Badlands, bad (?) Charlie!

Well, yesterday we had another big day of driving planed to get from Soiux Falls over to Yellowstone, but I guess Charlie had got a bit bored of it and by lunchtime had decided he wanted a rest. He communicated his intentions by getting a bit warm and leaving a nice puddle of water underneath the engine when we stopped at a rest area. Lifting the bonnet it was obvious this was coming from the P-gasket. Yay. After checking the water level (he hadn't lost too much) and that we had a new water pump gasket and P gasket in the back of the truck we decided to push on carefully to the next campsite and finish early so we could allow the engine to call down and replace said gaskets. We found a KOA in the Badlands, which wasn't a bad place to stop anyway! And went for a swim whilst the engine cooled down. I think Dan was a bit worried about working on the engine in the middle of nowhere (as we had realised there was no Landy dealers in the next 3 states) as he was doing his usual 'I'll just do this' and 'this is really important that I do this first' ... so I decided to do it myself :) That soon got him looking over my shoulder! :) After a couple of comments to 'make sure I put the bolts back on the things I've taken off' and 'be careful because that might be hot' we discovered three of the bolts were loose, so we decided to have a go and just tightening them (why take apart things you might not have to) and put everything back together. The test run to the 'shop' (in a town called Interior, population of 67, 5 miles up the road) went well, so fingers crossed that'll be problem solved.

We had planned to go out at night to see the stars, but as we ate dinner a HUGE storm rolled in. Lightening every couple of seconds and a sky full of cloud put pay to that idea, but it wasn't too bad as there was a fantastic view from the rooftent :) We'd also planned to go on a 23 mile bike ride loop thing this morning (before it reached 100F +), but it's 8am and I'm sitting here typing and already sweating buckets! Maybe it's not such a good idea.

A few pics from our journey through the Badlands yesterday:





For those of you that don't read all the comments my Step-Dad Ron had this to add to the Stat's section: 'Some further stats for you, your journey today is the equivelant of Southampton to Aberdeen, 195 trips to the Jolly Sailor (I like this one! - Jen), or,if your poison is Guiness or Grolsch, Dublin to Amsterdam!! :-)'. Thanks Ron :)x


Just so I remember, so far people have guessed we have been from:
Australia
Germany
Canada
New Zeland

Charlie Camel has been called:
A Jeep (predicatable I guess)
A 'Unit'
A Rig
A Toyota (?!)

...and yes, someone asked if we had 'driven here from England'... Dan said "Yes, the bit under the water was fun"... the bemused american chap didn't laugh. Oh dear.