Drive, drive, drive!
Oh goodness, was this a drive. It started out in super snowy mountains of Wyoming. We were paving the way off the mountain with no one in front of us, it was actually pretty scary driving though, we don't have snow chains which made it pretty rough. After about an hour we made it through the snow and we were all good for the next 6.5 hours to Mt. Rushmore.
Honestly not to exciting of a drive, just super long stretches of flat lands until we hit South Dakota.
Once we got to Rushmore we saw it was a $10 parking fee, but we could see it from the car driving by, so we just saw it and drove past. It looks just like all the pictures, but we saw it! Hahaha.
So we just kept on driving and took the last 1.5 hours to get to the Badlands. We parked up on a clif right above the park. We met this super cool guy named Mark and his wife Diane, who also drive a vanagon camping up here too so that was a good way to end the night.
The next morning, we went to go check out Wall Drug, a 76,000 square foot convenience store in Wall, South Dakota. It was super cool and they had different themed rooms for all different things they had. They even had a full café for us to have breakfast. I had french toast and Ryker had eggs, toast and hashbrowns. It was pretty good and the coffee was only 5 cents. after breakfast we went to drive around Badlands National Park for a bit before heading to Colorado. We went to a few look outs like Yellow Mounds overlook where we learned about the area and how all the stripes came to be. We also checked out Pinnacles Overlook to take some pictures before heading out.
We were taking Sage Creek road out of the park and that's when the day went south. It was a long dirt road full of washboards, which shook our van really badly and dropped our brake pedal. So we took it slow and pumped the brakes to get it to come back, but after a little bit we started hear a terrible scratching sound. We pulled over still on the dirt road and luckily bypasses all the dead zones and I was able to get one bar of service for us to call a repair shop nearby to get the van a spot and then call AAA to get a tow. Took an hour to get a truck and then another hour and a half to get to us, and then another hour and a half to get to the shop.
After almost two hours at the shop we learned that the back drum breaks were shot. When they were last replaced (before we bought the van) the shoes were put on wrong and the hardware completely warped. There weren't any parts in town so we're shipping them from GoWesty, a company that we use often and trust a lot. So now we're posting up at a hotel in Rapid City, South Dakota for at least three days while the van is getting a full rear brake job.
Happy spooky season to us!