Devil's Tower, WY to Keystone, SD - the detour continues

We Love RV'ing but we finally had “one of those days” ! We started out from Devil’s Tower on a bright sunny day and headed towards Keystone, SD, USA. The GPS system hasn’t been used much because we’ve been following the road. Now we have an RV park as a destination so Keith has entered the town of Keystone.

                                                      Devil's Tower KOA grounds

I know that GPS can be a wonderful thing but there are exceptions ! We are following the shortest route and even though I feel very competent at reading the map and navigating our trips, I have conceded to allowing Miss GPS to know what she is doing and following her directions. Let me tell you, it was not a good idea.

We followed Hwy 85 to Deadwood, SD and it is a busy little tourist town. It has a great city center and we stopped at the tourist center to get a map and some information. Then we’re back in the truck to follow the rest of the GPS directions. We head south on Hwy 385 looking to turn at Hwy 16. Miss GPS tells us to turn, which we do, and although there was no sign saying it was Hwy 16, we followed her directions of following this road for 3 miles, there was no turnout in the road for us to change our minds now. It was a single lane dirt road !! I don’t know what she was thinking ! I suggest at this point that until she is updated, we do not trust Miss GPS.

LESSON #1 – Do not always take the shortest route, it may not be the best one !
Miss GPS may have been doing as instructed, but that isn’t my department so I cannot say for sure !

Main street thru Keystone, SD, USA

We found our way out to the road, joining onto Hwy 16A getting us into downtown Keystone, SD, USA ! Woohoo, we made it. Now the key was to find the RV park.
There are directions in the book, but none of them include Hwy 16A from Keystone, so Miss GPS goes to work and gives us the directions. All other directions in our book are coming from different locations. Ok, away we go. Turns out there was a reason why Hwy 16A was not included in the book.

We wind our way thru town to follow Hwy 16A to Spokane Creek RV park. What a pretty drive, although a very narrow road, we carry on slowly with so many tight curves to navigate. There are hairpin turns, which are so narrow that we have to drive into the oncoming lane, thankfully there is not too much traffic. Even when we were on our own side of the road, it was rather amusing to see the looks on the face of the white-knuckled drivers that we did meet, but I was the only one laughing at this point.

We were crossing bridges that were built on curves, this was one windy road, but the best was yet to come.

                                                             Small tunnel opening

We found some single lane tunnels on the road, three all together, with no way around shown, we were at the point of no return and had to go through. The sign gave the size of the openings, we’re pretty sure we can fit. One tunnel was 12’ 2” high and our 5th wheel is 11’8”.

                                                              Tunnel vision
Whew, not much room to spare, we were video’d by tourists as we were going thru that one. Looking thru the end of this tunnel was framing the face of Washington on Mt. Rushmore……. That was pretty exciting, but Keith didn’t get a chance to look at that, he was busy getting us thru the tunnel ! Too bad, it was an incredible sight !

We did manage to get thru all the tunnels and made it to the RV park. I never had any doubts that Keith would get us there safe and sound, he’s driven some pretty rough roads back home without problems, but apparently there is nothing like those tunnels! Boy, was it time for Happy Hour when we got parked!

LESSON #2 - ….. update your GPS before leaving home.
Now for more fun, check out our visit to Mt. Rushmore.

http://we-love-rv-ing.blogspot.com/2009/08/we-love-rving-to-mt-rushmore-sd-usa.html