My body hurts because the wind blows. No, seriously. South Dakota wind is no damn joke. My hands feel like an 87-year-old lifelong knitter with rheumatoid arthritis, I have a skinned elbow, a hole in my pants, and a lumpy bruise on my forearm, all from wind-related incidents. But let’s back up and go over how we got here, and why I’ve now dubbed Hecate L2.
It’s been a busy March & April….the first week of March, Jack and I went down to Indy to spend a few days with my family, and then within a week of our return, rushed off to Vermont so I could get some of the spring cleaning and maintenance done (hahaha…..although the weather report had shown 60’s and sun for the duration, it ended up dumping almost 2 feet of snow on us the second day we were there, which didn’t melt until about 36 hours before departure, so next to none of the outside maintenance happened, but we did catch up on a lot of Jeopardy!) at Gatsby’s Getaway. To add to that, my bathroom and kitchen need gut jobs sometime in the relatively near future, but once again, I can’t get a contractor out there to even look at it. Never mind that I’ve told everyone that I call I don’t care about the timeline. It’s not an emergency (right now), but will be if it doesn’t happen…. I just want to get on somebody’s calendar for next spring, shit. Isn’t that enough advanced notice and time enough to finish the eight million extra projects every contractor is currently working on? No, is the answer. So after 2 weeks there, I had two flat no’s, and one contractor who said he’d be there on Friday not show up. I guess it’s back to the drawing board. Anyway, right after we got back from Vermont, we were going to Fond Du Lac to watch Jack’s son play in a hockey tournament, and from there, G and I departing on our April-long adventure to hit up some of the sights that were missed from the OG Summer of 2022 list. If we’re honest, mostly everything on that list was missed. If you’re just joining me, I encourage you to go back and read some archives from that timeframe to see what YOU missed out on. So that meant unwrapping, un-winterizing, and packing up Hecate. All in the span of about 60 hours. Per usual, nothing went with anything resembling ease, and I put on a display of at least a couple of spectacular meltdowns within this timeframe. To start, the battery had died over the winter. Not unexpected, but it died dead enough that it wouldn’t keep a jump. I watched the RPM needle time and again struggle at 4-5x and then flop right down to zero. Nothing short of a 24-hour trickle charger would do for that beast, just to get it started enough to move from Lonnie & Barb’s (where I’d stored it for the winter) home. Meaning I couldn’t even use this precious trickle time to pack her. When she did start, on the drive home, the check engine light came on, so off to the local auto shop I went. There are still all the other dashboard lights that have been lighting up for the last 18 months wildly illuminated, but since I know those are just computer glitches, and also had an appointment with the RAM dealer in Fond Du Lac to address said issues, I was only worried about the check engine light. It wouldn’t do to get halfway to the dealer (3½ hours away) and have the van shit the bed. The local guy didn’t know what the deal was with any of it, but when it was returned to me, the engine light was off, so I figured that was good enough. Next, to the homestead, where I would reinstall the Goal Zero battery (remember how it plagued me for the first 8 weeks of ownership? Yeah, me too.). I did reinstall the battery, and plugged her in for an overnight so that I could take her back to Garden the next day to flush out the pipes of their cotton candy pink antifreeze. If you’re wondering why it was necessary to go back to Garden for this, it’s because Manistique has something like the highest water prices in the UP, maybe all of Michigan, IDK (for real, I am pretty frugal about my water usage, and have yet to pay less than about $140/moth), so for the amount of flushing needed, not to mention the 40-gallon fill up after, I wanted to use Lonnie’s $40/month unlimited well water instead of breaking into a cold sweat at the sight of my bill after that. So back to Garden it was, on an extremely shitty, cold-weather-winter-warning scenario, where the tube connecting the hose’s nozzle entrance (the system’s vagina?) to the water tank promptly fell off. Though we really could have used a helpful octopus, eventually the three of us managed to reinstall it, but it took longer than anybody wanted to be outside in that weather, and still had to flush and fill. Lonnie said, “Fuck it – have fun, kids!” and went inside. I didn’t blame him. Flushing finally began, and within a few minutes, I started hearing a beeping sound. It’s been a while, so my van noise recognition was rusty, but figured out that it was coming from ye old Goal Zero battery. It was plugged in again, so I didn’t really understand what the issue was. I’ll tell you what the issue was. The motherfucker wouldn’t charge. It wouldn’t charge while it was plugged in to an outlet. It wouldn’t charge while from solar. Nothing. So we flushed what we could while watching the battery go from the 8% it had retained from October rapidly to 0% and then die a sad, off-key beeping death. At this point, all we could do was fill up the tank and reason that I’d have to deal with the water situation later. I got back home just before it started dumping sleet and snow on us, and started to troubleshoot the battery. As I’d already learned the hard way two summers ago, it’s damn near impossible to travel comfortably with anything less than a fully functioning battery. The only way this bitch would (sort of) charge was while the van was running. But even then, it would just randomly shut off the 12V completely. Which, you know, runs MOSTLY EVERYTHING IN THE VAN. This was problematic for many reasons, the main concern being that I had just dewinterized the pipes, and now was without heat. I was already having flashbacks to last spring when the water heater sprung a leak after being dewinterized and had to be completely replaced. Plus, I like to eat, so unless I was planning on loading up on Subway while I still had those nice 3 footlongs for $17.99 coupons, and put them in a Yeti cooler for the duration, boondocking out in the middle of nowhere was going to be a challenge without a fridge or a cooktop. After several emails with Goal Zero, customer support decided my battery had well and truly shit the bed. Naturally this occurred 4 days after the warranty on it expired. Not joking. The warranty was good thru 31 March 2024. They did say they’d do an open box exchange, which to my understanding is they’ll send me one that someone else returned for whatever reason, but, while this is lovely of them and I look forward to it, did me not a lick of good for this trip. There wasn’t time for my usual organization prior to setting out, it was more just toss all the shit I think I’ll need in there and I’ll make it look nice later, and then we were in Fond Du Lac. The RAM dealer said they knew what was wrong with the computer glitches, but it would take a couple of days to get the part. I asked if they might send that part to the Rapid City dealership, so I could make an appointment and have it done there, and the answer was no, that Rapid City would have to diagnose it themselves. And then wait the appropriate number of days to get said part. I didn’t have the appropriate number of days at either location for that dumb fuckery, so once again, the neon lights will have to wait. Speaking of RAM dealers….remember last June when I went to Green Bay to have the seal on the back doors fixed so it would stop fucking leaking? It still fucking leaks. Speaking of leaks, the gullwing panels that have plagued me from the get-go? They're still an experiment in growing penicillin. After a couple of days of hockey, Jack and I parted, he back to the homestead, me on a westerly trajectory with my best pal, starting with a stop at REI in Madison to purchase a new Goal Zero. Since I will be getting another 3000x when the exchange happens and those babies are a pretty penny, I opted for a 1500. I originally was trying to find a 1000, but am actually really glad I couldn’t because I’m not sure the 1000 would be able to keep up on a daily. Especially a cloudy daily. That day, in and of itself, was an adventure. I got to REI at about 3pm, had the new battery installed by 3:30, with the puzzlement of why, in the 3000, there was a place for a plug that I have and that the 1500 did not. I really wasn’t even sure what that plug was for or if I was really going to miss whatever it was that it did. So I shrugged, and off to Dubuque, I went. I definitely did miss whatever it was that the plug did. It turns out that said plug is what charges the battery from the can alternator while it’s on. So in the 90 minutes it took to get to my overnight location, the battery had only been charging via the sunshine (thank god there WAS sunshine). It took some due diligence on my part to figure all this out, uninstall the old charger port from the 3000 and install it in the 1500, but it wasn’t until 8pm or so that everything was set to go. Alas, since the battery had only gone up to 18%, and I couldn’t run the van all night long in order to get a charge (or heat), I knew that once again, I’d be waking up to no power. I was just hoping I’d be lucky enough that would happen at like 6am instead of 3. I was not lucky. I woke up to see my breath in the air. I jest, but it was 48° and verrrry uncomfortable. Since I couldn’t make coffee or brush teeth, or, well, anything, I got on the road. Good thing I’d gotten the alternator charger sorted out, because I never saw the sun that day. I drove for a couple of hours to Waterloo, where I was so cold and exhausted, I pulled into a Walmart lot and sacked out with the heat cranked to 75° for several hours. Eventually we made it to Fort Dodge for our overnight at a winery. It was at this location that I discovered that the fixed leaking seal was still fucking leaking. And these things are why Hecate shall now be dubbed L2 (that's L squared, but it's not formatting properly here), for my Little Lemon. The following day (already that thing that happens in the van has already started where I have no idea what day or date it is, how long I’ve been gone, etc.) was extremely cloudy, so although I was outside getting a quick workout in at a city park on the route, I had no idea that the eclipse was even happening. It was at a Mexican restaurant in Sioux City, IA where I had what was the worst margarita ever paired with the best taco salad ever that I realized just how nutty people were about the eclipse. My waitress said to me, “How is everything out there? I just know I should have stayed at home and kept my son home from school, just in case.” Ummm, just in case what? What the fuck did I miss? We spent the rest of the evening hiking behind the church parking lot where we were overnighting. I love staying at churches. Not because I feel at home there, but because you can be as absolutely antisocial as you want to be. And I want to be. Tuesday (I looked that up in my calendar) took us north to Oacoma, SD and took us into the beginning of the wind. As my cousin Stevie put it oh-so-eloquently, “Ain’t got no trees in it.” Sure don’t. The drive this day wasn’t so bad, with moderate winds from 12-16 or so mph. This being said, I was on a two-lane road, and every time a semi and I would cross paths, I would be wildy buffeted about. Something happens in L2 that I’m not sure is entirely supposed to happen. Any time there’s a gust of wind, be it from a semi or from Mother Nature, not only does the little orange light that looks like a car swerving blinks on and off (which came on more times than I have fingers and toes to count on the following day, but we’ll get to that), but, for no better way of explaining it, the wheels kind of lock up during this. Like, it’s not driving normally, the tires seem stuck and are having a little mini seizure before recovering, and all that can be done is to take your foot off the gas and hope that you stay on the road. It’s suboptimal, to say the least. Oacoma was my favorite stop thus far, and I’m hoping I didn’t make a mistake in leaving when I did instead of enjoying a second day there. We were right on the Missouri river, with a gorgeous view of the gently rolling hills across. There were open fields, and lots of room for the boy to run amok, and play in the water, and really dog it up. Loved it. On Wednesday we got off the backroads and onto the Interstate to make haste toward the Badlands. That was a bad idea, and there was no making haste. We already know that the Google Maps is wildly incorrect in guestimating my travel time when in the van. Take what it offers, and then add 40%. If I’m traveling at a somewhat comparable rate of speed as suggested by the speed limit. I assure you, I was not going anything near the posted speed limit of 80mph to being with. I rarely ever take her over 65, and if I do, it’s in ideal driving conditions. So I started at 65. But as we progressed west, and the wind picked up from the moderate range of the prior day into the strong category (which goes from 25-31mph, in case you were wondering), my speed kept dropping. And dropping. And dropping. Until I was going 45 with my hazard lights on. Fighting to keep us on the road while the wheels kept stroking out with every good gust, which was approximately every 3.2 seconds. The good side of this is that I-90 isn’t a wildly travelled interstate this time of year, so I was never holding up traffic. When we got into the Badlands, I was faced with my second major challenge of the day (and one of the all-time major challenges of my van trips, in general): finding water. Although my schedule is being rearranged now because of the weather here (it’s going to be in the 80’s Friday-Sunday and then plummets into the 30’s for the rest of the week), I didn’t have that information yet, so was anticipating 5-7 days of boondocking out in the wilds before being back in more people-y places. I had stopped at a city park on the drive because iOverlander told me I’d find water there. I did find water there, but didn’t have a hose long enough to get it into my tank. I stopped at a campground because iOverlander told me I’d find water there. I did find water there. But it was shut off for the season. I found more water nearby, but the spigot that was near enough to accommodate my hose had burst over the winter, so water went all over me instead of into the tank. There was a spigot working a bit further away, but I didn’t have a hose long enough to get it into my tank. There’s a pattern here, isn’t there? I think I need a longer hose. #ThatsWhatSheSaid. I’m still not very mature. During these many ventures, I kept having to open the back doors to access said tanks and said hose and said whatnot, and that’s where the other various injuries occurred. Did I mention how windy it was? Those doors had their damn way with me. I finally procured the prized possession at the Ben Reifel Visitor’s Center. I always slowly and I’d guess somewhat creepily skulk around rest areas and visitor’s centers and gas stations like a guy with 70’s glasses, a pornstache and a windowless van looking for kids to give candy to, trying to eyeball any potential water source. This paid off in spades when I spotted next to the handicap entrance a spigot that said the MOST magical words on it: POTABLE WATER. I parked and took a quick shower (with a hair wash….it was a big day) to use up the rest of my Garden water and filled ‘er up. The wet hair and wind combo probably contributed to what look like welts on my neck. We were ready to rock and roll! And I mean that quite literally. We did the Badlands Loop Drive. I got out and did a couple of hikes and took some pictures (I will say, there is no setting on my phone cam that can even begin to capture the essence of what the Badlands actually feel like, but I did what I could), but by the time we got to our boodocking site, right on The Wall about 30 feet from a giant cliff, the winds had gone from strong to near gale (that’s from 32-38mph), so no matter that I had parked nose into the wind to minimize its effects, I could have sworn we were about to meet The Great and Powerful Oz (or my maker) at any moment. I had to use my phone-a-friend to ask how much wind it takes to tip over a ProMaster. While I was told that I probably wasn’t going to tip over, I found myself sitting on the floor of the van (there’s less motion down there), for several hours, riding out the insanity. Fear not, I’ve lived to tell the tale, and that’s where I’ll leave it today. We can pick up later on today’s adventures, beginning with a refresher course on bathroom-stall-picking etiquette. Until then.
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