The cat decided to make our bed a racetrack at 6 this morning. For some reason I couldn't go back to sleep. So I surfed for awhile and then got up. It was a little more surfing after breakfast and pet stuff.
It was a little over 100 miles to Devil's Tower. About 3/4 of it is on I90. I did 75 all the way on I90 and 65 on the other road. There was also a steady uphill on I90 and a lot of up and down once we got off. We got 17.9 mpg for the round trip. I think that is pretty good.
The tower is really impressive. There was a small, but nice, visitor's center. After going through that we took a 1.3 mile trail around the tower. Of course Lucy had to stay in the truck because the government hate dogs.
There were a whole lot of very good places to take pictures, and I took a lot. The lighting was good on the far side. I got a lot of pictures of people climbing the tower. They're nuts. With all the picture taking it took quite awhile to do the trail. It was sunny and warm. I was worried about Lucy by the time we were done. She was a pretty hot dog when we got back.
There are two tourist places just outside the park entrance. We went through both, but didn't buy much. We did get ice cream and Sioux City Sarsaparilla. We'd seen a place on the way in that advertised Elk burgers. It was after 2, so we stopped. I had one. It was good. It's been many years since I had wild game meat.
The trip back was uneventful except for an accident just out of town. There was a crashed motorcycle in the median with an ambulance picking up the rider. About a quarter mile down the road there was a pickup facing the wrong way with an overturned flatbed trailer in front of it. The trailer had had a load of lumber. We're not sure what happened. Fortunately it didn't delay us much.
When we got home the deadbolt lock on the trailer had gone tits up. I couldn't get it unlocked. I'd left the bedroom window open in case this happened, but Ellen had locked it before we left. SHIT.
I went to the RV place we'd gone to the other day. Fortunately they had a replacement door handle assembly. I knew the old one was unfixable. I also knew I'd have to destroy it to get in. Having the new one gave me a strategy on how to get the old one open.
I tried jamming the lock by hammering a screwdriver into it. No joy. So I got out the drill and started drilling the lock mechanism out. Fortunately it was made of soft aluminum. I worked on it for awhile and finally drilled out enough that I could get to the actuating mechanism at the end of the lock. I jammed a screwdriver into the actuator and managed to turn it enough to unlock the door.
After that the hardest thing was vacuuming all of the metal shavings off the step carpet. Putting the new one in was pretty easy. The new latch is a slightly different design and work s better than the old one.
After feeding the pets we left for Menards to get a copy of the new door key made. Unfortunately their automated key maker couldn't do it. So we went to a restaurant that was on the way to Lowe's. It was good yuppie bar food and had Guinness. I had two.
Lowes had two key machines, but neither could make the key. I'll ask the RV place if they have blanks tomorrow. If not, we'll go to a lock smith.
We got home about 8. The rest of the evening was surfing and chick flicks. We each had one of the donuts that we'd bought in the morning.
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