Week 39: Bison, Badlands & the Bus Mechanic
- Karen Kuhl
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
July 25 – July 31 | Rapid City, SD (100s) → Hermosa, SD (90s)
Where We Stayed
Country Inn & Suites — Rapid City, SD (Saturday & Sunday)
Heartland RV Park — Hermosa, SD (Monday–Thursday)
Best Western — Custer, SD (Friday)
A Hotel Weekend & a Much-Needed Nothing Day
We were supposed to go straight to Heartland RV Park for the full week. But the forecast showed temperatures climbing to 105°F over the weekend, and after what we'd just survived in Medora, we were not doing that again; not to ourselves and not to Lucky. We booked two nights at a hotel in Rapid City instead. Saturday we did absolutely nothing. Air conditioning, brainless TV, no agenda, no itinerary, no expectations. In nearly nine months on the road, we haven't had many of those days, and this one was genuinely welcomed. The funny thing about a year-long trip with goals and places and things you want to accomplish is that you're always on. Always moving, always planning, always optimizing. Sitting in a cool room watching cooking shows on TV felt like a small act of rebellion. We had dinner next door at the Mexican restaurant; we had to have margaritas in honor of my sister's birthday. Sunday we rallied and headed to Badlands National Park. I also stocked the refrigerator and pantry properly for the first time since before St Mary, MT. Medora had no grocery store, and we'd been eating through our staples, cheese quesadillas with creative side salads for at least four meals. It was fine. Now we're back to a real kitchen.
(One side note: there was an outbreak of bacterial contamination in bagged vegetables across the US this week. I bought baby spinach. I watched that situation very carefully.)
Badlands — A Drive-By at 110°F
I'll be honest: going to Badlands felt more like checking it off than checking it out. The temperature climbed to almost 110°F. Skuhlie has her quirks in extreme heat (she has a hard time starting up and gets louder than usual), so we kept the engine running as much as possible. I would jump out to take photos while Don and Lucky stayed in the bus.
We drove the Badlands Scenic Drive, took our photos, and kept moving. We didn't even stop at Wall Drug, which I know is practically a road trip rite of passage, because we were genuinely worried about stopping the bus and not being able to restart it.
We did stop for the giant prairie dog statue on the way in before the heat climbed too high; it was right on our path, no detour required. We also picked up a tiny prairie dog for the dashboard lineup. I really love our lineup.
The landscape is extraordinary even as a drive-by in survival mode. The formations don't need ideal conditions to be dramatic.
Heartland RV Park, Hermosa
Monday we moved to Heartland RV Park in Hermosa, SD; population of 382, which makes it technically three times the size of Medora (population 100), though Medora hires more J1 visa international students than its entire permanent population, and its a busy tourism town. Heartland was a genuinely great find for $40 a night: nice showers, laundry, a restaurant, a store, a pool, hot tub, pickleball court, trivia nights, bingo, and live music. We were here for access to Badlands, Crazy Horse, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave, but the campground itself was worth staying at. We met several lovely people, and Lucky made friends with Griffin; he is also a 14-year-old dog, also moving at a considered pace, also clearly very wise. It's always a good sign when Lucky approves of someone. We also caught up on our sticker wall. It is a visual sign to us of all the places we have been in the past 9 months.
Custer State Park & the Bison Traffic Jam
Wednesday we drove to Custer State Park, a park bigger than some national parks. At 71,000 acres, it is more than twice the size of nearby Wind Cave National Park. We went back and forth about the Wildlife Loop. After Lamar Valley at Yellowstone, after Montana, after North Dakota, I'll admit we had reached a point of mild bison fatigue. We've seen so many. It's similar to how we felt in the Southwest after the hundredth stunning canyon; the awe is real, but it gets harder to access quickly. Then the ranger told us the bison were right next to the road, and there were hundreds of them. Fine. We went.
It took over an hour to drive the 18-mile loop, and not because of traffic. Because of bison.
On the road. Bison walking, standing, completely unbothered by the line of vehicles they were creating. The most up-close-and-personal bison experience of the entire trip. Calves running. Bulls watching. It was worth every minute. We didn't see the famous burros. Visitors are encouraged to bring apples and carrots to feed them on the loop; I had carrots in the bus. I was genuinely sad to have missed the chance. There were also many prairie dogs, they are still impossibly cute, even after hundreds of sightings across Montana and the Dakotas.
We continued toward Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore. I have no interest in Mount Rushmore. Don described it as graffiti on a mountain (the bad kind, the kind intended to insult and mark territory) and I don't disagree. It sits on land belonging to the Sioux and Lakota Nations, carved without their consent, and I don't feel the need to add to its visitation numbers. I wanted to visit Crazy Horse, which is still being carved by the family of the original sculptor and operated as an independent, non-government project honoring the Lakota people. Due to the heat, we headed back toward camp.
The drive back took us through Keystone, which neither of us could wait to leave. Kitsch of the least charming variety; theme parks, restaurants, aggressive advertising, the kind of roadside commercial energy that feels like it's working very hard to be memorable and achieving the opposite. The drive back also included a 15% grade descent. Fifteen percent. The bus rattled when we used the brakes. We made it down. I filed it under "things to mention to a mechanic."
Skuhlie Breaks Down
Don took Friday off so we could go kayaking on Sylvan Lake and hike the surrounding Black Hills. The photos of Sylvan Lake look extraordinary. We never made it. We left the campground early with bad steering. Don topped off the power steering fluid (we keep a bottle on the bus for exactly this), and we drove on. Half an hour later, in Custer, we stopped for gas. The bus did not sound well. At all. Don poured more power steering fluid in and watched it pour straight back out. We called Roadside Assistance, the first time in nine months we've actually used it. For every other mechanical issue, we've handled it ourselves.
The dispatcher located a mobile mechanic from Rapid City, about an hour out. We found a pizza place for lunch. I looked at a small campground in town. We ended up booking a hotel, because after a day like that, we deserved a real room. The mechanic communicated well, gave us updates, and said we could drive the mile to the hotel carefully. We did. Then it started pouring, hail, thunder, the works. The timing, at least, was on our side. The mechanic arrived at the hotel after the hailstorm and got right to work. He was exactly the kind of creative, can-do mechanic this trip requires. The type who looks at a converted school bus with a power steering leak and sees a puzzle worth solving rather than a lost cause. In the end, he fixed the leak and sent us off with a verdict that felt perfectly appropriate for where we are in this journey: "She won't win any beauty contests, but she'll keep going." I'll take it.
Thanks, Dom's Mobile Repair from Rapid City!
The bus has met a few mechanics on the trip:
Radiator — Asheville, NC — November 2025
Flat tires — Prescott, AR — January 2026
Muffler & start of rear wheel differential leak — San Antonio, TX — January 2026
Rear wheel differential fixed — Las Cruces, NM — February 2026
Muffler pipe — Loveland, CO — May 2026
Power steering fluid leak — Custer, SD — July 2026
Every time something happens, the first name that comes to mind is Mike, Skuhlie's mechanic, and our first Skuhlie telehealth call. I wonder what he'll think of this repair when we get Skuhlie back to NY. So far, we've solved every single one, with help from family, mechanics we've found in small towns, and roadside assistance we'd forgotten we had. Family has been critical in overcoming these challenges, whether it is with financial help, some words of wisdom, encouragement, or someone to vent to while we process the current situation. We owe a lot to our family; they are always there for us.
Next up: Nebraska and Kansas.
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