Sunday, May 22, 2022; Minuteman Missile Launch Silos, Mt. Rushmore, and Devil’s Tower

Sunday, May 22, 2022; Minuteman Missile Launch Silos, Mt. Rushmore, and Devil’s Tower

We didn’t have any issues with boondocking in the gravel parking lot for Wall Drug, which was a block off the main drive.  There was one other campervan that pulled in late and left early.  

We went to visit the Grasslands National Monument visitor center, but it was closed.  We backtracked on I-90 a short distance to see the Delta-09 Launch Facility, one of the very few remaining Minuteman II missile silos preserved for historical purposes.  

Most of the other Minuteman II missile silos were destroyed as part of the SALT II treaty to reduce the number of nuclear warheads and missiles between the US and Russia.  The silo contains a “training missile”, which is an unarmed inert missile simulator.  The blast door is pulled back partially to expose the top of the missile, and a glass enclosure allows viewing into the silo.  

You can’t buy a used missile silo because deactivated silos are imploded, left for Russians to inspect, and then covered over with gravel.  Most are now just chain-link fenced enclosures for storing farm equipment.  The actual missile silos are unmanned.  The crews who operated the missiles actually were housed in underground capsules buried deep in the Earth a few miles from each silo, and each capsule controlled up to 10 silos.  

There are still plenty of active Minuteman III silos standing ready as a deterrent to Putin’s arsenal, in addition to our submarine launched and air launched nukes.  

Once done at the Minuteman site, we headed back westward, stopping in Rapid City, SD for diesel, taking on 15.275gal @$5.379/gal with 25519 miles on the odometer (10.9mpg).  We also stopped at a Walmart and bought DEF for the RV and a sub sandwich for lunch.  

We arrived at Mount Rushmore National Monument around noon.  Janet’s National Parks Pass was not valid for the $10 parking concession, but her senior status was good for a $5 discount.  Parking is valid for a full year from date of purchase, but it’s unlikely we’ll be back again within the year.  We had lunch in the RV after parking.

It was nice that it was not hot or too crowded.  Only one bus load of Asian tourists showed up while we were there. The official National Parks season opens on Memorial Day.  Things will get a whole lot busier after then.  The Artist’s Studio was not open yet, but the main visitor center and trails were.  It was mostly sunny when we were there and the temperature was near 60˚F.  We did the President’s trail, which is a loop around the base of the monument from the visitor center.  

The next stop was Devil’s Tower National Park.  On the way, we found a Wyoming rest stop that had a free trailer dump and potable water.  We didn’t really need to dump our tanks, but we did need some fresh water which was down to between 2/3 and 1/2.  We got to Devil’s tower at 4:30pm.  They now ask campers to pay at the main entrance gate if they are going to camp, so we asked if they had any vacancies, and they said there were lot’s of open campsites this time of year.  So for $10 (regularly $20, half off for National Parks Senior Pass) we will spend the night in a real campground instead of a parking lot.  As the ranger said, there were plenty of open spots and the campground had lots of pull through sites for RV’s.  We marked our spot and put our tag on the post before heading up to the visitor center.  When we got there, the visitor center was closed and a thunderstorm was rumbling nearby.  

We decided to walk the trail around Devil’s Tower.  We managed to do so with only getting lightly sprinkled on at times.  Janet had spotted two climbers descending one side of the mountain and managed to snap a picture.  When we finished the walk, which was under 2 miles, Janet encountered two young people laying on the sidewalk by the parking lot.  They explained they were splayed out there because they had just gotten off the top of the mountain and were so relieved to have beaten the thunderstorm.  

Then Janet showed them the picture she took, and amazingly enough, these two climbers on the sidewalk were the same ones she had photographed on the mountain.  What a small world it is.  

While we were in the parking lot, we got pictures texted from Price.  Then we realized it was time for our weekly Zoom meeting with the kids.  Crossing time zones has made it hard to know exactly time it really was.  We scrambled to get Zoom up in the RV, but we barely had 1-2 bars of cellular AT&T service to work with.  It kept failing to connect until we tried it with voice only.  We successfully logged into the Zoom meeting, able to see the kids, but we didn’t have the bandwidth to send our video stream, so we just joined in audio.  It was nice to see all our kids, even though we had just seen John for real in the Poconos, and will be seeing Price and Ciara in less than a week if everything else goes well.  

During the Zoom meeting, Ben noticed light coming in through the ceiling kitchen fan vent.  It had apparently had a cover blown off during the severe cross winds we encountered over the last couple of days.  After the Zoom meeting, we drove back to the campground and Ben got on the roof and cut a microwave-safe cooking tray from some Costco convenience meal into a shield that would allow ventilation while preventing rain from getting in.  He cleaned the roof and secured the makeshift cover with Gorilla indoor/outdoor tape.  

We’ll have to see if it’s possible to order a replacement cap for that vent, although it’ll probably end up less expensive to fabricate a sturdier version of Ben’s temporary fix out of sheet aluminum or plastic.

One problem we have noticed with real campgrounds is the insistence that people have with building camp fires and smoking.  We inevitably end up with smoke drifting into our campsite.  That’s another reason we like to boondock.

We made Ramen with Nephew Eric’s BBQ pork and the mustard greens and turnips we bought from the farm in the Florida panhandle we stayed with for dinner.