Some places just aren't a good fit for RVs and motorhomes.
The Needles Highway in South Dakota’s Custer State Park, near Mount Rushmore, is one of them.
Denise Yelton and Todd Beaver discovered that during an excursion in Custer recently when a motorhome intended to thread the Needles Eye Tunnel found itself fraying halfway through.
Yelton and Beaver, who have been “full-time RVers” since April, decided to take an early-morning drive on the Needles Highway on Friday. They departed in their Jeep Gladiator, leaving their 38-foot Holiday Rambler Nautica parked at the campground.
“We left early because we knew the highway would get really crowded with Sturgis,” Yelton told Cowboy State Daily. “When we got to the tunnel, we pulled over because I wanted to record a video of my husband coming through the tunnel.”
When they pulled off the road, the Freedom Elite motorhome behind them kept going. That’s when disaster struck.
“I was sitting there waiting to see if he was going to make it through, and he got stuck,” Denise said. “I recorded it, obviously.”
Aw, The Awning
Drivers pass through three tunnels on the Needles Highway. The Needles Eye is the tightest at 8 feet, 4 inches wide and 9 feet, 8 inches tall.
Many people have attempted to get their RVs, motorhomes, and travel trailers through these tunnels, and many have failed.
Yelton had seen videos of similar incidents and wasn’t keen to emulate them.
Yelton thought the Freedom Elite might have had a chance. Unfortunately for the couple pulling it, they were over-accessorized.
“The awning started scraping against the side of the tunnel,” she said. “When he realized that he wasn't going to make it, he started backing up, and that's when it was making all the noise.”
When the RV backed up far enough, the awning arm fully extended until it fell off. The driver backed out of the tunnel and parked in the pull-off to assess the damage with his wife.
Yelton and Beaver hopped in their Jeep and continued onward. Yelton assumed they conceded they couldn’t thread the Needles Eye and went back the way they came.
“I think he just thought he could get through, and maybe if it wasn't for the awnings, he possibly could have,” she said.
'Don’t Be This Guy'
Before Yelton posted the video of the RV incident on her Better Get to Livin’ Facebook page, it had 347 followers. Three days later, it has more than 9,000 followers.
“It has blown my mind,” she said. “I’m not out there trying to get followers and stuff, but it's really blown my mind.”
When Beaver retired from the Charlotte Fire Department last year, the couple left Gastonia, North Carolina, in April and haven’t stopped since.
“We’re sharing our adventures and life on the road, one mile at a time,” Yelton said.
Yelton noticed that the Freedom Elite that attempted to scrape through the tunnel also had a North Carolina license plate. However, she figured that wasn’t a good time to chitchat.
“I didn’t speak to them at all,” she said. “We just went on.”
She did point out the numerous signs along the road warning drivers of the width and height of the upcoming tunnel. It seems the driver either underestimated the Freedom Elite’s width or overestimated his ability to get through the tunnel.
“He had to make it through the previous tunnel to get where he was, and that one was wider,” she said.
There’s An App For That
How can RV and motorhome drivers avoid these incidents? There’s an app for that.
As she was researching full-time RV life, Yelton learned the secret to safe travels is the RV Life app.
“We put our destination in the app, and it’ll tell us what we want to avoid,” she said. “That’s what you have to do as an RVer, and we knew that because we follow a lot of them.”
That’s why their 38-foot Holiday Rambler Nautica RV stayed where it was. That’s for living and traveling the open road, not exploring routes like the Needles Highway.
“We never would have intentions of taking our camper on a mountain road,” she said. “We've researched enough about the areas that we're headed to so we know what to do when we get there.”
Yelton and Beaver have been savoring South Dakota for several days. The next leg of their trip will take them on Interstate 90 to Buffalo, then over the Bighorns to Cody on their way to Yellowstone National Park.
Thanks to RV Life, they know where they can and can’t go with their RV, lest they end up facing scrutiny on social media.
“We’ve seen a lot of videos, so we knew our RV would never make it through those tunnels,” Yelton said. “That was my first time seeing something like that.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
