Oglala land

We are at the Walmart in Chadron, Nebraska (map).  We are now on US-20, which will take us all the way to Casper, Wyoming, although for part of the distance it will be colinear with I-25.  Yesterday's drive was uneventful, covering mostly prairie ranchland, in contrast to the farmland east of the river.  We also traversed two Native American reservations.

It was good to top off the batteries and dump and fill the tanks while at the state park.  It was nice enough there that we would have stayed a few days, had we not been on a tight schedule.  As it was, I did not even get a chance to knock out any projects, or even fully catch up on email.

One of those projects I finally tackled once we landed here, given that we "gained" an hour when we crossed into Mountain Time.  That would be the fourth attempt to fix the fresh water pump, which so far appears successful   After having swapped and/or reconditioned every rubber diaphragm in the pump, last night I finally swapped the pump head housing itself.  I'm not sure if the leak was in the hard-to-access pressure chamber, or perhaps the little silicone seals around the case bolts were starting to wear out, but in any case changing the housing has made a huge improvement.  I've set aside all the reconditioned parts for the next time either of the fresh water pumps starts acting up.

We made a slight miscalculation in the sense that we did not start anything in the crock pot before we left the state park, and we were out of leftovers.  So when we arrived here to find no good eats within walking distance, we instead picked up a cooked chicken in the store.  I'm not entirely certain how Walmart makes any money on these -- perhaps it is a loss-leader item.  But they are convenient and delicious, and we have leftovers even from the smaller-sized one.

In a few minutes we will continue west to Casper, where we will probably fuel.  We'll spend tonight either in Casper or somewhere a bit further south along WY-220.