Patriot

We did an overnight at Gun Creek, COE in Benton, IL. $9 electric only with our America the Beautiful pass and it worked perfect. We enjoyed dinner at the Gun Creek Golf Course Club House and followed up with breakfast this morning. We made pretty good time east bound and are now in a KOA in Crossville, Tenn. Pretty nice digs for a KOA overnighter. Naturally we haaaaaad to make a stop a the Buc-ees here. YUM!! Ha! This Buc-ees sells diesel too at $3.04 a gal, not bad. Gun Creek COE. We have never been so happy to see trees again! Buc-ees in Crossville, Tenn is much smaller than the Sevierville, Tenn super store. We still got our Buc-ees fix! 😋Ha! Safe Travels and Happy Camping All!

When is it not windy out here? 😂 So far the wind blew in CO, UT, ID, WY, SD, Just sayin.

Landed our rig XPLOR in Wall, SD we did a little shopping and a walk through of the Famous Wall Drug Store. It was ok…more of the same touristo t shirt type stuff. We are still spoiled by Buc-ee’s ha! After Walls Drug visit we set up base at camp Sleepy Hollow CG. Then headed to the Badlands NP convientently only 8 miles away. It was a super windy park visit, not at all crowded and cool temps for sure. Gotta love the America the Beautiful pass which provides free entry into All National Parks unless otherwise posted. The Badlands was established as a National Monument in 1939 and became a NP in 1978. The name Badlands comes from the Lakota Indian tribe who called it Mako Sica aka - Badlands. This is some of the roughest territory we have ever seen. It is almost like being on a different planet. Please excuse the poor audio in my vid. It was super windy. Cheers and Safe Travels! IMG_2352.mov

We are departing Hill City this morning, and headed northeast to Wall, SD and it appears to be just in time. We had the opportunity to visit and spend time at Mt Rushmore, Custer SP and Needles Highway on Oct 3rd. Beautiful. We have an app called “Watch Duty” and learned about a fire 🔥 in Custer SP not far from our base camp. If you don’t have this free app I highly recommend it. Thanks to our Starlink Mini we are staying weather and fire aware. The dry west is a tinder box! https://www.keloland.com/news/local-news/fire-warning-evacuation-near-little-devils-tower-area-friday/ Onward!

You were very fortunate to have been close to a trailer shop. Good for you! Onward!

A good idea especially while you have it stored. 👍🏻

Completely enjoyed the presidential walk around Mt Rushmore, driving through Custer SP and Needles Highway is a must see! The drive and the views were incredible. We were stomping hungry 😄 and had a fabulous tenderloin dinner at the Alpine Inn. The meal was perfect and the homemade deserts were awesome. We highly recommend the Alpine Inn for dinner in Hill City. 🤩 Off to Wall, SD tomorrow making our way east. Our hearts are very heavy about the conditions left behind by Helene. We look forward to getting home and volunteering where ever we can help to our fellow North Carolinians. Hopefully we will find roads open so that we wont have to detour to Atlanta. We think I40 east of Asheville is open from what we are learning. We will probably have to go to Wytheville, Va and drop down on I77 and pick up 40 east. IMG_2288.mov Dinner at the Alpine was On! May head back today for lunch it was soooo good. The horseradish a must have with any steak was super potent! Loved it! Deserts are house made..

We are based camped at Horse Creek CG, near Hill City SD. A nice little CG nestled in the Black Hills of SD. We landed a nice long end site with a great view of the Black Hills and right on the perimeter of the National Forest. Headed to see Mount Rushmore aka “the faces”, needles highway, Spearfish Canyon, and Custer SP. Who knows maybe a little dinner at the Alpine Inn? 😋 Safe Travels and Happy Camping! IMG_2272.mov No fire ban here, so we enjoyed the warmth of a hot fire and continued to plot and plan for the next few days. With careful overwatch, later in the evening I doused it before we knocked off for the day. Super quiet here with very few peeps and jeeps. 😊 The barbwire fence you see is the actual border between XPLOR and BH National Forest.

Bill, I believe you will be pleased with everything about the “mini”. We also ordered the 12v adapter cable to allow us to run the mini from our TV. Just a thought. https://www.strikerfab.com/products/dc-power-adapter-for-starlink-mini

Not sure if this is 💯 accurate, but I-40 in Western North Carolina is now projected to be closed until September of 2025. I-26, north of Asheville and into Tennessee is now projected to be closed until March 2025. Saw this post on a Meteorologist page and thought it was worth sharing. The floods have destroyed roads everywhere in North Carolina & Tennessee.

We are here right now -https://www.nps.gov/deto/index.htm and had a decent hike around the base. In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the tower and over 1000 surrounding acres a national monument. We are camped essentially on the door step of this tower. We woke up to a nice crisp 37 degrees but were both toasty warm inside our Oliver aka XPLOR. There were there people climbing the tower today as we hiked around its base which was pretty awesome to see. Onward tomorrow saying so long to Wyoming to XPLOR parts of South Dakota.

@Mike and Carol Thank you Mike for your concern. As reported the Western NC foothills and mountain areas are in really bad shape in a lot of areas. A close friend of mine who works for Duke power told me it looks like a war zone. We did have had friends and neighbors check on our home and to our surprise we were spared and had no damage with exception of a few pines over on the ridge we live on. Sadly, this is not the same report for many of our neighbors. Our LNG Generac standby generator ran for 60 hrs before our power was restored keeping our home on 💯 full power. We are very grateful to say the least. All this said our hearts our heavy for ALL impacted by this storm. I40 which connects eastern Tenn with western NC is closed and it appears it will be for a long time. Our Starlink mini has been a game changer with regard to staying up to date. I have made several attempts to call and txt topgun2 and have not had any success. Mike I am glad hear you got through this morning. We are both relieved he and Sue are ok. I would ask everyone to take a moment and lift up ALL people impacted by this storm in your thoughts and prayers. David & Kathy

Yes, every night at 7 pm. Ha!

We left Cody the land of Buffalo Bill Cody and arrived at Devils Tower KOA this afternoon. The sites are close to DT have FH’s and are level. Yay! The staff was welcoming and really helpful. We will get a good nights rest and check out this National Monument. The drive through Big Horn National Forest was just pretty spectacular. Safe Travels and Happy Camping! IMG_2221.mov Our site with a decent views of DT.

Good looking cargo box and you will be really glad to have it. Well done!

Hey Jim, My input- We are one of the first owners of many to install the SB cargo box. We absolutely love the amount of room it has, and it suits our set up gear with quick access perfectly. I use to secure our generator in the OEM Cargo box. After our 6000 mile trip out west last year and never using the generator, we reevaluated keeping the generator on the tongue and decided to just carry our Honda 3200i in the bed of our TV. The room in the SB cargo box allows me to keep all my immediate set up gear ready to deploy - 30 amp cord, chocks, Andersen blocks and levelers, 4 rubber chocks with lots of room for other miscellaneous items. Before the SB box install I was storing these items in the bed of our TV in an Action Packer box. The SB cargo box has made life easier just keeping everything right where I can get to it quickly vs unloading gear out of the bed. This box has continued to serve us very well even right now as we are out west again. We have not had any issues with water getting into the interior of the cargo box and we have been through some heavy rains on past trips. We always try and support USA made 🇺🇸 products and I think you will find David and Kristine Hess the owners of SeaBiscuit some of the finest people you will ever meet. David and his team take pride in what they craft and produce. I would also suggest you consider the moose rack he makes (pic below the hitch). It will keep your safety chains or cables stowed and off the ground. For what it’s worth, that is my input all the way from Cody, Wyoming now slowly headed home the long way round to North Carolina. 🇺🇸 Cheers and Happy Trails! Patriot🇺🇸

We are based camped at the Ponderosa CG right in Cody. A lot to do and see here and this town has a really nice vibe. Landed another nice FH site and even a little shade. Tomorrow morning we will get breakfast at Roosters and then head out to Bear Creek Pass and a place called The Red Lodge. Safe Travels!

So we left YS after a week of awesome fun touring and hiking around and taking in the sights and we headed out the east gate to Cody for our next place to base camp with XPLOR. Came up on this gorgeous pull off and decided to capture a vid. IMG_2186.mov Safe Travels!

Enjoying our last what we thought was going to be a nice quiet evening here at Fishing Bridge CG in Yellowstone, we had an unexpected Oliver visit and showing. Where does a 2000# Bison graze? Anywhere he wants!! I kept real quiet, he had no questions, but he loved our Oliver. What a last night at YS send off! 😂 The Beast head to head with our Beast of Burden. So glad he did not munch our SL mini cable. He tugged on it a few times as he ripped grass out of the soil. Glad we decided to enjoy dinner inside.

@MAX Burner Yes! We did that last Sunday…awesome views and the weather was perfect! Did you guys camp inside the park? If so where and your thoughts on the CG.

This big fella was out munching this morning not far from our site here at Fishing Bridge. We have a large herd of Buffalo being farmed not far from our home in Western NC. It’s still pretty neat to see them in the wild. The guy that owns the fiver you see had eyes the size of teacups. 😄 His expression was priceless. Onward with a short drive to Cody in the morning! We will be there a few days and longer if we really like it! IMG_2130.mov

Still looking for the snow front you said was moving through. 🙄 You must be watching a local channel! Ha! 😂 Stay dry, I do believe you are going get some hard rain. I did have a short encounter with a bear in Montana at Beartooth Pass in Cook City. Fun times! We bought him a T-shirt and all was good.

We extended our stay 2 more days here at Fishing Bridge CP inside Yellowstone NP to give us a full week at this magical park. Why leave? Ha! And the CG staff have been just awesome taking great care of us. Loop E is the where you wanna be if you are gonna stay at Fishing Bridge. The other loops are very close. This morning we enjoyed a short hike to the overlook at Grand Prismatic Spring. wow factor for sure. We enjoyed lunch at the Old Faithful Lodge and watched Old Faithful for the third time since we have been here. Every 90 minutes give or take it does it's thing. On our way back to Fishing Bridge we pulled off the road and walked out to the shoreline of Yellowstone Lake just to take in the majesty of this huge lake. More proof that the natural beauty surely is everywhere you look here. This is the time of year travel out west suits us best. A lot less peeps, much more campsite availability, beautiful sleeping temps, very little traffic and no long lines. What more could one ask for? Not a cloud in the sky, and gorgeous temps! (Excuse the poor audio in the lake vid, it was a little windy) Happy & Safe Travels from Hull #634 XPLOR IMG_2115.mov IMG_2116.mov

Excellent reminder especially for owners who don’t know this about the BAS.

We park our Oliver at our home under cover in a steel building. I choose to leave the fresh water tank valve open so that IF there is any water or moisture in the tank around or in the valve it does not freeze with the valve in the closed position. A freeze would cause the with water in the valve it to expand, and possibly crack can and fail. We don’t get really long extended hard freezes where we live in Western NC, so it’s not a huge deal. This has worked fine for the last 4 years. As far as any residual RV antifreeze in the fresh water tank or system, a good system flush is what I do after de-winterizing. We do not drink water from our fresh tank. As far as the toilet seal, add a little Vaseline to the seal in the toilet and it will be fine. Please post up your Olivers year and Hull #. It will make it much easier to help you with future questions. Welcome and Happy Travels!