On July 2nd we began a Summer cross-country road trip for the second time in our almost two years of full-time RV living. This year we were in our new (since January) Alliance Paradigm 390MP 5th wheel. Our route was planned using RV Trip Wizard, an on-line application specific to RV travelers. We’ll provide a post about that in more detail later. The route started in Hilton, NY and ended in Hubbard, OR on July 31st.
The route started with a much longer drive than we normally do in a travel day (we like to stay around 300 miles) of 490 miles to a KOA in Elkhart, IN! It also included our first issue of the trip. Issues with our hydraulic jacks! Everything was fine until we had unhooked the RV from the truck. We tried to retract the front jacks and nothing happened when we hit the button! Ugh! Luckily from other experience we knew how to manipulate the solenoid for the front jacks and use a drill to operate the hydraulic motor and get the jacks to retract. We manually leveled for the night. To our surprise the jacks and slides all retracted normally the next morning.
From Elkhart, IN we set off for Waterloo, IA, another long travel day. We stayed at another KOA, this on the Waterloo / Lost Island Waterpark KOA Resort with tons of amenities, even a fueling station. It was July 3rd and they had a professional fireworks display. Again, the front jacks wouldn’t retract and everything works as expected the following morning.
Travel day three had us going to a KOA in Sioux Falls, SD where we would stay for six nights. We had the same issue with the jacks! It was a pretty eventful week weather wise. On Tuesday we experienced possibly the worst storm since going full-time. Tornado warnings that caused us to leave the RV and go to a “shelter” on the KOA grounds where we saw high (70-80 mph) straight line winds and hail. Mostly pea sized but some quarter sized! We thought surely there was going to be damage to the RV and/or truck. Thankfully, there was no damage.
After six nights we left Sioux Falls with a relatively short travel day to the Black Hills area of South Dakota. We arrived at Firehouse Campground in Hill City to one of their “bigger” sites that we just squeezed into. There is zero cellular data in that area but our Starlink setup worked flawlessly for us. Jim was able to work the two weeks we were there without issue. We purposely chose the Black Hills in order to visit some of the attractions there. We packed a lot in and got to visit Mt. Rushmore (twice), the Crazy Horse Memorial Monument, Custer State Park (twice), Tatanka, a Bison Story (In Deadwood), Spearfish Canyon where we hiked to Spearfish falls and Roughlock falls. One of the trips to Custer was to Sylvan Lake where we hiked around the lake. There is so much more to do in the Black Hills. We plan to come back.
After our almost two weeks in the Black Hills we headed for MT. The first travel day took us to 7th Ranch RV Camp in Garryowen, MT. A great stop over close to Little Bighorn Battlefield. Since we were having hydraulic issues we didn’t unhook the truck so we had to pass on that attraction. Also, the issue that was just the jacks before started causing issues with the slides as well. At this point with the hydraulics we could extend everything, jacks and slides, and retract nothing! It was a pain to deal with but we could manipulate everything manually with a 5/32 allen wrench (for the solenoids) and a drill motor.
On day two of this weekend of traveling (It was now 7/24) we ended up at another KOA in Missoula, MT for six nights. While here we went to the National Bison Range but didn’t see any Bison close up. We think they were hiding from the heat!
Our last weekend of travel on this trip had us going to the Pasco/Tri-Cities KOA Journey for one night. We made it over the Continental Divide easily. This time we didn’t unhook. We didn’t extend any jacks or the hydraulic slides. It was very hot in southeastern Washington! 110 degrees! It was still about 105 when the sun went down and the RV finally started cooling down.
Our last day (7/31) on this epic cross-country travel adventure was less than 300 miles to Hubbard, OR. It was an interesting trip. A big part was along the Columbia River with a lot of ups and downs and curves. Not too bad though. At one point we could simultaneously see Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens. We arrived at our “Moochdocking” spot around noon and were grateful for a place to plant ourselves for a while. Our hosts have water and a 50 amp hookup for electricity and a very pretty and comfortable setting.
See the link below for Jim’s reviews of some of the RV parks we stopped at on the way:
Jim’s reviews on campgroundreviews.com