We made it to Faith, SD last night – after an extremely rough ride for the last 70 miles.  Both Ole and I have now had our practice for riding bucking broncos so we can enter  the next rodeo we come across.  (I know there’s a bull at the Full  Throttle Saloon – but they only let topless women ride that  and I’m not up for that – sorry.)  The road between Lemmon, SD and Faith is so rough and so narrow  you’re truly taking your life in your hands when you travel on it.  And in addition, this time there was a ton of road construction – maybe SD finally realized they needed to do something about that highway. 

Anyway, I always go through the rig from front to back and make sure that all the “hatches are battened down” and locked up securely.  I really hate to have things flying around while we’re traveling down the road.  Things have a tendency to break when that happens and besides that it scares the livin’ tar out of the cats.  Poor Simon got hit on the head with a small candle that went flying off the table.  And this poor cat is blind so doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.  At least Lucy can duck and cover when things get wild.  This trip the road was so rough that not only did some of the cupboards come flying open, but the bumps even blew out part of our electrical system.  The rearview camera quit, Ole couldn’t get his power window up or down, the dash fan quit working – well, you get the idea.  After we “landed” Ole trouble shot things and informed me that things had come loose under the dash and the problem was fixable once we got to Sturgis and could get parts.  Obviously there were no “parts” available in Faith as that town rolls up its sidewalks at five o’clock.

We always spend the night at the city park in Faith.  It’s a nice little park on the edge of town with big trees for shade, lots of room to run Daisy, and it’s fairly quiet – except for last night.  There is a small farm/ranch site located about a quarter of a mile from the park.  Obviously, they have chickens – or at least they definitely have a rooster.  With his attitude he’s probably driven all the hens away – just sayin’ is all.  Someone forgot to instruct him in the difference between day and night – light and dark.  This feathered monstrosity started crowing at MIDNIGHT last night and let loose every three minutes until the sun came up this morning.   Apparently his owners are so used to him they don’t even hear him anymore.  That stringy old geezer would be in my stew pot so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.  I’d choke his last crow right out of his scrawny old neck.  Just remember – if you come to stay at my  house – DON’T CROW!!. 

Other casualties/issues of the day:  We finally got the satellite receiver working after having a service call from Direct TV.  Fortunately when I contracted with Direct TV I bought a maintenance contract so this was all on their dime.  Then we blew a fitting in the water system – when Ole was loading water on it was running out as fast as he was putting it in.  Unfortunately, the leak was INSIDE the coach – not outside so I had a lot of water to mop up and carpet to dry out.  Then – as Ole was hooking up the motorcycle trailer and we were just ready to pull out of the yard I noticed a hissing noise coming from just behind the right front wheels.  This was extremely distressing as we had just spent $1500 on new tires all around and I couldn’t imagine why we’d be having tire problems.  After close inspection Ole discovered a leaking air line.  This RV has air suspension – so keeping the air INSIDE the line is kind of important.  An easily fixable problem as long as we were at home and not on the road.  So after numerous trips back and forth from the RV to the shop, Ole had it fixed and we were on the road. 

All went well until Ole decided to turn on the in-dash a/c.  Last fall we had to have the compressor and a few other parts on the A/C replaced.  More $$$.  Everything worked fine.  So this is the first time we’ve used the rig this summer because we’ve been so busy.  So Ole flipped the switch, pushed the button and what do we get?  Hot air.  So we ended up just driving down the road with the windows open.  By this time we’re both getting a bit frustrated – but what do you do. Ole has the stuff along to fix it, but didn’t have the correct fitting.  Once again – wait until we get to a hardware store in Sturgis – as the one in Faith had locked the door and pulled the shades at 5 o’clock. 

We’re currently driving through a wide spot in the road called Mud Butte.  Real exciting town that consists of one gas station/post office.  This is the last leg of our journey for today and we should be seeing Bear Butte shortly – that’s just outside of Sturgis.  Hopefully we won’t have any more fiascos, but fortunately those we have had so far have been easily fixable and just inconveniences. 

Stay tuned for the saga – (I’ll just have to teach you more Norwegian words.)

Love, Lena