Hello followers! It has certainly been a while since we posted anything meaningful or interesting to our fledgling blog. "Where are they and what are they up to?" one might wonder. Well, to answer your question, we are still stranded in Rapid City, just as our title might suggest. Our misadventure can be summed up in 2 quick thoughts: there's really nothing to do in Rapid City and don't buy a Hyundai.
Our story begins about four days ago. We had reached the Black Hills of South Dakota in high spirits. Our tour of the Badlands was awesome and we had finally found a proper supply of firewood for the night. Upon reaching the town of Keystone, however, our fortune immediately changed. We were navigating through a very narrow, winding mountain road in the dark, bear-infested woods of Black Hills National Forest in route to Custer State Park. Suddenly, our car began making a screeching and clanking noise during each turn. Steering along the twisting road became increasingly difficult. Katherine wisely suggested we turn back to Keystone and attempt to find a room for the night.
Keystone proved to be nearly at capacity; we found the only hotel with a vacancy was the elusive Econo-Lodge. Even with the aid of our smart-phones and a call to the Econo-Lodge corporate office, it took about a half-hour to locate the establishment, which was only a mile away from where we were stopped. We spent the rest of the night informing our parents of the situation, gathering information about local repair shops, and formulating a plan to fix our disabled vehicle.
The following day was Sunday, meaning most of the repair shops in the area were closed. We quickly discovered that the garages capable of repairing our car were located in nearby Rapid City (Actually, RC is about 20 miles from Keystone, but in South Dakota, 20 miles is a negligible distance!) Of course, none of the garages that were open could repair our car that day because they didn't have the required parts. Even more frustrating was the news that the parts would not arrive for 2 to 3 days. We felt that our best course of action would be to tow our car to the only Hyundai dealership in town (which was closed on Sunday) with the assumption that they would hopefully have the parts readily available and be able to get us back on the road the quickest. Utilizing AAA and Hotels.com, we towed our car to the dealer and walked 2 miles to our new hotel, the Grand Gateway Inn. There, we relaxed with football, beer, a hot tub, a 130ft water slide, and a $5 all-you-can-eat buffet of hot dogs, brats, chili, and nachos..
On Monday morning, we received disconcerting news. The Hyundai dealership informed us it would be $480 to replace our power steering pump. Also, they would have to order the parts, meaning the earliest they could repair the car would be Tuesday. The dealer insisted we would need additional work on various other parts of the car as well, quoting us an additional $200-250 dollars of work. Astonished and suspicious, we sought advice from our respective parents and estimates from other shops in town. Thankfully, Sears Auto quoted us $250 and told us they too would have it ready by Tuesday. We promptly told Hyundai to shove it and towed our car to Sears, where we ran into more complications. After all of this effort, we were told that now all the parts we needed would probably not arrive on Tuesday and there would be additional costs than first quoted, albeit cheaper still than Hyundai.
So now here we are on Tuesday evening. Sears was correct in predicting that our parts would probably not arrive today. We are crossing our fingers that everything will work out tomorrow so we can get the hell out of here!
Stay tuned! We're posting how to access our pictures shortly!!!
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