A Tullyroan Travelogue

There was always going to be a day which began like this.

The fact that we rolled into the High and Dry RV Park late last night (having just moved from Mountain Time to Central Time and lost an hour) should have been a clue.  The High and Dry RV Park lived up to it’s name.  It was deserted with nothing but two empty caravans, a beat up car and a boarded up office.  Too tired to drive on or to cook, we parked up and strolled the 100 yards or so to Arbys for a bite to eat.

We were keen to get on the road early aware of the many miles we still had to cover in less than 6 days.  The states of South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois stood between us and our final time zone and we had to pick the pace up considerably.  Unfortunately the effects of the previous night around the camp fire were still lingering and we all slept in.

We woke to realise that the batteries had run flat overnight leaving us without hot water for showers.  Never mind, we could boil some water on the gas for a cup of coffee and once we were on the road the engine would heat the water for showers – no problem.

The next task was to pull into the local gas station to fill the tank with diesel.  This always takes about 15 minutes (big tank but it doesn’t last that long at 8mpg) which leaves time for coming up with our plan of attack for the day.  Today it was simple – do as many miles as we can.

Lucy ran into the store to pay with her credit card and seemed to take a rather long time.  Ryan went in after her to find that her card had been rejected and the store manager was phoning RBS to confirm that Lucy was the owner of the card.  Some phone tennis took place between Scotland and South Dakota and eventually the card was rejected. Thankfully Ryan saved the day and paid with his credit card.

Back in the van Ryan was turning the key in the ignition trying to get the old bird to start…with no success.  He noticed that the fitting was loose, the key was turning too far and reached underneath the dashboard to screw it in more tightly…still no success.  What was going on this morning?  This had never happened before.  Ryan looked at me and I looked at him.  One of us (and I can’t for the life of me remember which one – it might even have been Lucy who was on hold to RBS) said something along the lines of “you don’t think we’ve gone and put petrol in her do you?”

My heart sank.  I looked out the window and once again realised (as I’d clocked back in Montana) that the pump handle for diesel was green and the handle for petrol was black.  How likely was it that we’d used petrol?  After all, filling your car is one of those things you do on automatic pilot.  Quickly I checked the receipts and was relieved to discover that we had indeed used diesel. Phew…but what then could be wrong?  Ryan dived under the dashboard to see if there was anything obvious.  As he’d tightened the fitting earlier he realised that a connection had been broken.  He soon fixed it and the RV purred once more.

Once Lucy had finished phoning the Royal Bank (I think it took about 11 calls – don’t want to see my phone bill) and sorting that out I whispered to her “God knows what we would have done without Ryan” and she gave me one of those looks as if to say “I don’t even want to think about it”.

It was now 11.15 and we had a lot of driving to do.  Ryan was on the first shift and coffee beside him set off only to hear a new beeping sound coming from his left hand side.  It seemed to be something to do with the lube pump which was pumping transmission oil into our towed car to keep her running smoothly behind us.  The noise was disconcerting especially given how the morning had gone so far and, while we were crossing the Missourri river and I was trying to take a photo out the window, Ryan thought it prudent to pull off and see what the problem was.

He turned off the interstate and into the town of Chamberlain.  As he was about to pull over the sound suddenly stopped.  Maybe it was just cold and needed some warming up.  So Ryan kept driving.  Turning left to try and go round the block and get back on the I-90 east we inadvertently ended up crossing the Missouri River again over a different bridge going in the wrong direction.  There was nowhere to turn the rig and before we knew it we were back at High and Dry RV Park.  It was now 11.30.

Let’s just draw a line under all of this and start again – the day starts here – the big drive across the midwest.  On the ramp back onto the I-90 the beeping sound started again. D’oh!  We pulled into the next rest area and Ryan did his thing (once again) checking the transmission oil in the ding dong and giving her a run around (I think she did just need warmed up).  And finally, having only gone 3 miles and crossed the Missouri river 3 times we began “our big driving day” at 12:05.

Here are some photographs which tell the story of the rest of the day…it’s a simple story really – driving, more driving and doing everyday tasks like washing and cooking…whilst driving!

1. Crossing the Missouri river the wrong way

 

2. Ryan to the rescue…again

 

3. Ryan relaxing after the first shower while on the move

 

4. Malkie at the wheel trying out Lucy’s (or is that Gemma’s?) shades

 

5. Ryan preparing dinner on the move

 

6. A game of Settlers at the end of the day with popcorn and beer (unfortunately we forgot a key part of the game, the resource cards, but we managed to improvise with post-its)

Lets hope tomorrow goes a bit more smoothly!