Another Long trip

We took off for our long trip out west. We went to Illinois heading to Rockford to see our friend Judi. Everything was going fine until we got about 50 miles from Peoria, IL. when we blew both right rear tires on our coach. We were of course in the middle of no where and it took over four hours to get them replaced. We were parked alongside the Interstate waiting for the tire service people. We broke out lawn chairs and made our selves comfortable. When they finally got the tires replaced we went back to a restaurant at a truck stop for supper. We were all worn out and I asked the manager if we could park in his lot for the night. He said "no problem" and that he'd leave a note for the owners who were going to open up the next day that he'd given permission for us to park there. John decided that he'd use his diesel generator to use the MotoSat Satellite. He turned it on and I noticed "white smoke" coming out and went to see what was wrong. The generator ran for a couple of minutes then quit. Since it was dark John decided to wait till morning to check it out. The next morning we found it had no coolant in it. We added some and it ran again but still had white smoke and after about three minutes it quit.

Rock Island RV Park

John called ONAN and informed them what happened. They told him to take it ONAN service center in Rock Island, IL. When we got there they checked the generator and determined that coolant was leaking from the system and it had also burned the heads of the engine. Since it only had a very few minutes of time in it ONAN would replace it under warranty. The big problem was it had to be shipped from Detroit, MI and would take about a week to get here. We went to a campground not far from the service center and waited for the new generator. We were in Rock Island for a little over a week before we got back on the road. We finally got the new generator installed and it worked fine. Yea, we can get back on the road.

We left and started to South Dakota to see some sights. The first place we stopped was Mitchell to see the world famous Corn Palace. Each year they remove all the decorations and renew it with new corn items. There is a farmer in the area who is in the Guinness Book of World Records for growing different colors of corn which is used to decorate the Corn Palace.

Our next stop was Wall, SD,the home of the Wall Drug Store. The store covers two square blocks in town. It's famous for it's "Free Ice Water" and it's said ,"you haven't traveled in SD unless you've stopped and had a glass of Free Ice Water."

We wanted to go to the FAMCAMP at Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City but since it was during the 4th of July they were booked solid. The private campgrounds in and around Rapid City were full as well. We were forced to stay in Wall as a base camp for our sight seeing. It was about 40 miles from Rapid City so it wasn't too bad.