Going Places With Gabe & Ziva: Sioux Falls, South Dakota

From Council Bluffs, we headed north to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Our dear friend, Pat Greenley, had encouraged us to visit there, as she and her husband, Don, had loved it so much, especially the sculptures in the downtown area. Our plans included visited the falls, the sculptures and maybe even getting together with a friend for some nosework practice.

We checked into a KOA Campground on the north side of town and ran into our first mechanical issue for the trip. After we unhooked the Jeep, we found out the battery was dead. When you are towing, there is a small draw on the battery for illuminating the break lights, mostly. We'd learned on our trip back to Arizona from Oregon last October, when Doug was driving for long hours each day in an effort to outrun some snowstorms in the mountains that towing for a long time without starting the car to recharge the battery could result in a dead battery. This time, however, the car had only been towed a couple of hours... it seemed likely that the car needed a new battery. (Don't ask Doug about the battery or the rather unorthodox dealer practices that surrounded its original purchase; it's a very sore subject!)

So other plans were put on hold and, once Doug found a good Samaritan at the campground office to jump the car, he headed off to buy a new battery and install it. That pushed grocery shopping and other errands to the next day, so we had less time to spend than we had wanted.

We did get to visit the falls, which is a wonderful area; on this Tuesday, it was chock full of families and other tourists like us, enjoying the unusual terrain, the historic exhibits and the big open park. And we did visit downtown, although we couldn't find a sculpture map and were unable to find some of Pat and Don's favorite sculptures.

This is only our fourth mechanical issue ever, so we've been very fortunate and it's not like it was anything drastic. But the traffic noise in the KOA was very loud (foreshadowing, unfortunately!) and, over all, I felt like this wasn't a particularly successful stop.