Day 59 - Car in shop - travelers at Belle Fourche Reservoir

Day 59 - Wednesday - of noises and repairs

At 8am we meet Jared, who, as we will discover later, will fix all of our leaks for us.  We leave him with the RV and take the car out to see if it still has problems.  We get a repeat of the clicking noise, and then a message comes up "Transmission Fault - Service now".

I call the Ford dealer in Spearfish and Lance, the service advisor, tells me he would not be able to look at the problem until Friday.  He kindly gives me numbers for Ford dealers in Sturgis (10 miles beyond Whitewood in the other direction) and Belle Fourche (remember Belle Fourche?).  He also tells me there is an Enterprise car rental in Spearfish and gives me the number, so I call and make a reservation for a car.  Neither of the other dealers can take me for at least a week, so I call Lance back and arrange to get the car towed back to Spearfish - fortunately at no charge since we have Good Sam Roadside Assistance.

The tow truck arrives and Andy, the driver, has no problem with me driving along with him (in contrast to John, the tow truck driver in AZ who said he wasn't allowed to).  Also in contrast to John, who told me he didn't like Winslow Ford, Andy told me that Lance and his colleague Mark were both good people who had been around for many years.  Vicky stays with the RV and as Andy is driving me and the car to the dealer, I get a call from the local Enterprise office telling me that they have no cars, so my reservation is of no use!

I explain this to Lance as I check in the car.  He tells me a loaner has just been returned and I can have it for free for as long as he's working on the car - just have to refill the gas!  Still can't believe how nice people are here!  As Lance puts it, it's old but it runs!  They will look at the car on Friday and then, since it's a new transmission, they'll have to get someone from Ford to authorize the repair or replacement, so it could be a week or two!  Although we could keep the loaner, it would mean driving both the RV and a full size car up to North Dakota, each of us alone,  so we decide to keep the loaner until Saturday and rent a car when we get up to ND.

Meanwhile, although I love the Focus, we're getting worried it might not be the best thing to tow.  I get back to Whitewood to find the RV job is finished but we don't have to leave immediately so we decide to drive down to Sturgis (a) to see the town and (b) to check out a Chevrolet dealer to see if they have more suitable cars.  The car salesman tells us GM basically doesn't make manual transmissions any more, so we drive around Sturgis (the only ugly town in the Black Hills).  It's famous for its annual motorcycle rally but has nothing to interest us, so we return to Whitewood, pay for the RV work and drive up to Belle Fourche reservoir for the next several nights.

I have another online class to attend so we leave the RV in the parking lot of a restaurant.  After I finish, we go inside and have dinner - taco salad for Vicky and liver'n'onions for me.  Simple and unpretentious, but good.  As we pull in to the camp area, the sun has set and it's the long northern twilight.