Leaving Bright & Early
[2025-09-17 (Wed) Day #1] We’re off to the Black Hills of South Dakota for a 4 night stay. We plan on 2 days to get there, stopping first tonight at Mitchell SD where there’s a Cabela’s that we can “camp” at overnight in their parking lot.
Checking that our total travel setup weight is within specs
This is our first time towing our Jeep with our new Winnebago EKKO class C rig. Short answer is it works great. The only problem we had was with our supplemental brake controller in the Jeep kept going off-line en-route due to positioning errors. I mostly solved this with a flat piece of wood between the supplemental brake system and the drivers seat. I’ll need to make a framework for this when we get home. We were also wondering how well the EKKO – Jeep rig would handle on the road, especially since technically we are near the GCWR (Gross Combined Weight Rating) tow rating for the Mercedes Sprinter 3500 chassis the EKKO is built on. Turns out the 2.0L high-output, turbo-diesel 4-cylinder powered Sprinter 3500 is quiet, accelerates smoothly, and tracks straight without having to constantly manage the wobble and wandering steering we’ve had with our previous RV rigs. I like it a lot!
We took advantage of free overnight parking at Cabela’s
From home to Mitchell SD is a little over 500 mi. We arrived around sunset at Cabela’s, found a parking spot with a few other RV’s, walked Tucker, then went inside with Tucker (dog friendly!) to buy something so that we could be a “customer”. Besides getting a treat at the entrance and having several customers and a toddler petting him, Tucker lucked out with a bag of training treats for our purchase. Although it rained most of the time we were there we had a peaceful uneventful night there along with about a dozen other RV’s.
I Love Cabela’s
Lyn fulfills her dream of microwaving dinner in a parking lot
Ah, Cabela’s parking lot for the night. Worked out great.