Woke up to the unfortunate sound of rain on the roof this morning, making everything wet just before we packed it up, although once it passed through there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! That helped dry a lot of things out just in the nick of time. Managed to get everything packed and were out of there by 9:00 or so. Followed the route I had previous planned, which quickly turned out to be a mistake. I thought the west side of the Black Hills wouldn’t be as twisty and windy as the east side when we came in, but within a couple of miles we came to a tunnel, which turned out to be impassible. The height was okay for us, at 12’2″, but the width was marked at 9 feet. Thinking of my other RV, which was 8 feet, I figured I could make it and started through, slowly. I forgot this new unit is actually 100+ inches, more like 8 1/2′, which, with the awning and slide toppers on both sides, actually made me wider. I soon realized I couldn’t make it, so we had to back out, which is when I caught one of the slide toppers on the edge of a protruding piece of rock, so we tore it up a bit, unfortunately. But we managed to get out okay, and fortunately there was a dirt road leading up to a logging area that was convenient for us to turn around, though we did hold up a little traffic in the process. So we headed down to the nearest detour, which took us through the entrance to Custer State Park (which we had avoided by coming from the north previously, otherwise I think we would have had to pay an entrance fee), through the town of Custer, past the Crazy Horse memorial carving, and on to the Willow Creek Horse Camp, which was just off the main road, so all of the roads going that way were easy and straightforward, with no more excitement, thank goodness. We quickly found our spot, which was a bit odd, with us on one side of the road and the highline for the horses on the other, but no big deal, we can still see them out the back window. The place is empty, and we can certainly understand why. They consider this a group camp, but the size of the sites aren’t much bigger than a single , or at most a double site in most other places, yet they charge an exorbitant fee for them. I’m guessing that’s because the KOA across the street charges twice or three times as much for horsecampers, and you think that would be an influence, but obviously most people have concluded it’s not worth it. For example, we’re in a site that’s rated for two rigs and 6-8 horses (though I don’t know how they figure that, it would be more than 2 horses per highline), and it’s $44 per night, with no Golden Age Passport discount allowed apparently. So it’s going to be an expensive weekend, and that’s just for camping! Anyway, after getting set up and putting the horses on their anchors so they could graze, we disconnected the van and I ran into town to the Post Office to pick up mail, though there was only the Dish receiver and not the hearing aid. Apparently, the UPS truck doesn’t arrive until just before the post office closes at 2:30, so I would have to come back then. I ran down to a little grocery store and found an open Wi-Fi signal nearby, so I spent some time on the computer looking for replacement parts for the slide topper, as well as a new motor cover for the main awning, I apparently just brushed that too. I heard from one local store in Rapid City that there was a hailstorm going on there, even though all we had was a few clouds in Keystone. Eventually I found out all I needed, and just as I was getting ready to go into the grocery store, a UPS truck pulled in front of me and parked! I ran out to see if I could get my package from him, and sure enough, after he finished his drop off, he found my other package, saving me from another stop at the post office. That done, I ran into the grocery store for bacon and ice cream, then back to camp, which only took about 10 minutes by this nice road, and discovered Hubby had managed to get a good satellite signal using the old receiver, so all I had to do was plug it in and within minutes, it was ready for activation. Which means we needed to find a way to call and get it activated, and there’s no phone signal here, surprisingly. We headed across the street to the KOA for two reasons, one to activate the Dish and the other to send in Hubby’s quarterly heart monitoring, which we needed a landline for. After checking around, we ended up at the lodge, where the woman was extremely helpful, even taking us up to one of their hotel rooms to plug into one of their phone, because that was the only one with the right end. Then we went to restaurant row (also in KOA) and there were a couple of courtesy phones, where I could make my Dish 800 call with no problem, and by the time we got back, the Dish was up and running and we had achieved all of our goals for the day. Eventually I put up our highline on the poles here (though they have a cable, I don’t like to use them because the horses can’t move around as much), and settled in for the evening, at last recording some new programs and back to being able to pause and hold live TV, something we haven’t been able to do since the hard drive crashed!
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