We embarked on our big summer RV trip promptly at noon on Thursday, June 30 after I worked that morning.  It worked out for my parents to accompany us for the first week, however they weren’t ready to leave at noon so we started out without them and they caught up later that day.  It was our first time to really drive the rig on the interstate and fully loaded for our two month trip!  I was initially impressed and have continued to be very happy with the way the fifth wheel pulls and handles.  Other than the extra weight, taking longer to stop, and the wide turns………….oh and pathetic gas mileage – more on that later – you hardly even know you’re pulling a trailer.  No swaying issues or really any issues pulling it at speeds up to 70 & 80 MPH.

Day 1 saw us drive to Eureka, IL (a nice little town) where Charity was excited to shop at The Skirt Outlet and the boys and I enjoyed some down time at the local park.  This also allowed my parents to mostly catch up to us.

Mom and Dad joined us at mile marker 47 on I-74 in Illinois and we traveled the rest of the way together.  We ended up in a Costco parking lot in Iowa City, IA for the night.

Day 2 we had another long travel day driving northwest through Iowa, across the southern part of Minnesota and into South Dakota.  It was the first time for our kids and mom and dad to be in MN and SD so that was exciting.  We stopped at a HuHot Mongolian Grill in Sioux Falls, SD for supper (which was delicious by the way) and mom lost her glasses on the walk from the car to the restaurant which was quite a lengthy walk.  Both her and I retraced our steps twice and didn’t find them so went ahead and ate supper.  On the way out, Jadon spotted them next to the sidewalk in some landscape rock.  Losing and finding things will turn out to be a recurring theme for us apparently and that’s a lot better than losing and losing things.

Day 3 was a much shorter travel day and more sightseeing.  We had stayed the night in the Cabela’s parking lot in Mitchell, SD and so before leaving the area we went to the famous Corn Palace.  It’s this neat building that has the appearance of a palace on the outside and inside is a gymnasium.  Every year though it is decorated with a different theme inside and out with corn and other natural plants.  This has been going on for over 100 years and Charity and I had stopped here ten years ago when we took our first and only trip to Mount Rushmore in 2006 while she was pregnant with Jadon.

After the Corn Palace we drove to the capital city, Pierre, SD.  Our planned stop for the night was Griffin Park which is a city park right on the Missouri river that has 11 RV electric hookups and is generally empty (at least according to what I read online).  On Saturday of the Independence Day weekend though, it was completely full!  So………..we ended up staying overnight in the Pierre Walmart parking lot.  Before we went to Walmart though, we spent several wonderful hours hanging out at the beautiful Capitol building and grounds.  We missed the guided tour inside the building, but took ourselves on a self-guided tour using their brochure, then ate supper there while the kids enjoyed riding their scooters on the sidewalks and throwing football in the lawn.  Next was walking the grounds and taking lots of pictures, then onto Walmart.  It was our first day to do some relaxing instead of mostly driving.

 

Day 4 was the best day yet.  We made a last minute decision to drive through Badlands National Park on our way to Mount Rushmore.  It was a really great decision.  The Badlands are quite incredible and everyone had a fun time climbing around on the rocks.  We took the loop road through and stopped at various points along the way to take pictures or walk around.  We also got to see, for our first time, several large prairie dog towns in the middle part of the drive.  Another highlight was seeing Bighorn Sheep.  After the Badlands we stopped in at Wall Drug to get “free ice water” and eat lunch.  Everything was great until Austin busted his chin and bit his tongue pretty bad on one of the chairs.  That quickly had us leaving to drive on to Mount Rushmore.  We got into our campground (which had full hookups for the first time as we’d been boondocking – full hookups are nice) at a reasonable time and went to Keystone, SD to shop and eat supper.  Everyone got our first glimpse of the Mount Rushmore Memorial on the drive to Keystone.  We are now officially in vacation mode and very happy about it.

 

 

Problems

We did have a few problems along the way, although nothing very significant.  The door to the bunk room keeps coming loose every time we move the RV and we discovered the first night that the truck is not charging the RV battery.  That turned out to be a simple solution where the fuse and relay switches in the truck that sends a 12 volt charge to the trailer were not installed.  A stop at Camping World took care of that and their customer service was phenomenal.  Since then however I’ve blown 2 fuses, so something is still not right.