Unexpected Ending to the Perfect Road Trip - Solo Camping With My Dog.

and I found more spots along that canyon rim that would work perfect for doing some dispersed camping. I pinned them on the phone so I might have to come back here someday. For now I really don't have any plans other than heading south getting into the Black Hills and finding a pharmacy. Once I get into the hills we'll figure out where our next campsite's gonna be. So now we just got to make this drive. Perfect. Well hopefully that medicine helps. From here we're gonna go through Spearfish Canyon get into the Custer area and I think that around that Hill City Custer we'll find some dispersed camping. If nothing else if we get there a little bit later in the day then we'll just pick up a campground. Right Toby? Let's see what we can find. Well the sky's turned dark and the rain moved in. It only lasted for about an hour. Temperature went from 81 degrees down to 55 like that. It could be because of the elevation as well. We're at about 6,500 feet and I can definitely feel it in my face. The problem that I had is though that rain mixed with that tar from the road construction the other day made an absolute mess on the windshield. So now I've got a big black streak going right in front of me. We're gonna head into Hill City. I'm gonna see if I can find a product that'll take that off and from there we're gonna get into the woods find a place to do some camping. every once in a while for the turbo vanes. They're just gummed up full of carbon so I've been running the exhaust brake going down these big hills hoping that heat burns out some of that carbon and frees up them vanes a little bit. I don't think those high rpms are gonna hurt anything. What do you say Toby? Should we go on a little walk? Better grab one of these just in case. I thought I'd let Toby stretch his legs out a little bit at the Hill City Museum. I doubt we're gonna go inside though. This memorial is dedicated to the young men of Civilian Conservation Corps 1933 to 1942. Come on up. Good boy. Good job Toby. Well let's see what we can do while getting this tar off of our windshield. I think there's a hardware store just right down the road. We're gonna give this a shot. I picked up a razor blade too. That'll work. It'll just take some time. Let's try the Gugon and see Black streak is gone. I still gotta clean this side yet but that worked. There's one more thing that we're gonna do before we leave and that's gonna be making supper really quick. Basically what we're gonna do is make a beef stroganoff in the slow cooker. Let this cook for the rest of the afternoon while we're driving down the road because I don't know if there's gonna be a campfire at the spot we end up at. So this is a real simple recipe. It's gonna be a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of french onion soup, and then a pound of beef. We're gonna let this cook for probably four hours on low and then when I get to the campsite we'll just make some noodles and it'll be supper. So we're sitting at 85 percent. I'll hook up the crock pot. It's gonna draw 140 watts. I've got the charger one cable hooked up so by the time we reach our campsite our food will be cooked and that should hopefully read 100 percent. I put on about 700 miles and now that check engine light's gonna come on after I talk about it. Of course that's the way it works. Back on the dirt. Let's see where this takes us. I believe we can boondock off of most of these roads. I'll have to pull it up on the onyx app see what it says. I'm hoping we don't have to spend four or five hours looking for a spot but you never know. Wow check out that view. Beautiful. Looks like there's a number of people boondocking off this road but we might be able to find something. Looks like we could probably use that spot right down there. Okay we're gonna save that one for a baby. Well look at those views. That looks like another one right there. There's another one. I'm not sure what level it's gonna be. Let's drive down there and find but what I noticed is this road kind of keeps going a little bit. I really couldn't see this. It crests over this little hill right here so I couldn't see any of this. Oh this would be beautiful right down here. Wow yeah I think we can definitely make this happen. This looks like I'm on a really nice golf course in the mountains. It's incredible that you can just set up camp back here. I'm gonna get the truck. I think this is gonna be our spot. Is this looking good Toby? Good job. We might even be able to get right underneath this tree for a little bit of shade. How's that for a campsite? Let's see how much of a charge we got on that power station. Well it smells good in here that's for sure. 99% mint. I'm gonna get camp set up and then relax for a minute. I don't know what it is about driving that just takes it out of a person. You want to see something beautiful though? Look behind you. We found a good spot that's for sure. I filled up the generator with the gas. I haven't even had to use it yet. I thought today for sure we'd be running the air conditioner. It was supposed to be up in the mid 80s but up here at like 6,500 feet I don't think we broke 80 degrees. The nice thing is is up on these hills there's always a wind. The dew point is really low. We're gonna have supper here pretty soon. I wish that I could kick this cold though. It's all like moving down into my chest now. It's worth it though. Totally worth it. Can you believe there's also no bugs here? That has been really nice. Toby's finally starting to act like himself. He's not constantly on edge like he has been for the last few days. We're gonna use this again. Make the noodles outside here. I'll do it on the metal grate. I've learned a long time ago you can't cook on this plastic table. It'll warp it so easily. That has come in handy. Let's get the noodles. I've been keeping this jug of water in the truck for me and Toby when we're driving down the road. We're gonna get this boiling and there's one more ingredient that we need to add to the beef stroganoff. And that is a bit of sour cream. Fridge is looking kind of weak. I had a couple people tell me they tried the Swiss steak recipe and they really liked it. So definitely try this one as well. Pretty simple. A can of cream of mushroom, a can of French onion, and a heap of sour cream. It just makes it smooth, a little bit richer. That is good. Looks like it's got a good rolling boil going. Add our noodles. That looks about right. Should be done in a couple minutes. Look at that sunset. Are you kidding me? Oh, looks like it's gonna boil over. I guess we can leave the lid off. You ever try the wooden spoon trick? Put a wooden spoon across the pot when you're boiling noodles and it won't boil over? It's true. It works. I don't know how, but magic. I'm dishing up outside. It is way too nice to be in the camper. I think I have enough for another plate. As long as you brought a fork, we're good to go. Toby, you want to try a piece? Good stuff? Yeah. Best seat in the house. That is delicious. I got you covered. Supper was good. Want to go for a walk? Let's go. Every time I come out to South Dakota, it reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Dances with Wolves. I should go check that area out. It's nice to see how clean these dispersed sites are out here. I wish I could say the same for Minnesota. It's not always the case. And I'm sure it's not always the case out here either. The ones I've been finding, not any garbage at all. I wanted to come up to the road and see how visible the camper is. You can see it, but it's not going to be a problem. The only traffic down this road is a brown pit bull. Toby, should we go this way? Come on. This is weird. Someone's got to know this is about a pile of pine cones. A pile of pine cones. Over here, there's another pile. There's a pile over there. And one more over here. That is weird. I think I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight. I'm going to go inside, take some more NyQuil, do the dishes, and go to bed. It is so nice having all the amenities of home. Plus a hot shower is going to feel so good. Are you going to figure out how to do this one day? I hope so. All cleaned up. We're ready for bed. the Black Hills at sunrise. I don't know if you can see them. They're just right on the treetops I've got to figure out what I'm going to do, though. I can't seem to kick this cold. If anything, it just keeps getting worse and worse. Now, the temperatures today are going to be up around 85 here near Custer. If we get out of the Black Hills, whether it's Medora or the Wall or Gillette, we're looking at around 95 to 97 today. Tomorrow, up around 107. And with the sinus infection and coughing, the temps, I'm telling you, it is just beating me down. I'm half tempted to just make the drive home. I was talking with Larry. You guys know Larry from Work Less, Enjoy Life More. And we're actually going to be meeting up. He's mentioned it on his channel. Hopefully, we're going to be meeting up. Of course, nothing is ever definite. But that's happening in like three or four weeks. And it's going to be about a 16-hour drive for that. So then I'm thinking, well, maybe I need to go home and save some money for that. It would be nice if these companies that I always talk about, like Onyx, if they would help sponsor a video. But I've reached out to them a couple of times. They're just not interested. There's other companies, too. There's things that I use all of the time. It'd be nice if those companies reach out. I mean, just even something simple like beef sticks that I'm constantly eating. You see them in the fridge. You see expensive coming out here. It is getting warm. Toby, we got to get going. It is getting hot in this camper. I think we're going to put camp together and then stick around. We'll find out where we're going to end up. Toby, let's go outside. I can't take the seat. This road trip has showed me a few things, though. Number one, I got to do something about my battery situation. I've been waking up at like 3 a.m., low voltage alarms. So I plug in the power station, keep the house batteries going. Otherwise, if I sleep all the way through the night and don't have the power station plugged in, house batteries are sitting around 10 volts in the morning. So that's not going to work. Another thing that I'm going to need to do is get some longer cables for my solar panels. I've got about 500 watts that I can deploy on the ground, but it doesn't do much if you can't plug them in. I also think it'd probably be a good idea to figure out a way to carry some extra fuel with, not only for the generator, but maybe for the truck, too. Don't get me wrong. So far, I think everything's gone fine. Put on almost a thousand miles and really had no problems. Found some beautiful spots. But I do believe it's time just how quickly the landscape changes up here. I think the National Forest is like 1.2 million acres and it is so diverse. I compare that to like the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. It's almost 4 million acres, but it almost all looks the same. Up here, it's constantly changing. Well, that was weird. Going through Rapid City, tears just started rolling down my face. My ears felt like they were going to explode. I was trying to make myself yawn to get them to pop. You definitely find your weak spots when you go on these longer distance drives. There's a spot south of Wall, probably six or seven miles. It's in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. I used to come here like 12, 15 years ago. And back then, you'd maybe see one or two campers out here. The last time I was here was probably four years ago. And I think I counted 101 campers. It is insane. But I was going to see if on a day like today, being 93 degrees, how busy is it going to be? Because I was thinking about maybe using this as a quick stopover for when I come back out west here in a few weeks. The road getting out here has gotten a lot better. Back in the day, it was just like two ruts. Mandy and I were out here probably 10 years ago in my old Mountain Star camper, and a tornado went through. We got tons of hail on the camper. On the way out, there was someone with a fifth wheel who was stuck right in the drive. This is a lot better. Wow, they actually have it designated as camping spots. Crazy. They even have like an information board up here now. Yeah, it was never like this before. There's only a couple of campers here. I thought there'd be more. Views here are amazing. I'm really glad that I was able to experience this back in the day. It's changed a lot. They put designated campsites all on the opposite side of the road. And all of the other campsites that we used to stay at, they have blocked off now. So it's no longer camping right on the rim anymore. I mean, it's still beautiful, but different. But I am glad to see that they're out here maintaining it better than just closing it down, which they definitely could have. That day that I was out here and counted 100 campers or more, the amount of trash that was blowing around out in these fields was crazy. So it is good that they came out here and decided to kind of maintain it more than just close it down completely. When I go out west in a few weeks, I'm sure this is where I'll come back and stay. I'll take a look at it a little bit better then. It's like a eight and a half, nine hour drive from home. So it'll be perfect for a quick overnight. Saying it out loud made me It was kind of nice having Toby with though. It gave me a reason to stop, take a break, walk around. Kept my eyes open. I do feel bad, almost like I let you down early by throwing in the towel. But there's no sense of being out there if it's just going to be miserable. I did plan on driving out to the Bighorn Mountains. That's where I wanted to end up for a couple of days. But I think you could probably read through it and no sense of me putting a fake smile on my face for the next couple of days. But remember that it's only going to be a couple of weeks and I'll be going back out west again, meeting up with Larry from Work Less, Enjoy Life More and a few other people as well that you probably recognize. It's going to be like a 17, 18 hour drive non-stop. So I'll break that up into a couple of day trip and then a couple of days back and we'll stay out there for a couple of days. And when I make that trip, I'm actually going to plan it out a little bit as well. So I'll have a couple of things put together. This trip here was just on the whim. I got in the truck and we just drove. So we'll plan this next one out a little bit better. We'll be back out camping again next Tuesday. Until then, be kind, be honest, and we'll see you down the road.