2019 Summer Trip To South Dakota

[ESquared]

Welcome to KC! Glad you made it safely.

Tomorrow will be cooler, less humid. Low 65-ish in the AM, daytime high of 84.

Get some rest and see you tomorrow!

Call me if you need any directions.

[JEBar]

will do .... I have to find a Walmart in the morning for my wife to pick up some things .... after that will b putting stuff in the truck prior to heading to the range

[BigAl52]

Be careful at Walmart Jim. There dangerous places

[ESquared]

will do .... I have to find a Walmart in the morning for my wife to pick up some things .... after that will b putting stuff in the truck prior to heading to the range

You probably already figured this out, but there's a WM Supercenter right there in Oak Grove. South of I-70, a couple blocks east of Broadway.

201 SE Salem Street.

[JEBar]

yep, found it yesterday evening .... once again, just to confirm, at the main office at Noon .. .. I'll have an orange towel prominently displayed ..

[ESquared]

yep, found it yesterday evening .... once again, just to confirm, at the main office at Noon .. .. I'll have an orange towel prominently displayed ..

You got it. I'll be there a few minutes before. No need to unload stuff at check-in, as we have to head up the hill to the trap area.

[JEBar]

hated to do so but this morning we had to leave Oak Grove (KC) and drive to Eureka (St Louis) .... 241.9 miles / 4 hr 5 min .... while in KC we put 130.9 miles on our truck .... shortly after we arrived at the St Louis West / Route 66 KOA a friend came by and we delivered $600 worth of prime South Dakota Ribeyes .... he works at the local Boeing plant where they make fighter aircraft and does heating / AC on the side .... as such he got up on top of our camper and cleaned / serviced both AC's .... plans for tomorrow and Sunday are centered on trap shooting at Jay Henges State Shooting Park ....

[PT7]

Enjoy another great round of shooting at Jay Henges, Jim

hated to do so but this morning we had to leave Oak Grove (KC) and drive to Eureka (St Louis) .... 241.9 miles / 4 hr 5 min .... while in KC we put 130.9 miles on our truck .... shortly after we arrived at the St Louis West / Route 66 KOA a friend came by and we delivered $600 worth of prime South Dakota Ribeyes .... he works at the local Boeing plant where they make fighter aircraft and does heating / AC on the side .... as such he got up on top of our camper and cleaned / serviced both AC's .... plans for tomorrow and Sunday are centered on trap shooting at Jay Henges State Shooting Park ....

[JEBar]

really looking forward to it BUT its supposed to be even hotter here tomorrow that it was in KC .... the good news is, Jay Henges opens at 10AM instead of Noon like it does at Lake City

[JEBar]

today's drive from just west of St Louis to Clarksville, TN covered 311.7 miles which took 5 hrs 12 min .... happily it proved to be a boring drive .. .. while in St Louis we only had 26.7 non-towing miles .... we are setup for the evening in what feels like an oven ... at 6:40 PM current temp 92 feeling like 100 .... no hurry to get on the road in the morning, rush hour traffic in Nashville is terrible ... we are about an hour from Nashville so we will not leave until just after 9AM .... doing so will put us well behind the morning traffic and also give them a chance to clear the fender benders ..

[JEBar]

hrs it took us 7 hr 33 min to complete today's 369.9 mile drive from Clarksville, TN to our current campground located just east of Asheville, NC .... yep, 7 hr 33 min .... the drive itself went smoothly and was uneventful .... as is our normal practice when returning home from the west on I-40 we fill our trucks tanks at the Pilot at Exit 417 where today we paid $2.76 for fuel .... the station just down the road from our current campground has diesel listed for $3.29 .... whenever we stop while traveling, I make it a practice walk around our rig and look things over .... today at the pilot, it was a good thing I did .... it was easy to see the carrier on which we mount our Yeti cooler filled with over $2,000 worth of steaks was tilted (picture 1) at an angle indicating something was wrong .... that something proved to be a weld (picture 2) .... at that time we had 90 miles left to drive to our campground .... thankfully, they had a tire shop in the parking lot of that Pilot .... I went over and asked a fellow if they had a welder in their shop .... the good news was, they had a welder .... the shop didn't do any welding for customers .... the best news is, he told me that if we could wait for him to finish installing two new tires on a semi, he'd weld it for me off the record .... we waited, he welded it, (picture 3) slipped him $10 more than he asked for and we were on our way .... his weld held but I don't like the angle .... tomorrow we plan to move the cooler to the bed of our truck for the rest of the drive home .... sometime after we get back home I plan to cut the bent pieces and weld them back together

[The Wiz]

Dodge one, there.

[BigAl52]

I have the same habit everytime I stop. Has paid off many times good catch Jim

[JEBar]

one can't be too careful with such things when traveling .... we were indeed fortunate to catch it before it totally failed .... I had it reinforced by a local welding and we've been using it for about 10 years .... the good news is I have several months to take care of it .... once we get home and I get it off to where I can take a good look at it, I'll be able to decide if repair, modify, or replace is the best way to

[JEBar]

a little while ago we moved the Yeti cooler from the carrier on the rear of our camper to placing it on the bed of our truck .... it probably would have been OK to leave it on the carrier but I simply wasn't comfortable doing so .... as I've noted many times, I much prefer boring drives when we have a camper in tow .... its hard to believe that this trip is coming to a close and that we are due to pull out and head home in the morning

[JEBar]

back in post on July 10 I showed picture 1 below .... in it a local road southwest of Estelline, Highway 81 south of Arlington, that was flooded back in March could be seen .... the next two pictures show the efforts to raise that same road today and get it high enough to get above the flooding ....

[PT7]

With the value of the steaks in that cooler, I'm relieved along with you
Sure would be a large loss if "left behind" somewhere between here and there.

Safe trip on the last leg of your journey.
You and Maureen are always welcome to stop by whenever you might pass through Missouri.

PT7

a little while ago we moved the Yeti cooler from the carrier on the rear of our camper to placing it on the bed of our truck .... it probably would have been OK to leave it on the carrier but I simply wasn't comfortable doing so .... as I've noted many times, I much prefer boring drives when we have a camper in tow .... its hard to believe that this trip is coming to a close and that we are due to pull out and head home in the morning

[JEBar]

With the value of the steaks in that cooler, I'm relieved along with you
Sure would be a large loss if "left behind" somewhere between here and there.

Safe trip on the last leg of your journey.
You and Maureen are always welcome to stop by whenever you might pass through Missouri.

PT7

to say we are relieved as well would put it very mildly .. .. if the river behaves, we usually pass through KC twice a year .... once in early June and again in early to mid August .... now that a major change has taken place for us in Asheville, we have more flexibility .... I really enjoyed the Lake City range so scheduling a day or two to shoot during each of our passes through KC is certainly a possibility

[JEBar]

trip summery and a few comments :

last day's drive from Asheville, NC to our home -- 254.1 miles / 5 hr 3 min

total distance driven driven the trip -- 4,866.8 miles

distant driven from where we filled at the Haw River flying J (NC I-4 exit 150) to Volga, SD -- 1,6984 miles / averaged 9.2 MPG

distant driven while in South Dakota -- 1,236.5 miles / averaged 11.7 MPG

distant driven from Volga, SD back to the Haw River flying J (NC I-4 exit 150) to -- 1,798.4 miles / averaged 9.5 MPG

when we arrived home we found that our heat/AC high tech thermostat is dead .... temp in the house was 90 .... delivered most of the steaks .... slept in the camper parked in our back yard .... hooking up in a few minutes to head east so we can camp with our club and will deliver the rest of the steaks .... due to return home on Sunday .... depending on temps, will sleep in our camper until AC is available on Thursday .... all in all, a very good trip .... already planning an October trip Chesapeake and going back to Texas in January

[markiver54]

All of that and back safely! Congratulations. Sorry to hear of your a/c problem. At least your timing is good. Temps are cooling considerably...welcome home!