Chapter Thirty-Five
Al Works a Silver Mine
May 24, 2009—Chamberlain, SD to Sheridan Lake in the Black Hills: When I gassed up the car for today’s drive, I noticed a conspicuous sign saying "Don't leave the gas pump unattended, you will have to pay for any spilled gas." I heard a click after our tank was full, but the gas kept flowing. I couldn't get it to stop. I pulled the nozzle out and pressed the tip against the ground, but it kept flowing. I finally got it to turn off.
When I started the car the pool of gasoline exploded, and flames covered the bikes and the back of the car. No, that was the part I made up. No flames, just a gallon of unleaded on the pavement. I told the gum-smacking girl attendant about the problem, but I had a feeling that they weren't going to fix it. Could they really view that dangerous situation as a profit center?
Anyway, our next obligatory stop was the famous Wall Drug Store. The Hustead's opened it in 1931, but because the town was so small, they just didn't get enough business to survive. Thousands of tourists drove by Wall on their way to Mount Rushmore, but they never stopped. Ted then had the idea of putting up signs on the highway for "Free Ice Water." He did so, and when he got back from erecting the signs, he found a line out the door. The rest is history. Wall Drug was actually pretty amusing, with a fascinating collection of western-themed paintings and other museum-like exhibits.
After scarfing down some pie, we continued on to Badlands National Park. Nice scenery. We were fixing some lunch at the visitor's center, when I noticed an ice machine with some quarters stuck in it. A half-hour’s work with my Swiss Army Knife's tweezers, and I was 25 cents richer! It doesn’t take much to make a tightwad happy.
Actually, it might have been my inner engineer rather than my inner tightwad that was in control. Engineers can’t resist a mechanical puzzle. My favorite engineer joke is this one:
Three people are about to executed by guillotine in medieval Europe, a baker, a cobbler, and an engineer. For the baker, the blade gets stuck halfway down. According to the law of the day, the criminal is free to go if the guillotine fails, and the baker walks away a free man. The cobbler then puts his head on the device, and the same thing happens. He’s also free to go. As the engineer is stepping up for his turn, he looks at the guillotine and says, “I think I see the problem.”
Engineers can’t resist solving puzzles. With the quarter in my pocket, we fixed a simple lunch, and were on our way.
As we came to Rapid City, the clouds were so dark and ominous that I started wondering whether our 16-year-old, heavily used tent would still do a good job of repelling water. So we stopped at a huge outdoor store, and purchased some tent waterproofing spray.
We had a few showers while scouting out campgrounds, but Lena didn't bring up the "M" word once, and we ended up at the Sheridan Lake campground in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The weather kept the campground from being full, and I put up the tent while Lena set out a rotisserie chicken that we'd picked up at Wal-Mart. I applied the water repellent spray with a cloth (the spray part didn't work), and the rain started just as I was finishing.
Dinner was great, and we only got a little wet; It wasn't as dreary as you might think.
After dinner, we headed in to Keystone to nab some Wi-Fi, and update the journal. Halfway there, the heavens opened up. This was a major-league thunderstorm, and we had to pull off the road twice due to lack of visibility. I didn't have much hope for the tent, which had all our sleeping bags and pillows set up inside. Lightning strikes echoed off the hills every 30 seconds; some were very close.
They didn't have any Wi-Fi in Keystone, so we just hung out, had some soft-serve ice cream, and watched the waterfalls cascading off the roofs.
As we sat there, we considered our options if everything in the tent was soaked when we returned. The first was to leave the tent overnight, and stay in a hotel. We checked a Keystone hotel, but the only rooms they had left were the honeymoon suite and some other expensive suites. The second option was to suffer through a cold wet night. A third was to sleep in the car at the campsite. Fourth, we could pack up all the soggy stuff and head off to a less-populated area and check into a hotel. This all reminded me of a cross-country trip in 1968 with my mother and sister.
We’d had rain much of the way, with the first warm, sunny day coming when we arrived at Grand Teton National Park south of Yellowstone. We hung all the damp sleeping bags and pillows on clotheslines, and drove up to Yellowstone for some close encounters with bears. The deluge came when we were forty miles from camp, and by the time we got back, everything was saturated with water. My mom broke down for the only time during the trip. Although it wasn’t in our budget, a night in a motel got things dried out.
Back to Keystone, the rain finally let up a bit, so we got in the car and headed to the campsite. As we drove in, we saw the two young women in the neighboring site packing up their water-saturated tent—not a good sign.
I jumped out of the car, and went over to the tent to rip open the door. Would everything be dry, or would it be a sodden mess? Would we be having a major mishap?
Find out in the next chapter!