Home sweet home

We are at Lake Herman State Park, immediately west of our new "home town" of Madison, South Dakota (map). It's a lovely park, and virtually empty right now. Our 30-amp site was $18 per night, and we also bought a $28 annual South Dakota parks pass to cover our two days of park admission, which is not included in camping fees. The front office struggled to get both of our names on the receipt, which we'll need for the DMV.

While we were checking in, reader Glenn came by the office to say hello; he and his wife are just a few camp sites down from us, and are here for their quinquennial driver license renewal. Lots of full-timers use this same mail service here in town, "My Dakota Address," including many of our readers and friends. We will be stopping by the office this afternoon to pick up our mail and meet proprietor Teri Lund, with whom we've already had occasion to speak on the phone this morning, regarding some vehicle registration issues.

When we started to gather our documents we discovered we had neither proof of prior sales tax paid for any of our vehicles, nor documentation of Odyssey's weight. Ironically, the scooter titles list their weights, which are not important. South Dakota assesses RV registration fees by weight, so we will need to come up with something to make them happy. Teri assured us that we would not need proof of tax payment since we've had all three vehicles for more than a year, but we might need to get an official weigh ticket on the coach.

In the meantime I combed through my back documents and found an old brochure for the American version of the Spaceliner, which does not list the unladen weight, but gives a GVWR of 48,500 pounds. That's pretty close to what we weigh fully loaded, and perhaps the DMV will just accept it. The manufacturer's rating plate was long gone by the time we got the bus. Getting a weigh ticket unladen now would be difficult, especially since we just took on 1,200 pounds of diesel fuel a few miles west of here when we spotted it for $3.579 per gallon, the lowest in the state.

We learned that the DMV here is not open on Monday, so we'll be heading in first thing tomorrow to start the process. If we need to submit further documentation later to finish the coach registration, Teri can handle it for us remotely. Our Washington bus registration is already paid up through next April, so we have some breathing room on Odyssey; the scooters should not be a problem, which is fortuitous, since Louise's registration just expired a few days ago.

We paid for two nights here, but we may add a third night if it looks like we'll be at the DMV longer than a couple of hours. We have an appointment Wednesday morning in Sioux Falls with an attorney, to start moving our estate plan documents over to South Dakota. We spent the morning updating our wills, and now we're scrambling to find health insurance.