Wrestling With License Plates

We're pretty proud of our "R SANITY" license plate.  We've had that plate on all of our last three motorhomes and have received many a great comment about it.  It was a no brainer to get the custom plate when we lived in Virginia, going online we chose not only the plate, but we even had a choice of backgrounds, so we picked the Shenandoah Mountains, close by to where we lived.  Ten dollars with our credit card, the order was placed and in two weeks we had our custom license plate. :c)

During our crazy working years, hopping in the motorhome and sneaking away for the weekend gave us the respite we needed, we felt our "batteries" were recharged and we were ready to face another week.  Marti was the one that came up with the idea for the plate and we even named our blog for it.  If you look closely at our header picture you can see the plate on the Journey.

Enter South Dakota.  After selling our house and "moving" to Sioux Falls, we went to the DMV in person and asked about gettting the same plate in South Dakota colors.

 

We were informed in no uncertain terms that because we didn't actually "live" in South Dakota and had just a personal mail box, we were not authorized to have a custom plate.  Huh?  Isn't my money that I'm paying to register my motorhome just as green as a South Dakota resident that lives in a stix-n-brix?

 

I asked for a supervisor, who told me in no uncertain terms the same thing.  We are second class citizens because we live in a mailbox.

 

I figured that was the end of it.  But out of curiosity, I asked a question about it on the RV Dreams forum and received a reply from Cherie, aka Technomadia.  She has a custom South Dakota license plate on her bus conversion.  She told me how she got the plate.

 

I followed Cherie's instructions, found the South Dakota DMV website, download and filled in the form, then sent it in with my $30 check.  O boy! 

 

In my next mail delivery, I received my check and form back from the South Dakota DMV with a note saying I had to go through my county (Minnehaha) where I had originally registered the Journey.  I guess Cherie must have registered her bus conversion in a friendlier county than mine.

 

Great.  Back to dealing with the same DMV that told me in no uncertain terms we were not authorized to have a custom license plate.

 

Then, in one of my rare moments of brilliance, I remembered that our remailing service, Alternative Resources can register your vehicles for you by mail.  A quick phone call to their DMV guru, Karen, put me on the right track.

 

She said in no uncertain terms that I can get a personalized South Dakota license plate even though I reside in a mailbox.  She really knew her stuff.  She was even ready and willing to give the Minnehaha DMV office a heads up call to help me out.  Great!

 

Just one small catch.  Minnehaha County DMV requires you to turn in your current license plate first, then they will issue you a temporary plate while you wait the four to six weeks it takes to have the custom plate made.  With our twice a month mail service it would mean we'd certainly  have to remain in one place for over a month, or longer to first wait for delivery of the temp plate and then the real one.  One final tidbit, I'd have to enclose a money order because the DMV won't take a personal check.

 

We'd probably be better served to plan to go to South Dakota in person again and stay there for four to six weeks.  That's not going to happen any time soon.  For some reason, I can't see us sitting anywhere for that long...

 

So maybe someday we'll get that R SANITY plate from South Dakota.  Except we may change our minds, with all the grief and hoops we'll have to jump through, we might be better served changing our custom plate to:

 

"N SANITY"

 

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