And it was evening of the second day, and uh…..not so good.

Murphy’s law rules whether at home or on the road. The second day on the road was actually a rather pleasant affair with Anna dominating behind the wheel while I “white knuckled” on occasion in the back seat. Thomas munched on sunflower seeds supplied by Bethany and Scott Nussbaum. We all relished in the changing of the scenery as we meandered through the Upper Peninsula, Wisconsin, and all of Minnesota.

We pounded out around 670 miles in a little under thirteen hours, and gratefully pulled into Anna’s in-laws, the Knutsons, in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. They have been wonderful and gracious hosts, with a wonderful meal and visits with their neighbors Stephen and Jackie Thomas.

When pulling out of Mackinaw, Thomas and I noticed that we could not keep the pilot on for the propane to cool the refrigerator, so we chose to do what we were instructed NOT to do – cool the refrigerator through the camper and truck batteries. We knew the fridge pulled a heavy current, but we decided to test its limits.

Predictably, upon arrival the camper batteries were dead – so dead that they could not hold any charge at all when we plugged into the 110 at the Knutson’s home.

Initially I thought we had blown a fuse, so I changed out the old fuse with one of three spares that I carry, but after five minutes that didn’t work either.

It was at that point that I began to wonder how we would finish out the trip without any juice to run all of the facilities in the camper. I was close to “freak-out”. I decided to fire up the truck to see what it’s alternator would do, sent Thomas and Anna off to bed, while I chose to stay out with the camper to fine tune things for the morning.

Low and behold, the truck was able to lift enough of a charge in the camper batteries for them to sustain a full charge off the 110 plug-in. I was able to turn the truck off at 12:30, and fell asleep, proud of myself for having “McGivering” my way out of that mess, only to wake at 3:30 to the worst thunderstorm they’ve had up here all season. Two inches of rain pounded down on the camper, some of which started to leak through the vent immediately over my mid-section, forcing me to shift over to drier locations.

Morning could not come soon enough, only to find that for inexplicable reasons I had left the front driver and passenger seat windows six inches ajar thoroughly soaking the passenger side – guess that’s where I’ll be riding for the first leg of the jaunt today.

We head off this morning for Williston, North Dakota, where we will be staying overnight. We have heard that this is the biggest boomtown in North America! It dwarfs what happened in Ft. McMurray over the past 40 years. The oil industry is driving this. John Knutson was telling us they have man caves for 600 men, each of whom take 8-hour shifts sharing a bed. RVs are parked all over the town. There is no such thing as a vacancy in any hotel or home!

Then it is off to Yellowstone! Will be posting pictures and video in up-coming posts.