A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 232 miles from Hot Springs, South Dakota to Ogallala, Nebraska.
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Posts featuring the coach.
Travel from Hot Springs, South Dakota to Ogallala, Nebraska
We drove our coach 232 miles, about 4 hours of driving, from Hot Springs, South Dakota to Ogallala, Nebraska.
Here’s the map route, heading southeast:
An interactive map, with potential stops:
A rabbit watched me pack up:
A stream of water from slide topper as we brought in the slides, from the rain we had during our stay:
Leaving the campground:
Hot Springs:
US-385:
A bridge over a river:
Rail crossing:
Entering Nebraska:
A seemingly endless long straight highway:
Zoomed view:
Another rail crossing:
A lunch stop; we took up several parking spots in the back of the parking lot:
Hay trailer:
So many fields of corn:
US-385 highway disappearing into the distance:
We paused for a bathroom break in an empty weigh station lane:
Another zoomed perspective:
Jail and Courthouse Rocks:
Paladin asleep:
Broadwater:
Silo:
My gosh, it’s Oshkosh (but not the famous one):
Long coal train:
Oh look, more corn. So much corn:
Another hay trailer:
Not your ordinary town!
Welcome to Ogallala:
We were going to fuel here, but most of the lanes were closed, with a huge line, so we bailed:
Our destinaton:
Guided to our site:
Replacing fuse for solar controller
Our coach came with one solar panel on the roof, and we had a couple more 190W panels added shortly after purchasing it.
Early last year I noticed that the solar controller was not receiving a charge, showing the moon icon during the day, and no amps coming in. I got NIRVC to look into that at my next service appointment, and they fixed it by replacing the fuse.
Recently, when the campground we were at had a power cut, I noticed that the problem had recurred:
I removed the panel and found the fuse:
The fuse had indeed blown again:
I didn’t have any mini fuses, so I bought an assortment from Amazon:
Since it had blown twice, I figured that the increased capacity of the two extra panels was the cause, and decided to upgrade the fuse from 25 amps to 30 amps, since that is what the controller is rated at. I have no idea if that was the appropriate choice; if anyone has any guidance, let me know:
The solar controller is now working, with the sun icon and showing 11.6 amps coming in (on a somewhat cloudy day):
The controller re-mounted:
Good to have that working, especially with a week without hookups at the Balloon Fiesta coming up.
Hidden Lake Campground and Resort
We stayed at Hidden Lake Campground and Resort in Hot Springs, South Dakota. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A campground with a nice mini lake (a large pond, really).
Dates:
- Check in: 2023-09-17
- Check out: 2023-09-24
- 7 nights
Weather:
- Mostly sunny, some drizzle
- High temps ranging between 60-83°F, lows around 50-59°F
- Negligible wind most days, gusts up to 33 MPH one day
Noise:
- Occasional road noise
- No train noise
- Negligible neighbor noise
Site:
- #9, pull-through, gravel
- Didn’t need to disconnect toad; parked behind coach
- Fairly level
- Gravel driveway about 83 feet long by about 10 feet wide
- Grass on passenger side about 10 feet wide
- Grass between driver side and next site about 30 feet wide
- No trees on these sites, some on other sites
- Picnic table, fire pit
- Not very clean site; several small bits of trash
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, inconveniently located at the rear of the site
- 57 PSI water, inconveniently located at the rear of the site
- Good sewer connection, somewhat conveniently located (2 10-foot pipes needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- T-Mobile: 97-107 Mbps down, 21 Mbps up, 55 ms ping
- AT&T: 130 Mbps down, 16-25 Mbps up, 47-81 ms ping
- Verizon: 17-22 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up, 37 ms ping
- Starlink: not used
- Campground Wi-Fi: none (an “unplugged” campground)
Amenities:
- Lake with swimming and board rental
- Garbage bins
- Package delivery to office
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Lovely pond, close to Wind Cave NP
This is a nice family-run park in the southern Black Hills and is close to everything you’d want to do there. The town of Hot Springs is cute and has everything you could want; just be sure to heed the detour advice the campground sends you, and don’t try to drive your rig down the main street. There is a bit of a hill to get up to the campground, with a sharp turn at the top. It’s not a big deal, but be careful of oncoming traffic.
We had a pull-through site, which was long enough for our rig and tow vehicle but pretty narrow. The “missing” site between us and the next one on the driver’s side was useful as there is still a power pedestal that we had to hook up to after a town-wide power cut did something to ours. I would’ve liked one of the back-in sites, but they’re too short for a 40′ motorhome. We camped at Hidden Lake Campground and Resort in a Motorhome.
The campground map:
An intereactive map:
Our site:
The power and water were at the rear of the site, rather inconvenient:
There were wild rabbits that liked to hang out around our site:
And some wild turkeys in the campground:
After visiting the Wind Cave National Park, 15 minutes north of the campground, we added its sticker to our coach:
The town had a power cut; it took us a while to notice; we just noticed when it was getting warm, and our ACs weren’t coming on (most other stuff runs fine on batteries):
Unfortunately, our solar system was not working either — but good thing we noticed now, since we’ll be without hookups for 10 days soon, when we attend the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. So I’ll fix it before then (and yes, I’ll have a blog post about that soon):
When the power came back on several hours later, my Power Watchdog reported that the power pedestal had a fault, under voltage on line 2 (only 44 volts):
Fortunately, there was a spare power pedestal next to our site, where there used to be a site, but now has trees (presumably because it was super narrow). So I plugged in to that one:
The office:
They have several signs around the campground with lists of rules; really welcoming and friendly:
The lake:
Craft available for hire (really should be included for guests; I think these remained unused):
Path around lake:
Cabins:
Games:
Landscaping:
Other sites:
A nice enough campground, despite the power issues and somewhat unfriendly signs. We’d stay here again.
Video: Badlands to Hot Springs, South Dakota motorhome travel timelapse
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 132 miles from Badlands, South Dakota to Hot Springs, South Dakota. With a fun picture-in-picture of the view from our truck being towed behind our coach.
Travel from Badlands to Hot Springs, South Dakota
We drove our coach 132 miles, about 2 hours of driving, from Badlands, South Dakota to Hot Springs, South Dakota.
Here’s the map route, heading west then south:
An interactive map:
As mentioned yesterday, I added a mount for my 360 camera to the truck; it’s a magnetic mount, but I also secured it with three tethers, out of an abundance of caution:
The camera mounted on the truck; I thought it would be fun to record the view from the truck on travel day:
The truck connected to the coach (aka toaded); ready to go:
After leaving the campground, crossing White River:
Badlands:
Cowboy Corner in Interior, South Dakota:
Badlands:
A prairie dog town:
Bison:
Roadworks:
I caught a stowaway wasp:
Leaving Badlands National Park; the Badlands was good:
The roads were not so good (using my max-zoom technique to show the bumps):
Big sunflower field going to seed:
Dinosaur:
Travel center lunch stop:
The camera was still there (I took it inside to secure and charge it during our lunch stop; check out today’s travel video for the fun footage):
Questionable food choices:
Onward:
The Mammoth Site:
The city of Hot Springs has some nice historic architecture:
Our destination:
Our site:
Our coach:
Again, check out the travel video in the next post for a combination of the usual coach dash cam footage plus the 360 cam perspective from the truck. An unusual view!
(And if you haven’t yet subscribed to the Sinclair Trails YouTube channel, please do so. It doesn’t cost anything, but will help me build my channel, which will let me do more with it.)
Badlands / White River KOA Holiday
We stayed at Badlands / White River KOA Holiday in Interior, South Dakota. (Campground Reviews listing.)
Yet another KOA, quite nice, right outside Badlands National Park.
Dates:
- Check in: 2023-09-03
- Check out: 2023-09-17
- 14 nights
Weather:
- Everything from sunny to thunderstorms
- High temps ranging between 67-99°F, lows around 50-67°F
- Afternoon gusts up to 33 MPH
Noise:
- Occasional road noise, not annoying
- No train noise
- Negligible neighbor noise
Site:
- #20, pull-through, gravel
- Needed to disconnect toad; parked behind coach
- Fairly level
- Gravel driveway about 60 feet long by about 8 feet wide
- Patio and grass on passenger side about 42 feet wide
- Grass between driver side and next site about 20 feet wide
- Some big trees
- Table, chairs, charcoal grill, and weird fire pit on concrete patio
- Clean site
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, conveniently located
- 55 PSI water, conveniently located
- Good sewer connection, conveniently located (1 10-foot pipe needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- Starlink: 78-133 Mbps down, 10-14 Mbps up, 78-138 ms ping
- Campground Wi-Fi: 36-42 Mbps down, 21-32 ms up, 56 ms ping
- AT&T: negligible service
- Verizon: 13-23 Mbps down, 8-11 Mbps up, 35 ms ping
- T-Mobile: 2 Mbps down, 0.06 Mbps up, 70 ms ping
Amenities:
- Pool
- Garbage pickup from site
- Package delivery to office
- Cook shack food
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Cook Shack and close to Badlands NP
What’s not to love about a park that has food service onsite? I definitely appreciate it, especially when other options are few and far between. We had a deluxe patio site, which was located at the end of a row. The site had a few trees for afternoon shade, which was nice. The site was not huge, however, and we had to park our tow vehicle perpendicular to the coach; I still worried about our bumper getting clipped as the roads are pretty narrow and there are some tight turns. It was pretty quiet, and the proximity to Badlands NP can’t be beat. We camped at Badlands / White River KOA Holiday in a Motorhome.
Tip for Other Campers: Stock up on bottled water before arriving. The local water is very alkaline and hard, which made it pretty much undrinkable (unless you like that sort of thing; our three-stage filter and water softener still didn’t improve it). The mosquitos are voracious, so ensure you have repellant if you want to sit outside. Plan ahead and get tickets for the control room tour at Minuteman Missile NHS. You get a pretty personalized tour and a good feel for what it was like to serve there.
The campground map:
We stayed in site #20, which we had site-locked as what looked like the best site when we booked. Once here, and after walking around the campground, I can confirm; it is definitely the best site. There are some very long sites towards the back of the campground, but they are buddy sites (i.e. living areas facing the neighbor), which we hate.
An interactive map:
Our site, on the end of the row:
Using the Starlink on the flagpole:
Our patio:
The patio came with a wacky fire pit thingy, and a charcoal grill, though we didn’t use either, but did use our Blackstone griddle:
The RV park is near Badlands National Park, so we were able to add that sticker to our coach, starting another row (I’ll need a stepstool to add them soon!):
Sunset:
We normally drink water from the dispenser on our fridge. But not here — even the five filters the water passes through weren’t able to make the water here taste good; our test strips indicate that the water has very high pH and alkalinity, which the filters can’t help with:
We did our full suite of test strips; everything else was fine:
Early in our stay the air was rather unhealthy due to wildfire smoke from Canada:
Smoke map (a blue dot near the middle is our location):
We also had lightning and heavy rain nearby (blue location dot off to the right; the weather heading that way):
We got a bunch of packages delivered here; I used my folding cart to collect the heaviest of them:
The office and camp store:
A nice feature of this campground is the cook shack (or “kookhouse”) that was open for breakfast and dinner every day:
Menus:
The next door pavilion for eating and activities:
A tasty breakfast:
A dinner:
There were a lot of flies buzzing around, so I took the dinner back to our site and ate on the patio:
A strange historic artifact; kids, ask your parents:
Swmming pool:
Dog park:
Dog shower, with mini golf in the background:
Path:
Lots of tent sites:
Cabins:
Other sites:
Entrance sign:
Video: Spearfish to Badlands, South Dakota motorhome travel timelapse
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 127 miles from Spearfish, South Dakota to Badlands, South Dakota.
Travel from Spearfish to Badlands, South Dakota
We drove our coach 127 miles, about 2 hours of driving, from Spearfish, South Dakota to Badlands, South Dakota.
Here’s the map route, heading southeast:
An interactive map:
Leaving our site, in a cloud of dust from the gravel:
Leaving the campground:
Heading east on I-90:
Rapid City exit:
A fuel stop at Flying J; we don’t get a discount there, and have to go in to pay, but it was more convenient to our route:
Almost 82 gallons of diesel, a bit over half a tank:
We parked our coach, with the generator running so the ACs would keep it cool, and went in to have lunch:
At the Country Market restaurant in the Flying J:
Menu:
Breakfast for lunch; a little underdone:, but tasty enough:
We had a choice between continuing on I-90, or going on SD-44; we opted for the highway, since we generally prefer them to freeways:
A sea of sad sunflowers, done blooming and going to seed:
Entering Badlands National Park:
Roadworks; driving on gravel isn’t particularly enjoyable in our coach, so we kinda regretted our choice to come this way (we knew that there was roadworks, but didn’t expect a lack of paving):
A prairie dog town (one visible by the fence):
An old cabin and pond:
Interior, SD, population 94:
White River:
Our destination:
Guided to our site:
On his recommendation, we untoaded (unhooked our truck from our coach) before reaching the site, then followed separately:
Parking in our site:
Fixing bathroom vent lid motor
The lift motor housing broke on the vent in our rear bathroom, so I replaced it.
Here’s the vent, with the decorative wooden cover open:
The broken housing:
I ordered a new motor from Amazon (cheaper than from the Tiffin parts store, though availability may be spotty):
Removing the old motor:
Above that, the lift mechanism, which had become detached (causing the breakage):
The motor just plugs in to a couple of connectors:
The new motor and housing in place, after re-mounting the lift mechanism:
All better:
An easy fix, and as a bonus, it’s quieter now when opening and closing the vent.