I guess I was sicker than I remembered at the end of the trip, because I forgot to post! I was getting together to put a new one up, and I realized I never finished the trip posts. Oops! Here you go, weeks late. And the photo quality isn’t very good. My camera finally gave up completely, so they are all from my iPhone. The zoomed in quality is particularly bad!
We left Prince George after breakfast on Tuesday, 7 September. We decided we wanted to head home the fastest way possible, so we took the TransCanada Highway to just north of Jasper. We had intended on staying at the Icefields, but with the fires we decided on the Hinton KOA instead, the same place we stayed on the outgoing trip. The campground sites are lovely, but make sure you drive very, very slowly coming in. The campground roads are awful! Huge potholes are too numerous to dodge, so just go slowly. We had some caravan friends staying at the same place, and we all sat around our propane fire pit and relaxed after the rigors of the trip.
The next day we drove down through Jasper and Banff National Parks. The town of Jasper was closed completely as were all the campgrounds, and it was obvious why. Here are a bunch of pictures of the fire and it’s residual smoke.
When we got to Banff we saw mountain goats at the same place we saw them on the outgoing trip. There actually are 5 in this picture, but the baby is tough to spot.
Banff is just outside Calgary, so the road quickly becomes a major one, but the smoke still lingered.
Being a populous area with lots of wildlife, we saw a number of these wildlife crossings.
We spent Kevin’s birthday at Cranbrook KOA. Nice enough place. Not a great place for a 70th birthday though! We were both feeling pretty miserable, so we just had eggs and bacon, using them up before the border. No nice dinner for his birthday!
On 9 September we crossed the border with hardly any wait. Quite different when it is a weekday morning than the middle of a Saturday! We spent the night at one of the prettiest campgrounds we have ever been in – Jim and Mary’s RV Park outside Missoula, MT. The place is a gardener’s paradise with flowers everywhere. We always try to stay here when we are in the area. Since we were both feeling so blah, we would have like to stay 2 nights, but they didn’t have any availability, so we headed to Big Timber KOA west of Bozeman, MT. Nice enough place, but I don’t remember any details. Remember I noted the fuzzy head?
On 10 September we came to the Buffalo, WY KOA, and we finally got to rest a bit. We reserved a fancy patio site next to the river in their newer area. We stayed two nights. Much of the time I just relaxed on the patio, soaking up the sun and mild temps. We both needed a rest. After two nights, we were beginning to feel human again! It helps that the Buffalo and Sheridan areas of the Bighorns are some of our favorite places, though we usually stay up in the mountains or at the lake between the two towns. We wanted relaxing pampering though, so we chose the KOA. I don’t usually spring for patio sites, but this one was well worth it for recharging.
Feeling almost human, we continued east to Belevedere, SD KOA, west of the Badlands. We would normally have spent a couple of days boondocking in the Badlands area or at the park campground, but we were on a mission to get home! And yes, you are seeing a theme of KOAs. We find them standardized enough and close to the highway that we particularly like them on traveling days. After Belevedere, we spent the last night on the road at the Sioux Falls, SD KOA.
We are now almost home, and we booked it out of there on Thursday, 15 September. However a minor disaster struck not far out of Sioux Falls. We used the Blue Beacon Truck Wash there, and discovered the rock guard at the back of the MH had come unattached and we were leaking fluid of some type. We called our local shop in Decorah, IA and they said bring it in though it would get looked at for a few days. I drove the MH there while Kevin drove behind in the Jeep making sure nothing disastrous happened. He did enough debug to discover it was a small oil leak from near the oil filter. We just stopped at every rest area and checked the oil on the way. It was a slow way to travel! When we got to Decorah, we unloaded only the bare necessities (cats, meds, night clothes) and headed home. The cats were thrilled to have all the space, and they spent a lot of times doing zoomies and looking out the windows. The next day we drove back to Decorah and picked up clothes and a few more necessities. The forecast was for sunny weather, so we just left the refrigerator running knowing the batteries and solar would keep it happy. It took a week to get the diagnosis and a part (oil filter loose and a turbo hose leaking, so needed a new one of those), but we finally got the rig to Cedar Falls a week later on Thursday, 23 September.
We parked the rig at a nice local campground, Big Woods County Park. It is only 7 miles from the house and has roomy FHU sites. It makes a handy place to stash the rig while we unpacked and clean up. I admit we weren’t very quick at the cleaning business. We got the important things like like haircuts, grocery runs, and laundry though. We finally got the MH winterized. Kevin also emptied out every storage bay and repacked! I bet we are hundreds of pounds lighter LOL! It is amazing how unneeded junk hides in the back of the bays.
I will summarize our views of caravans in general and the specifics of this caravan in the next post. This one is long enough!
