Rocky Tales — Almost Mount Rushmore

About Mount Rushmore, let me say first, it was well worth the visit. And my recommendation to you is: Go if you can. We stayed at a campground in Keystone, which is a town in the Black Hills region of Pennington County, South Dakota. Before I get to the monument, let me say something dreaded by seasoned RVers everywhere: U.S. Route 16A!

For some reason known only to Rand McNally, our RV-friendly GPS, which is stamped with the Good Sam seal of approval, sent us to 16A, also known as Iron Mountain Road. Sounds perfectly benign. It was still daylight, about 7:30 p.m. We had been traveling since about 10 a.m. We were looking forward to getting into our site while there was still some daylight and having sausages on the grill.

First, we missed the turn onto 16A because we were talking. Suddenly, we were climbing a hill, and Mount Rushmore appeared ahead of us in the distance. Immediately, our GPS recalculated, adding another half hour. Nooo!

At that moment, the universe was telling us to go that way. Take the extra half hour. But we didn’t listen!

So Philip made his first U-turn on a major road (I think it was SD-244) while, I admit, I snapped a photo of Mount Rushmore before doing my helpful bit: I stood in the middle of the highway and managed to stop other cars from careening around the corner directly into the trailer by waving my hands around. Murray did his part by barking madly in the back seat. Bark, bark, bark!

You see, to back up our trailer, we — by which I mean, Philip — has to remove our stabilizing, anti-sway bar. So he jumped out, disengaged and stowed the stabilizer bar, and then began the turn. Yes, he had to back up, making it a traditional three-point turn with 50-feet of truck and trailer. And then, having not been run over, I climbed back in our pickup.

And we thought that was the hard part. HAHAHA

We went down the long curving road to the missed turn onto Route 16A, driving directly past a park ranger because Iron Mountain Road goes through Custer State Park. The ranger’s car was at the turn, and he let us go up a road that RVers CANNOT travel upon. Why would he do that? Then, just as we were starting to realize the dodgy nature of 16A, because we were on a narrow two-lane road with hairpin turns, our GPS announced that we had arrived.

?? Had we, though? NO!

I turned on our secondary GPS, which is not RV-friendly, and it said we had a few miles to go. At that point, we still didn’t know the infamy of the road. We proceeded with caution because we had no choice. And then, out of the blue, our GPS finally flashed a warning about how there were tunnels ahead with low clearance.

To be precise: “Too low”!

Believe it or not, we’d somehow already wasted over a half hour. We stared at each other in horror because, although we’d just performed a fabulous U-turn on the previous road, that was not an option in our new situation, and it was growing darker every moment. Cue the dog: bark, bark, bark.

We continued a few yards until we saw a steep dirt road off the left side. Philip pulled us onto that side of the two-lane road and began to back the trailer down this dirt off-shoot with thick brush on either side and a drop-off. I thought either someone was going to come around the bed and smash into the front of our truck or we would simply disappear over the side and no one would ever know what had happened to us.

Once we were partly tucked off the main road, a conversation happened like this:

“What shall we do?”

“We’re f^&*ed! Effing GPS! Effing Good Sam! Effing park ranger!!” And so on.

Bark, bark, bark! [meaning “I am ready for my bowl of food, please!” or “You two are idiots, and I hope I shall soon be re-homed with clever people if such even exist.”]

Then I got out and waited for headlights. When they came, I waved them down in the dusky light. I probably spoke gibberish. I think I cried! The couple were so helpful. Once they realized we were not crazed axe murderers but only RVers in distress, they explained that this road has three tunnels, which are rounded and which we would not fit through. Later, we found out the coolest thing about these tunnels is that they frame Mount Rushmore — two of them show you the monument ahead of you, and in the other one, you glance in the rear view mirror to see the presidents’ heads behind you. But that joy was still in our future.

The strangers took Philip with them to look for a place we could turn, leaving me and Murray in the now-dark truck, praying the trailer wasn’t going to pull us backward down the side of the mountain. It seemed a very long time that they were gone. I began to imagine the kindly-seeming couple had kidnapped Philip for ransom, and began wondering if they would take Murray in trade.

Finally, they returned with good news. There was in fact a place up farther where we could turn. Hallelujah!

We followed the couple up a couple more hairpin turns, and then they stopped traffic with their car’s headlights. Philip backed onto a small dirt drop-off, managing to turn us back down the blasted 16A. I should add at this point that this was one of our longest travel days. So we were fried, exhausted, on our last nerves, and now, this!

We drove back past the spot where the park ranger had watched us go by. Watched us!!!! We consulted the maps, we turned off the GPS. And then … then … I recalled there might have been some info on the campground’s website about NOT using the GPS.

At that moment, I may not have told Philip that because I believe he would have ripped off his own arm and throttled me with it.

Instead, I looked at the campground’s confirmation email. Nothing! I went back to the website, and sure enough, I found the instructions where to turn from Keystone to avoid 16A, or at least, this side of it, because the campground is located on the other side of it. Another stop at a gas station/liquor store (!) and we found the road.

We pulled into the campground at 10 pm. And they had ever-so-thoughtfully put us on an inclined campsite next to a drop-off! Not kidding. It was one of the harder ones we’d encountered, and Philip had to back in after 12 hours of travel.

Needless to say, we did not pull out the grill and eat sausages. Only Murray ate, while we went to bed, still feeling rattled. It may have been our single worst day of travel. And now, there is no time to tell you about Mount Rushmore. Or the frozen custard.