4th-7th June: Days 57-60
This stop was really just to sort out the water heater and we had no great expectations for the campground or the town. We pulled into the camp at lunchtime and it was beautiful. Clean, large sites, lots of trees and quiet. As a completely unexpected bonus it also had a lovely swimming pool and as the temperature was in the 90s again we were into that like excited otters. I left Bob, the mechanic, a message to let him know we had arrived and asked him to call with an approximate time for the morning. When we hadn’t heard from him by 9am I called again and he answered from his hospital bed, to which he had been transported by ambulance the day before…Bad luck for both of us. With the help of our very helpful campground owner we spent the rest of the morning trying to secure the services of another mobile RV mechanic. Happily we found one that could come the evening of the next day.
We made the most of the pool whilst the weather was still hot and were generally lazy until the evening when we took an Uber into town for a drink and dinner. Downtown Bismarck, named after the 19th century German chancellor, has some great old buildings and an active railway line running right through the middle of it. We found a brewpub and sat outside watching the world go by. The evening had that lovely comfortable heat that you only get after a stinking hot day. We then walked a slow mile up to a recommended restaurant. It was in a small strip mall and looked mediocre from outside, but was very good.
Interesting that very little ‘walking as a form of transport’ happens here. We are told all the time ‘Oh no, it’s too far to walk’, or ‘you’ll need the car/a taxi/an Uber to get to there’. The same people are probably lacing up their hiking boots at the weekends, or dressing in lycra and going for power walks with their girlfriends in their lunch breaks. There are obviously lots of non-walkers too. The car is king and fuel is cheap.
The next day was cooler and we explored the town’s network of cycle paths. There was a very pretty river trail with lots of historical info signs along the way. Bismarck is on the Missouri River and was an important port for the Lewis and Clark expedition as they headed up the river on their travels. By the time we got home we had done about 17 miles and were a little saddle sore.
The mechanic arrived at about 7pm, and eventually found the fault: a fried relay that he didn’t have a replacement for. He did a McGyver fix, and recommended we find a place further on our travels that could get the part and fit it. Not a perfect solution, but it would have to do. Unfortunately the heater now seemed to heat fine, but in retrospect has no thermostat or functioning off switch. This meant that 1 hour later we had near boiling water spewing from the pressure release valve on the outside of the camper, and we couldn’t make it stop without turning it off at the fuse.
Some things are never simple. Our next civilisation is Daluth in about 2 weeks. We will need another mobile mechanic.
Next stop somewhere north of here.