(written on October 28th from notes taken previously)
I totally spaced the fact that we were staying at this rest area and not a truck stop. Originally, we had been planning on staying at a truck stop, so I wasn’t thinking about needing to get gas. But then we ended up going a different way, or something like that, and ended up staying at the rest stop last night.
Which means… we needed gas, and the next station down the road from us toward our destination was like 100 miles away, and we were below a quarter of a tank, so that was going to be a risk. So he ended up driving back into town (gratefully only a few minutes back up the road into the town of Broadus), but as we were going, I noticed that my charging light was on and flashing/flickering.
😬
So we got gas, and I think I checked the voltage at the battery, and it was a little low, but fine.
Hmmm…
So I started the van back up, and started driving back toward the rest area with the idea of heading on down the road, but it started flashing again, so I pulled back into the rest area we had just stayed at, grabbed my multimeter, and found that the alternator was toast.
Gratefully, an alternator was one of the many parts I had purchased to bring with us just in case it went bad on the trip, so I had one under my bed, which I pulled out, along with my tools, and got changed there in the rest area parking lot.
That’s going to be one of my new road-trip protocols from now on: Buy a bunch of parts that I might need, drag them around with me, and take them back if I don’t need them.
After getting all that taken care of, we started driving on down the road toward South Dakota, and I started doing a little bit of JustAnswer stuff.
And then I found myself shocked… JustAnswer had docked my compensation rate.
Wait, what?!?!
What did I do? They dropped me down 25%!
What the heck?!?!
There wasn’t any warning. No, “hey, unless x happens, you’re going to get dropped down a pay level.” It was just, boom, there it is.
Ugh.
That didn’t sit very well.
So I send off a message asking what on Earth was going on, and I get to wait for their ridiculously slow customer service to get back to me in a day or two or three.
And generally fairly useless customer service.
I needed to work, and especially even more now that my pay had been docked, so I kept working a little bit. We drove through Sturgis, South Dakota, the motorcycle rally capital of the United States, I think. Last time I was there, the only other time I was there, was back in 2010 when I did a sort of impromptu road trip by myself across the country and back.
Then we went to Rapid City, grabbed some building Supply stuff for My sister and brother-in-law that they had special ordered, went to the Walmart to buy some things that we weren’t able to get at the Walmart in Great Falls, grabbed a quick lunch at Wendy’s, and then headed to the Big Heads.
First stop at Mount Rushmore was to find a bathroom, as I was… badly in need. 😅
After that was successfully procured and utilized, I was able to actually think properly and enjoy the experience there at Mount Rushmore.
It’s kind of a conflicting sense of being for me, being there at Mount Rushmore. I’m conflicted because it’s an absolutely amazing feat of artistry and engineering and what not, and it’s pretty cool to memorialize people that we have respect and appreciation for, but at the same time, knowing that Mount Rushmore was built on land forcibly taken from the native Americans after having been explicitly promised, via treaty, ownership of the lands, only to have that treaty broken by the United States because people found gold in the Black hills… It’s pretty crappy.
I haven’t fully thought through it, so this is a temporary position perhaps, but I think I’m not a fan of reparations from previous generations sins and mistakes being paid and atoned for by succeeding generations who had nothing to do with the injustices of their ancestors.
Anyway, my mom and I walked around the Mount Rushmore monument/memorial/whatever it’s called for a bit, taking pictures and chatting.
Saw a couple of probably early 20 something men who had gone past the the area where they were supposed to be, and were smoking pot further up on the hill below the heads.
Easy to be quick to judge, but quite likely something that I might have done as a teenager in my pot-smoking days.
From there we did a drive-by of the Crazy Horse memorial. They’ve made some noticeable progress on it since I did my last drive-by in 2010.
I could have sworn in 2010, though, that I drove almost underneath the sculpture, going by it. Maybe I did? But that would have meant that I would have had to have paid for it, I think? I don’t know what it was like back in 2010, but either I drove by It underneath it and didn’t pay, or I don’t remember paying, or I’ve just got a false memory of what it looked like as I went by. 🙃
After leaving Crazy Horse, we headed toward my sister and brother-in-law’s place near Hot Springs, driving by wind cave National Park as the last vestiges of the light of day were fading to black.
In the darkness, though, we were able to see several wild bison, which I guess make that area home.
It’s always fun for me to see bison. 😊
We stopped and took some pictures of a group of three of them that were in a little parking lot and that appeared to be licking parking lot ground. 🤔
Maybe salt from something?
Anyway, from there it was on to my sister and brother-in-law’s place, where we chatted for a good little while before crashing for the night.
Welcome to South Dakota, last significant stop before heading home.
(sigh)
I don’t really want the trip to be over, but we’re on that home stretch anyway where it’s just time to just… Go home.
But I don’t really have a home anymore, so it’s just… last stop on this trip before going back to my things, selling them, and heading right back out on my little vision quest thing.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 