We tried out a different campground this trip. The campground (Chris’ Campground) reached out to us and invited us to stay with them…so we did.
The journey to South Dakota last time was quite interesting. Right before leaving town a blizzard (not the Oreo kind either) came through a few days before we were scheduled to go so I had my guard up this time.
Since we were leaving for an extended period of time, I decided not to cut the lawn until the last minute. As I started up the mower, I noticed that the deck wasn’t working. I pulled it into the garage and eventually figured out the tension spring was nowhere to be found. So I had to back track over the lawn until I found it. Lawn cut (check!).
Mother Nature didn’t back down this time either. Even though we decided to go a month later (June), the weather actually followed us. We stopped over in Mitchel, SD for a night (and to see the Corn Palace again). That very night the entire country was in a calm state except for one small severe cell of thunderstorms and it was heading right at us. I can’t make this stuff up. I even included a radar photo below.
We did arrive safely in Spearfish right as planned despite all the weather issues (including a nice cross wind). The campground is situated right off the interstate so getting in was pretty easy. We were assigned two nice semi shaded spots in the back in area.
The campground has many amenities and many are shown in the photos below. There’s even a petting zoo that Molly really enjoyed visiting. There are several pools and a basket ball court close by our sites so we took advantage of that.
About the second or third night, a freak wind storm rolled through and ripped up our canopy which we had covering our picnic table so that didn’t last long. About every third night after that (usually when we had made plans), the weather threw something at us. That included the ride home; wind as usual. Lucky for us it was a tail wind so we made great mileage going home.
On the ride home, I tested out my TPMS…twice (50 miles apart). Yes that’s right two flat tires on the first 100 miles of our 300 mile journey. Lucky for me, I came prepared with two spares, an axle ramp and a new floor jack. So two times we had to stop on I-90 and swap tires. When we arrived at Sioux Falls, our destination for the day and the nearest Discount Tire store, I bought four new Goodyear Endurance tires. I was planning on replacing them at the end of the season anyway as they were 5 years old.
It must of rained everyday back home while we were gone because the yard looked like a jungle. Of course my streak of luck continued and 10 minutes in, the rear tire is flat and won’t hold air on the same mower. Once again, I had to park it and order new tires. When they came I tried to change the tire out myself with a Harbor Freight Mini Tire Changer. To my surprise, I was able to pull that off.
Since I got two tires as a package deal from Amazon, I decided to go ahead and change the other one a week later right before I mowed. Of course there was nothing I could do to mount that tire on the rim. It was just too tight. So for the third time, my mower was out of service. I had the local tire shop force that tire on first thing Monday morning.
I will be posting a few non-camping side trips in the very near future. Watch for those tags soon!
Anyway, enough of that, the photo are below…
After a hard day of travelling and set up, we went straight to town to have dinner. Don’t look down on this one!