One word -- grueling. Today was long, arduous, boring, and ripe with lameness. It all started with this:
Fortunately, even though the weather forecasted snow from Bozeman to Billings (a good 120 miles if I remember correctly) we had none. So we busted to Billings pretty quick. We had planned on stopping to get a book on tape at a Borders in Billings, but as we drove through it (everybody was sacked out) I didn't see a single building that looked like it was built in the last 50 years, much less would contain a Borders bookstore. So I kept driving.
I must say, Montana is WAY cooler than Wyoming. I thought the people in Montana were nicer, the scenery much more interesting, and there were (slightly) less pickup trucks and more SUV's.
After we hit Billings, Montana, for some reason, I think they just didn't bother to plow the roads. We basically had this for hours and hours of driving today:
Not fun.
We hit South Dakota and things didn't really change. I could have taken this same picture anywhere along a 200+ mile stretch of road through SD:
That was where we stopped to pee. It was so cold I didn't think Miles was actually going to be able to go. The wind, gusts of 20-30 mph, probably resulted in a wind-chill of 15-20 degrees. Hell,
I could barely function in that kind of wind/temperature.
A good couple hours, 16oz of coffee, and 12oz of Red Bull later, we stopped at a rest area. Needless to say, it was still freezing:
The highlight of the day was stopping at Mt. Rushmore. It was awesome!! It was as impressive as I had hoped. Since we were off season, most of the tourist-oriented shops were closed - nobody in their right mind should have been out perusing shops in that weather.
It costs $8 to enter the Rushmore "grounds." You can park on varying levels of parking, but since nobody (I mean
nobody) was there, we just parked up in the RV parking right next to the entrance to this mall thing, where you walk down a paved row of square pillar things, each with four flags on them representing a state. Here are some pics:
The only thing that annoyed me was that it looks as though the right (our right, his left) side of Lincoln's face doesn't look completed. Other than that, very awesome.
We were wrapping up at Rushmore, I was taking some video, and a badass park ranger chided Kristal (who was bringing the car around) that she couldn't park in the RV parking. I guess if I were him on a freezing day like that with nobody around, I'd be bored too. :-)
We left Rushmore, and decided to grab dinner at a Sonic in Rapid City. This is a clever fast food joint where you simply pull up to stations in this covered parking lot, order on your private "drive up" window, pay with a card right there, and they bring your food out to you. Really cool idea -- unless you have a 5 and 8 year old in the back seat who ordered extra long chili-cheese dogs. LOL It was about 25 degrees outside, and I had resolved to not give a damn about the car this whole trip, so pass them back we did. They actually did great.
We wrapped up, and were ready to get back on the road! Fire up the car -- nothing. Try again -- nothing. Battery is dead. I knew we had a weak battery because the car died a month ago when I left the headlights on too long to light up us unloading firewood out front of the house. My guess is the interior lights, plus having a DS Lite plugged in the whole time, just drained it. Which is pretty sad.
I pop the hood, meander around waiting for someone to drive by, for about five - ten minutes. I figure I had better dig our jumper cables out of the trunk since the whole trunk is packed impossibly tight. Of course, I realize, in my brilliance packing things up before we left, I put the jumper cables UNDER the mat at the bottom, with the spare tire, thinking it would help clear room in the trunk. WHICH IT DID -- of course, I didn't think about what would happen if I needed them. Oh well, I'll just ask someone. This is BFE South Dakota -- surely everybody has jumper cables.
Finally someone pulled into the stall next to us. One of the gals got out of the car, so I asked her if she had some jumper cables we could use to jump my car. Abruptly, no. OK....I walked inside Sonic, and basically asked out to the expansive kitchen and everyone in there if anybody had a pair of jumper cables I could use. No, no one did. No one did!?!?!? There were at least 8 cars parked out front in "employee parking" and no one had jumper cables? I exit the kitchen, and signaled to someone else parked there. I asked if they could give me a jump. Yeah, they would do it. Awesome.
They pull over to the stall next to us, and realize they didn't have their cables. Great. So Kristal and I start unpacking the entire damned back of the trunk until I could left the mat high enough to snake the cables out (i.e. pull as hard as possible). We finally released them from the trunk, and had the car jumped within seconds. Awesome!
We repacked the trunk, put the cables ON TOP, and were finally on our way.
We realized that if we were going to keep driving another 5 hours tonight, we'd need an audio book, so when we passed an exit which would easily lead us to a Borders bookstore, we took the next exit, returned back to the prior one, and brewed into Borders to pick a random mystery / thriller book. After a bathroom break for the boys, we headed out again. As we entered the freeway, we realized I had forgotten to fill up with gas. ARGH!!! We took the next exit, filled up, and left.
We were finally on the road! But, after 13 hours, and two prior days of driving, things started breaking down. I was getting tired, kristal fell asleep, the boys started bickering about their games. We drove another hour, but just couldn't make it any further, so we're now in Murdo, SD. If I thought we did good with the $107 C'Mon Inn stay last night, we are doing fabulous with the $57 Best Western we're in now. :-)
Between white-kunckling it through hours of snow on the road, blistering cold every time we took a step out of the car, the badass park ranger, the battery dying, the fits and starts, etc, we actually made time for this, which should indicate to you our overall feelings at this point -- we're having a great time!!
