Winter is Coming to South Dakota!

The weather continues to be at the forefront of our minds as we worked on the house this week. Unseasonably cooler weather seems to be the norm pretty much everywhere up north and the extended forecast does not show much promise. With a low of 2°F forecasted for Tuesday we had a decision to make. Even in the garage there is no way we were not going to freeze with temps that low. We have too much going on and too many commitments to abandon our plans and head south so we are going to have to winterize the rig and tough it out.

Once we get through Wednesday it looks good again

With luck it will only be a few days as the temps should rise (relatively speaking) to a more bearable level later in the week. An hours work and 3 gallons of RV antifreeze @ $2.25/gallon will be quite a bit of peace of mind over the next few days.

Friends Dave and Leslie stopped by for 2 nights as they made their 2,000 mile trek from Alberta to Texas. It is just not right when it is warmer in Alberta than it is here in South Dakota!

Burger night at the Pringle bar!

Regardless, we made the most of their time here visiting and going out to see the sights. Since they had never been here before we took them through parts of Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, up Iron Mountain Road, by Mount Rushmore and finally to Crazy Horse.

Crazy Horse

Lakota Lake

This area is beautiful throughout the year but this time of year, with the changing leaves, a smattering of snow and virtually no tourists is really special to us. Iron Mountain Road is 17 miles long with 14 switchbacks and 3 pigtails as it winds up to the 5,445 summit. Each of the 3 tunnels feature a view of Mt. Rushmore through one end.

Mt. Rushmore in the background

Sylvan Lake

We had never really spent any one on one time with them so it was great getting to know them better. The only downside is that it was a little cold and they could only stay the two nights. If everything goes as planned we will meet up again in Arizona in February.

On the home front, with our rough-in electrical inspection behind us we can start insulating! Or I should say Barb can start insulating. It is not going too bad but after getting one wall done she decided to quit until she gets a mask.

 Meanwhile I am outside working on boxing in the soffit ends. Slow and tedious work. I had to get up and down the ladder at least a dozen times while boxing each of the soffit ends.

Our funny story of the week involves our mail. We have been waiting for some important mail regarding Barb's stepmothers estate. When we went to Oregon we had our mail forwarded there. We got some mail but the estate stuff never arrived. When we left Oregon we had our mail forwarded back to South Dakota. Day after day, after day we would check the mail. Not only were we not getting the estate stuff, we were not getting any mail! After 10 days Barb calls the post office to see if maybe they are holding it for some reason. Barb explained what she had done with the forwarding over the past 5 weeks and the post office guy asks "Did you cancel the forwarding to Oregon"? Barb says "No, I just had it forwarded back to South Dakota". One the surface this may make sense but in reality our mail has been in an endless loop. Any mail we get here is forwarded to Oregon. Once it gets to Oregon it gets forwarded back here, once it gets here it gets forwarded to Oregon.....you get the picture..... We will probably get a crap load of mail plastered with "Forward" stickers!

Deer hunting continues to be a little slow, lots of deer but no big bucks. I did see one 14 pointer and for those of you who are deer hunters know that 14 points are rare and huge! Well this had to be the smallest 14 point in the world.....

You cannot see all the points but trust me, there are 14!

We have had some interest in our 5th wheel but nothing I would consider serious buyers so I will list the link to the RV Trader listing again here.