August 27 Missiles and Spearfish

There is one campground in Badlands Natl Park, Cedar Pass, not including one or two hike-in back country ones. This is not a criticism, just an observation that may help prepare any of you who may take an RV here.  It is a paved loop plus a road bisecting the loop. Tent sites are along the outer parts and sites to accommodate RV’s on the inner part. Some of the sites do not have enough room for a larger RV, much less with a towed vehicle. Certainly we have done tent camping, but this trip is not that kind of experience. We only made reservations back in April, so I guess we got the last site available. First, we had to (or did, anyway) come in the wrong way (opposite to the posted direction), so that our door was facing the open area rather than out into the street. (We weren’t the only ones to do it.) Next, we backed the truck up as close as possible to RV. I made sure the Rock Hard 4×4 off road bumper was the part facing the traffic! I also put out traffic cones, which I wisely provisioned among everything else imaginable, but not quite, for the trip. (The first 52 degree night, I wish I had thought of pajamas.) The site was so sloped we never got it level. It was next to the “bathrooms” (oh, there was no “bath” in the bathroom, just toilets) and across from the dumpster. The florescent light from the bathrooms blotted out the Milky Way. Again, I am not complaining. Just catching up on the “telling it like it is” category. We had reservations for four nights, but we could not reserve one site for the whole time. The first night was in one site, then the next day we had to move to the site right next to us. There is no water hook up at these sites; only electricity. You fill your fresh water tank at a one of a few spigots around the campground.  Only after we got the vehicles positioned did we realize we needed to get to a water spigot. We connected our extra length of hose and with the double length, were able to reach the spigot to take on some water without moving. The next morning, since we knew we could reach the water from our current position, one of us thought we should go ahead and fill the fresh tank before moving to the site next door. The other one of us said, no, let’s move first, we can still reach the water with the double length of hose. So we set up at the next site. Then we tried to get water and were 10 feet short. One of us wanted to move the rig back a short distance before we were completely set up in order to get water. One of us was insistent that we not move it and that the one could complete filling the tank by using buckets or pitchers. One of us said, “No way.” One of us said, “Watch me.” Now we both know that you can’t fill the fresh tank inlet with a bucket or pitcher. We never got any more water.

Not complaining, but considering everything; having to be stingy with the water, the leaning floor, the unwanted illumination, having obtained enough practice of my fly-catching skills on the rascals coming from the dumpster, et cetera, et cetera; in the afternoon of the day before we had to leave, we pulled up stakes and headed for an oasis to the west. Good old KOA. Water! Sewer and electricity! And flat, or flatter, sites. A night at the Spearfish, South Dakota KOA, and a shorter drive to our next destination.

[Note: The park’s Cedar Pass campground is on the park boundary. You can see the sign for the private KOA campground just outside the park boundary.]

After leaving Badlands, we stopped at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near I-90.

We even drove out into a field a few miles from the museum on a dirt road to a launch silo.

The Spearfish KOA has large grassed areas, big trees, and a cornfield in back.  We left a largely asphalt campsite in a national park for the peaceful greenery of a national corporate campground. Ironic?

As we pulled in, a man was sitting outside the camper next door reading a book and waiting on the charcoal in his grill to turn gray. He let me get hooked up, then said, “Hi, new neighbors.” His wife drove up with the groceries. They had a Florida tag. We had not seen any other tags from the Southeast. They were from Jacksonville. His wife worked on the road, a “project manager.” He said that she just talks on the phone all day. I don’t think he had any work. He had recently completed an Alaska journey in the RV. His wife did not go on that trip; he went with his brother. His brother departed somewhere along the way and his wife had recently joined him at a nearby airport. His towed vehicle was a Jeep Wrangler. The front of the Wrangler was covered with dents from hundreds of miles of gravel roads in Alaska and one headlight was busted. He said if I went to Alaska, not to get a “hula” skirt. I don’t know what other kinds of skirts they have for RV’s. The Jeep took them all the way, though, when the RV conked out. He and his brother loaded into the Jeep and continued the journey while the RV was getting $12,000 worth of repairs, including a new engine.