Category: Black Hills SD 2025

On site at Hot Springs SD KOA

We arrived at the KOA just outside of Hot Springs SD mid afternoon today after a 323 mi drive from Mitchell SD. It’s a nice quiet campground and we knew what to expect as we stayed at this place once before, in our Airstream, in July 2017. One memory of that trip was how uncomfortably hot it was here in July. This time, in later September, it’s very nice with temperatures in the 70’s and no summer crowds. In fact the campground is less than half full. We choose this time for just those reasons.

After having driven for 828 miles in 2 days we were ready to just relax at the campsite for the rest of the day and look over a map of the Black Hills area to plan tomorrow’s site-seeing. Lyn really likes that some KOA’s will deliver pizza right to your site, so that’s what we did for dinner.

Relaxing after the trip out here

Last time we were at this campground, July 2017. Tempus fugit!

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.