First off, the promised bathroom etiquette refresher course. All I’m going to say is that when G and I left our Badlands boondocking site (I’d planned on staying 2 nights there, but really, one was plenty, especially with that crazy wind) and went to the infamous Wall Drug, there was a ladies room that had about a dozen stalls; I was the only one in the room, and when someone else came in, there were 10 other stalls she could have chosen to take her post-5¢-coffee dump in that were more appropriate than the one she selected.
I didn’t entirely see the appeal of Wall Drug, since I’m not a shopper and don’t care for trinkets or touristy crap, nor did I want to dress up in an old-timey costume and take pictures by myself in it (although now that I think back on it, that might have hit me right in the giggle dick), nor did I fancy having a penny smashed into the shape of South Dakota or having my fortune told by either Pappy or Zoltar. So I wandered the premises, and then got back on the road west. Like many things in life that you make out to be an amazing thing in your head (Stonehenge comes to mind), Deadwood fell short. There was nothing wrong with the place, but it was just a little touristy wild-west downtown area dropped into the beautiful Black Hills with a lot of casinos and saloons. I’m not really sure what else I expected, to be honest. Calamity Jane to pop out and sing ‘Just Blew in From the Windy City,’ maybe. That would have been nice, since the entire reason I was so excited to go to Deadwood was because Calamity Jane has been in my top 5 musicals of all-time, pretty much since I first saw it at a young age. In case you were wondering, the other 4 include Wicked, Ragtime, We Will Rock You, and The Pajama Game. I figured I’d just go to my boondocking site for the night and have a nice relaxing day. Like 83% of my van plans, it did not turn out that way. The place I most wanted to stay at, a big, green, secluded pasture, was blocked off by construction. The second place I tried was washed out in the road, and in the spirit of not getting L2 stuck in the middle of nowhere, I moseyed along. The third site I tried was pretty trashed and graffitied up, and I just got a bad vibe thinking of being there at night if hooligans came around, so we gave up and went back to Rapid City, where I stayed at the Elks Golf Course. It was a pleasant enough stay, but I was really excited for my revamped schedule, since I was trying to work around some incoming weather (funny me, thinking spring was a good time to travel, when there were 3 days of 80° weather upcoming followed by several 30° days following). Summer + Winter = Spring, I guess. In order to not melt myself, or bake the dog, I bid Rapid City adieu and swept off to Pactola Lake, a gorgeous reservoir in the Black Hills to escape the heat (and yes, I sang ‘The Black Hills of Dakota’ (from, you guessed it, Calamity Jane)) on repeat as I drove through them. I found myself the perfect site, right in the trees, but with full sun so I could stay charged (hahahahaha….joke was on me), with both a view of and a trail down to the lake. It felt like heaven, and I was on top of the world. For about 12 hours. Until I realized the next morning that my Goal Zero wasn’t charging via the solar input. Now this wouldn’t be a huge deal, except that EVERYTHING ABOUT THE COMFORT OF VAN CAMPING INVOLVES HAVING A POWER SUPPLY IN SAID VAN. So instead of spending the day relaxing and reading a book down by the water, I spent it troubleshooting what might be wrong. To no avail. I did reset after reset after reset. I climbed on top of the van to look at panels and connections. I did this, that, and the other thing. Finally, in the evening, I succumbed to just turning the van on to run for a while to at least charge the power bank up enough to keep the refrigerator running overnight. Which is when I discovered that the alternator input wasn’t behaving appropriately either. It hadn’t taken the complete dump that the solar had, but it wasn’t giving me the wattage levels it should have. It was fluctuating from 524 (normal for alternator input) to 17, to 219, to 63. The two major pains in my ass of van life have been 1) where the fuck to get water for the tank, and 2) having unreliable power. Wind is another thorn in my side, but at least that and the water sitch I KNOW I’m always going to have to deal with. The power should really not be a factor in my van-related stress levels. I had planned on staying longer at Pactola Lake, but clearly needed to try and figure out a workaround for the battery, so back to Rapid City we went. I needed to try and fix things in an area that had actual stores and help and whatnot before heading off into the hinterlands. Sunday. Was. Awful. At least the morning was. The uselessness of both inputs pointed to yet another faulty Goal Zero (I’m seeing a pattern here, and I’ve got to say it’s going to be either third time’s the charm with their products, or three strikes and they’re out), but I had a game plan. There was a Cabela’s in RC that said they had Yeti 1000’s in stock. Now, I wanted a 1500 at least, but beggars can’t be choosers, so I was going to take whatever I could get my hands on and return the faulty 1500 to the closest REI I could find (so at the end of the trip, in Green Bay). I was not happy to hear the Cabela’s employee tell me they didn’t actually have any 1000’s in stock. Or any, of any size, for that matter. So much for my workaround. Indeed there are no stores in Rapid City that carry any Goal Zero Yeti’s of any size. My friend Jim (btw, a big thank you to both Jim and my friend, Tom, for your support troubleshooting this bullshit. And to Jack, for the emotional support provided, particularly on this day, when a few hours after Cabela’s I did indeed lose my fucking shit.) mentioned that I could go to any auto store and they’d at least be able to test the Goal Zero to see if it’s the battery. That way, at least I know for sure where the problem is….is it the battery, is it a solar panel, is it a connector cable? The first Auto Zone I went to said, yes, they could do that. But their equipment was broken. The O’Reilly’s I then went to said yes, so I disconnected the thing and lugged it into the store, just for the guy to look bug-eyed at it and say, never mind, that was above his paygrade. Since the absolute ONLY way I was getting ANY charge on this particular day was through driving, I re-installed it before finding the next Auto Zone, where they assured me that yes, they could test it. So I repeated steps 1-3. For them to tell me, no, they couldn’t, but to try a battery store up north of the city. Repeat steps 4-6. I’d like to mention at this point that none of these steps are easy. The power banks are big, bulky, and quite heavy (the 1500 is about 40lbs; the 3000 is 79), stuffed into a tiny space with next-to-no wiggle room, and accessed only after I move all the shit that’s on the bench seating, move the cushions, fold up the boards, and bungee the lid up so it doesn’t fall on my head while I’m fucking around in there. Which I have to do each time because that’s how the dog gets up and down from the bed, and it freaks him out if it’s not in place. All in a very small space, with a very anxious dog nearby, supervising. Also, I’d like to mention that it was Sunday, and the recommended battery store was closed. Because, you know, Jesus. I located another battery shop, that (HALLELUJAH!) was open on a Sunday, AND was a Goal Zero retailer, to boot! Jackpot. I went into the shop, asked if they could help, or at least test the battery, to a resounding YES. So I went out and worked my way through Steps 1-3. Again. And when I brought it into the shop and the guy told me, OhWaitNoWeCan’tActuallyTestThatEvenThoughISaidICouldAndWeDealWithGoalZeroShit, is when I lost my shit. Not in the store in front of the guy, but as soon as I was back in the privacy of the van and had done Steps 4-6. Again. Look, Rapid City was a nice enough place, but for fuck’s sake, I had already been back there more times than was preferable, and on this particular day, been back and fucking forth across it for going on 5 hours. I realized that nothing as going to be resolved, and that I was either going to have to tuck tail and head home, or figure out a way to continue relying only on alternator power. I decided to brainstorm that on my drive down to the Oglala National Grasslands in Nebraska. The plan had been to stop at Wind Cave National Park on the way to do a little hiking, but when both turns had me on gravel roads (Gatsby is not fond of anything other than nice smooth pavement; nor am I, for that matter) for many miles to get there, I decided to just keep going. I felt like the morning had been more than enough of a struggle. 3 hours after leaving Rapid City, with 22 miles to go to our destination, I found myself once again staring at gravel roads. Did I mention that I still had 22 miles to go? And that Google Maps had the audacity to suggest I could do in 24 minutes? It was at this point that I summoned all the moxy I had left, told the kid to sit down and buckle up, and got after it. 57 minutes later, we arrived. Honestly, most of the gravel roads weren’t in terrible shape (there was a section of a few miles during which my ass sphincter made its way up into my throat sphincter as I was chugging along at 12mph), but going anything over 25-30mph was asking for trouble. We ended up in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Nebraska, aka the Oglala National Grasslands, and it was spectacular. If I’d ended up having to overnight at a Walmart, or Flying J’s after that day, I might have ended it all right there. Not that there were any Walmart’s or Flying J’s anywhere close by, or even distantly by. This was what I’d wanted since the first moment I thought of van life. Miles and miles and miles of space, and nobody around. Room for the dog to just dog, without being on a tether; without me having to keep a constant eye out for other dogs. As the sun faded the gold of the gently rolling hills into a l̶a̶v̶e̶n̶d̶a̶r̶ lavender haze, I finally relaxed. I relaxed all the way into the next morning, when I realized that a big, fat fucking bee had been my bunkmate for the night, and Gatsby hadn’t done a damn thing about it. While I do have my Epi-pen with me, out in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Nebraska is not an ideal location for an allergic reaction. I was loathe to leave, but since movement had become necessary to me being in electricity (plus there was incoming thunderstorms, so I wanted to be on paved roads by the time they hit…..getting bogged down and having to have to call for a tow in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Nebraska also didn’t seem ideal), we had to get going: destination, Upton, Wyoming. Wyoming was the fourth of my six new States this trip, and although I didn’t have ideals about Eastern Wyoming, it rivaled my feelings of Deadwood, and I was once again underwhelmed. I’m going to go ahead and say that most of what I’ve seen of Eastern Wyoming is pretty fucking gross. It’s not attractive. The towns, if you can call them that, look to be full of Spouse Cousin Lawn Hoarders, and like I might have to worry about someone running me off the road to toy with my emotions or my person, à la The Hills Have Eyes. The golf course we stayed at in Upton was completely pleasant. Closed for the season still, so Gatsby got to run amok, and terrorize bunnies to his heart’s content. Using a (I’m going to mess up whatever it’s actually called) multi-volt-meter-something-something-measurer thing that I purchased just before leaving Rapid City at my fourth and final auto store, after procuring some emergency consolation cookies at Safeway, I attempted to troubleshoot where the power issue was coming from. The obvious place to look was the cables incoming from the solar panels. Now, in hindsight, there was an easier way to do this (namely, just pinching the middle of the connectors, which would have popped them apart), but I opted for the dunce’s method, which was unscrewing the caps of each cord to fully expose the wires to touch with the little probes. I’m somewhat handy, but also somewhat stupid. The good thing? There’s plenty of power coming in from the panels, which is great, because I really didn’t want to get back up on the roof and stare at them up there, pretending like I might have some idea of how to fix anything other than a glaringly obvious problem, like a broken panel (j/k, I wouldn’t know how to fix that either), or a disconnected cable. It told me that the problem is either the unit, or the connector. Interestingly enough, after my friend Tom talked me through how to re-twirl the wires and shove them back into their little cable slots, THE SOLAR INPUT STARTED WORKING AGAIN! In celebration, I took a shower, complete with hair washing. This proved to be not the best idea, since by the time I got out of the shower, it had gone back to 0 solar input. Somewhat downtrodden, I plugged in to shore power for the night to at least get the Goal Zero up to 100% after the water heater had depleted its meager stores. The afternoon was beautiful, and even when it started storming, that was beautiful, too. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many BIG lightning strikes before. The following day, we set off for Devil’s Tower. They don’t allow dogs there, so G lazed in the van while I meandered down the Tower Trail and let my knuckles relax (it was another ‘Near Gale’ wind day – fun, every time!). A few more hours of driving through mind-numbing Eastern Wyoming brought us to the Thunder Basin National Grasslands, and the adjacent Weston Hills, where we would be staying. At first glance, it seemed ideal. We were about 2 miles down a gravel road (not that the main road was bustling affair….. I think I’d seen 2 other vehicles during my 45 minutes on it), and up in the hills, away from, well, anything. The dog got to dog again. He really likes that, and I really like him to do that. It gives him some independence, and at some point during our inaugural journey back in the summer of 2022, I let go of a little bit of control (it was while we were staying at my cousin’s friend’s land on a river in the Yoop, to be precise – at first, Gatsby would NOT cross the river unless I did, and then he would, but still kept me in eyesight at all times, and finally after a week or so, got brave enough to go exploring in the woods on his own), and decided to just let him do his thing, and we would all live with the consequences. Same thing here. I know there are wild animals, but 1) a lot of them are more scared of him and he’s going to chase them off anyway, and 2) even if he was on a tether, he’d either bust off it, and/or I’d break a hand trying to wrestle him back into the van, and/or we’d both die during that same activity via whatever animal he was barking at attacking us, so best to just let him do his dog thing and (hopefully) save us both, or at the very least, take one for the team. It was as we were out after his dinner that I had some reservations about our chosen location. It was already a little creepy because of the isolation, which I both love and fear, but honestly, if it were just me, I’d never stay there. I’m honestly something of a weenie, and between that and not having a LICK of cell service, it would be a no for me without my Gatsbaby. Anyway, while we were out, I was walking around this big bush I’d parked next to, and I saw bones. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them. And then G trotted up to me with, I’m going to guestimate, the femur, patella, and tibia of some animal. He had been insistent about nosing around in said big bush, and when I went and nosed around with him, it appeared to be some kind of Bone Den. Like we had stumbled across something's collection. The sun was dropping rapidly behind the hills, so I wasn’t moving us, but trust and believe neither of us were going to be going outside after dark. This didn’t play into our favor later in the night, when I was getting ready for bed, and something flew into my hair. I honestly thought it was a bat, but it (thankfully) ended up being a giant moth. However, it would have been nice if we both could have escaped the confines of the van while dealing with that debacle. My thermoregulator woke me up sometime during the 5 o’clock hour, because it was 48° in L2. In trying to conserve power, I’d hoped it would be warm enough outside to not need the heater, but this was when the transition from summer back to winter was clearly happening. It was probably a good thing I woke when I did, because when I peeked outside, I couldn’t see a damn thing due to some light fog and whiteout snow. Since I didn’t have any cell service, I had no idea how long this little squall was going to last. I did know, however, that there was no snow plow that was going to be heading into my neck of the hills, ever, so if I wanted to get back to a road that I could actually see, I better make haste. We made it to a city park an hour or so north, where I took promptly turned the heater on and sacked out, very Waterloo, IA-style. I’m not a good napper, and at home, Jack knows that if I actually take a nap, something is wrong (I actually have a funny story about that that I will tell in a side blog about a nap interrupted right after we got home from our cruise), but in the van, I nap like a champ. With nothing wrong with me, other than I’m just really tired and probably had to get up early for some dumb reason. Both dumb reasons on this trip, so far, have been because of suboptimal temperatures. After I’d recombobulated, I had nearly full power, so decided to treat myself to the coffee making experience, and wouldn’t you know it, when toggling the AC on, I saw that my solar was working again! Apparently, every time the solar works, I rejoice by taking a shower. I’m not sure how long the solar input lasted, because after said shower, and we had finished today’s drive, it had already shit the bed again, but it was exciting all the same. It would be MOST exciting to just have consistent power, but then what would I spend all my free time fretting about? That’s where the tale ends, for now. We’ll pick up with starting with my experiences in the bustling metropolis of Miles City, MT, population 8,354. Until then, more power to ya.
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AuthorA Homebody with a severe case of Wanderlust Categories
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