Tag: Camping

Grand Teton National Park

We left Baker’s Hole on Sunday the 8th. We have been camped at Gros Ventre campground in Grand Teton National Park since then. We intend on staying until Friday. It might snow then, so that means it is time to leave! We have been enjoying it here. We took the bikes into Jackson and peddled to the Fish Hatchery, a round trip of only 7 miles or so. We also did such exciting things as laundry and grocery shopping. There is a new laundromat in Jackson that we tried. It is all front loaders (four different sizes!), very clean, and lots of big dryers. The only disadvantage is that it is expensive for the washers, but the clothes were really clean so I guess it was worth it. We have had dinner in town at Bubba’s BBQ which was pretty good. Of course, being as it is in Jackson it cost more than it would in any other place.

One of the treats we gave ourselves was an evening at the Bar J Chuckwagon. We had a blast. The food was good, but the show was tremendous! It was an hour and a half of comedy and music. It was soooo much better than the one we went to in South Dakota.

The stage at the Bar J.

I was also able to do some sewing. We have had trouble with inverters (changing 12v to 110v), but we actually found a Radio Shack with a nice selection. That let me connect my Bernina 440 to the electrical power in the trailer without using the generator, a big plus. However using the iron requires the generator, so I haven’t pressed the borders on this one. It is an appliqué kit from AQS called “Lunar.” I used a fusible backing then used a button hole stitch with invisible thread. I like it!

Ignore the unpressed borders. And it is straight – promise!
Close up of the appliqué stitching.

Today we went to Jenny Lake and took the scenic boat tour. As many times as we have been to GTNP, we have never taken the boat so it was a new experience. The smoke has disappeared mostly so I got some great pictures of the mountains.

The Jenny Lake boat.
The top of Grand Teton is covered in clouds but still gorgeous.

We are having scattered showers which has cooled things off. The solar is still keeping things charged nicely.

Yellowstone – fabulous and smoky

We are back on the road. We left Tuesday after waiting for the Labor Day crowds to go home. We arrived at Baker’s Hole campground around 4:00 and got the next to last spot here. It is a huge site next to the river with a good open exposure. We were really interested in how the solar set up would work, and it is wonderful! We have turned on the generator only long enough to run the expresso machine in the mornings. The solar has brought the battery up to full charge every day. We have run the fans all day, used the satellite television system extensively, and run the heater quite a bit at night and in the mornings. We have been more extravagant with power than we usually are, and it is still lovely.

For the last few years we have concentrated on seeing animals while in the park. This time we decided to concentrate on the thermal features. I always recommend first (or second) time visitors to Yellowstone really spend time at the variety of thermal features. The animals and scenery are spectacular, but there is nowhere else on earth with such an abundance of funeroles, hot springs, paint pots and geysers like YNP. My back is still bothering me, and Kevin’s knee is still a problem, but we did take some short loops to see some of the best spots.

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The basin from a distance on a cool morning
An itty bitty geyser on a ~5 minute cycle
Another geyser
Old Faithful from the walking trail
Another view of Old Faithful

The park is weirdly smoky, though the pollution is still better than at home.

A very smoky sunrise heading into the park
The smoke was intense. Trust me, there are mountains over there.

We were planning on heading to Mammoth Spring campground from here, but the road between Norris and Mammoth is closing for construction on Sunday. The detour is something I do NOT want to do with a trailer, so we decided to go to Gros Ventre in Grand Teton National Park again. Tomorrow we will ride the bikes into West Yellowstone and visit the museum and Visitor Center there. Oddly enough, I haven’t ever been to either of them.

The Great American Eclipse

On Friday, 18 August, we headed to Silver Creek campground in the Boise National Forest for the eclipse. The campground is 2 1/2 hours from Boise, 75 miles. Yes, the road is that slow! It is up the Middle Fork of the Payette River, the up a tributary. There is a hot spring there, but we didn’t go swimming because it was just too crowded. There is a small resort associated with the spring and the campground. They operate a cell booster that allowed limited Verizon voice calls and simple texts, but nothing else. The sites were roomy and well separated with some shade, and all for $7.50 a night with our senior discount. We made our reservations in mid February after being alerted to the spot by a member of the Wasatch Mountain Club. It was in the path of eclipse totality, and that is what we got on Monday! It was glorious. I had all these plans for pictures I was going to take, but I was so awed that I didn’t get hardly any of them! Kevin got a few, so here are a few.

Pretty impressive!

While we were in Idaho, we also went to a Winnebago dealer in Meridian to look at Class A motorhomes. We are thinking about buying one in 4-6 years, getting a condo, then being gone even more than we are now. We don’t want a new one since the depreciation is so extreme so we will be looking for a 3-5 year old one. That means the ones new now will be on the list when we are interested. We really like the Forza 36′ so it will go on the list to look at in a few years. We also took a trip up to McCall to see if it was a place to spend time on another trip. spoiler alert – it was!

Catch-up posts – Yellowstone, Bozeman, and The Book of Mormon 13-16 August

I am way behind on posting because I was waiting for pictures from Kevin’s camera. I finally got them, so I will work at catching up.

We decided to sell one of our cars to my son living in Bozeman. To get him and the car in the same location, we decided to drive up there while spending a couple of days in the Yellowstone area. Then we would go to Bozeman, pick him up, and head back home in time to attend The Book of Mormon musical. Since the trip was going to be short, we decided to take the itty bitty motorcycle camper. It is a pop up that is designed to tow behind a big motorcycle, but a Kevin modified the lights to work with a car. We left on Sunday morning early and got to Baker’s Hole campground not long after noon. Baker’s Hole is one of our favorite campgrounds. It is 3 miles north of West Yellowstone so it provides easy access to Yellowstone. It costs less than campgrounds in the park, and the sites are more attractive and roomy than the park campgrounds. You do have to take the 30 minute drive in through the West Entrance, but that is part of the experience. The campground even had decent Verizon data access.

Here is a picture of the little camper as Kevin is getting it ready.

It is called a Bunkhouse model.

We had a great animal viewing experience! We saw both a big bear and a wolf, a rare combination.

The bear walked right up to the road then walked away again.
The wolf was protecting a bison car case from other scavengers.

We spent Tuesday night at the Bozeman Hot Springs campground in town so we could get an early start. Fairly boring, but convenient. We made it back by 3:30 in time to unpack, take showers, and go to the musical which was wonderful! It was funny how certain comments in the show that might have gone straight over the heads of most audiences got roaring laughter in Salt Lake City with a Mormon-knowledgeable audience.

Bonus picture: Moose along the Gros Ventre River in Grand Teton from the last post.

Nebraska, I wronged you

I generally travel across Nebraska on I-80. With the exception of the hills along the Missouri River and the Sand Hills area, I have always found it pretty boring. This trip we are traveling across Hwy 20, and until the middle of the afternoon today, my beliefs seemed justified. This we came into the area around Ft. Robinson State Park, and it is gorgeous. Badlands, rolling hills with pine trees, incredible broad meadows with bison and longhorns grazing, pronghorn, and deer. Wow!

Looking along the Smiley Canyon Scenic Drive
Longhorns!
Bluffs with the sunset gold on them
Even more sunset
Did I say something about sunset?
The bluffs yet again

They have a lovely campground. An electric site was $20, but there was an additional daily Parks Pass fee of $8 for an out of state resident. The fort itself is wonderfully preserved. There are many original buildings and a number of reconstructed ones. The old officers quarters have been converted into rental units. They are full many weekends, but not during the week. We road our bikes all over the main part of the fort. Of course we also included the University of Nebraska museum with a lot of fossils. I hadn’t realized just how close this place is to the southern Black Hills. I definitely am going to plan a longer trip that will include the wonderful southern Black Hills plus this area. There are a number of National Monuments and Historic sites.

I wish I could post an audio recording of the campsite as I sit outside on a warm summer evening. Lots of birds (including a mourning dove) plus a small babbling brook at the edge of our site. Quite nice!

Into Nebraska

We left Iowa this morning. Yesterday’s baptism went really well. Darling Clay slept through much of the service, but he woke up when the pastor poured the water over his head! Isn’t he adorable?

Dad, GS, Mom, and the two pastors.

You can see the long skirt that buttons onto a romper. There are actually three sets of pintucks, each 7 rows.

The romper part of the baptism outfit.

The romper has 13 sets of pintucks down the front.

Regarding Iowa, I said I would post some wildflower pictures.

To give some help with scale, the yellow rockets are higher than my waist.

These pictures were taken on the bike path at Pinicon Ridge County Park, but Squaw Creek (where we camped) was the same.

We decided to head toward Gros Ventre campground in Grand Teton National Park. We also decided to not head out on I-80 but instead take Hwy 20. I must admit it is not the scenic path, but at least it has the advantage of newness. We are now camped at Carney City Park in O’Neill, NE. What a lovely little place!

Shade, concrete pad, electricity, and water.

There are quite a few sites available. It is on a voluntary donation system, so we left 10 dollars. We won’t use any facilities except the electricity so it seemed fair.

In Iowa

We made it into Iowa. We are spending the night at a city park in Casey, IA, about 50 miles west of Des Moines and only a couple of miles off I-80. It is a classic small town city park with playgrounds and a covered pavilion. It also has a few electric RV sites in a grassy loop, most with lovely old shade trees. The sites are very unlevel, but the price is definitely right at only $10! We stayed here before, but I can’t remember when. Looking it up in my old paper trip journal is too painful, one of the reasons I prefer the current electronic version.

The animals have been interesting on this trip. Minou, our older black cat, is calm and collected. Nothing much bothers her. We put her in the truck, she comes for some petting, and then she goes to sleep in one of the cat towers in the back seat. Lily, the calico cat is definitely an Anxious Annie. She gets all wound up and starts crying when anything changes. Slow down? Rough road? Lots of curves? Out she comes screaming! She also wanders all over the truck. Eventually she will go to sleep under the passenger seat or I  one of the cat towers (but not the one Minou is in). Lexi, the dog, is very mellow. She is older too (12) and she just goes with the flow. She mostly just sleeps on the back seat, but occasionally something will be interesting enough to make her sit up.

Inside the trailer we have an adjustable pet gate with a tiny door for the cats to move through. It lets the cats have their food available without Lexi getting into it. We take it down when we travel.

Other than the hassle with the pet gate, traveling with Lexi added to the menagerie isn’t too bad. She sure does leave a lot of hair clumps though. When we get to our campsite in Marion we are going to have to sweep and vacuum, something I normally don’t get too worried about. The trailer is really a mess though with clumps of black dog hair all over the small amount of carpeting we have. The rest of the dog hair is in the corners of the vinyl flooring!

We have also been listening  to audiobooks on this trip. So far we have done two by Faye Kellermann. This last one had a back story about diamond merchants so I think I will pull out my Dick Francis audiobook that is also about gem sellers for our next book.

On the road again (again)

It has been a while since I posted. After the last post I finished my grandson’s baptism gown, but I am not posting pictures until the baptism takes place. I will say there are lots and lots of pintucks!

On a food-related note, I made a small lasagna with the pre-cooked noodles in a 6″ pan. It came out quite ok, and I am going to try it again. A big pan of lasagna is just too much for two people. I also tried to make brownie so in my Instant Pot, just to see if I could. It was an epic fail – brownies too thick, too much liquid after cooking, and took too long. It was a silly thing to do, and I will go back to using an oven for baked goods.

As for travel, we left on Tuesday, 4 July, to a campsite at Steamboat Lake State Park. How lovely! No electricity, and it was hot. We took it for the first couple of days, but yesterday we gave in, turned both generators on, and had air conditioning. Ahhh, cool! Mornings were really lovely, but it was just too hot to make it comfortable between 2:00 and 7:30 – 8:00. We did use the new clam screen room, and it was great. There weren’t any mosquitos I could discover, but there were a number of bothersome little gnats. The screen room kept us comfortable. Pretty nice view, isn’t it? Lots of wild flowers.

View from our campsite at Steamboat Lake State Park
Trailer and screen room
Steamboat Lake
Everything was a little smoky due to wildfires nearby

We left this morning to head to Iowa. Tonight we are in the Holiday RV Park in North Platte, NE. We have stayed here a number of times before. Lots of mature shade trees, a little bit of grass between sites, plus full hookups. I will take a luxurious shower tomorrow! The park, generally just an overnight place, is almost completely full. I am guessing it has a lot of travelers going home after the holiday week.

Oh, and Lexi came with us this trip! She is my son’s dog now, but she originally was the family dog. She is doing great, tough it is amazing how much floor space she takes up.

Pictures from the Black Hills trip

Our travel trailer and the view at Lucerne.
View off our campsite at Lucerne campground in Flaming Gorge near Manila, UT
We had a number of unfazed pronghorn that kept wandering through the campground to the lake.
Oh, and there was a family of ospreys at the edge of the campground. We never saw the babies, but the adults flew back and forth with food.

I tried to insert a sound file from Boulder Creek, but I can’t figure it out. Sorry!

Devil’s Tower from the KOA campground
Cabin near Spearfish views
Bunkhouse near Spearfish
A mandatory view of Mount Rushmore from the highway (with the truck antenna right through Jefferson’s face)
Another view of the Needles Highway
Even in the rain I think this shows why the hills were called “Black”
One of the wonderful tunnels on the Needles Highway, in the rain from inside the car.
Pactola Lake in the Black Hills has some amazing rocks around and in it.

Family trip to Black Hills

I am way behind on documenting this trip, and I know I will forget some things. I had no cell service for much of it, and I didn’t even take very many pictures that I can post.

We left home on Wednesday, 7 June, for a big family get together in South Fakota. The first night we stayed at Flaming Gorge in a lovely campground named Lucerne near Manila, UT. Kevin made a reservation at the last minute to guarantee a lake front site with electricity. Cost was around $20 since the electricity was from a concessionaire. We had a lovely view of the lake and surrounding hills plus ok phone and data service. We just enjoyed the view from the recliners while under the trailer awning. It was a lovely start.

The next morning we headed to the Bighorn National Forest and found a spot at Boulder Park on the west side of the park. Absolutely no cell service, but a gorgeous mountain forest site. There were quite a few sites with long pads, but we had some trouble with narrow entry roads that weren’t wide enough to back in the site. Cost was a whopping $8 with our Senior Pass. We enjoyed the roaring creek providing all the white noise we could manage that night. On Friday morning I had a medical issue arise (lots of brand new “floaters” in my left eye) so we headed to Gillette on the east side of the NF to find an eye doctor. The very helpful Gillette Optometric Clinic worked me in on a busy Friday afternoon. I really appreciated the thoroughness of Dr. Fischer was did the examination. Turns out I had a vitreous detachment, fairly normal for someone of my age, but there is a 10% risk of a serious retinal issue in the next month so I need an ophthalmologist. He did say it was ok to continue with the vacation as long as I am aware of the symptoms and know where to find an emergency room with an ophthalmologist on call. This trip that is basically Rapid City! (I have already made an appointment for a follow up with the Moran Eye Center in SLC.) The only immediate issue is the huge bother of numerous dark floaters in my eye, one right dead center. Sigh. Supposedly they will get better in the next 3-6 months.

We stayed at the KOA next to Devil’s Tower Friday night. We didn’t even do any hiking, since I was emotionally exhausted and Kevin’s knee was really acting up. It was nice to have full hookups before going to a dry camping site (the family get together) for a week. Cost was somewhere around $35 or so for an older campground that definitely makes its money on tourists stopping for Devil’s Tower. One of the unusual thing they do is play the move “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” every evening. The movie centers around Devil’s Tower, and we saw a number of people heading that way. We have seen the move a number of times, so I didn’t feel the urge to see it this time.

Saturday was check in at the vacation rental we were staying at. Since the cabin was just outside of Spearfish and we spent the night only an hour away, we really dawdled leaving the KOA. We then decided to drive around some of the Black Hills since we couldn’t get to the rental until 4:00. We had a nice lunch at a cute diner in Hills City across from the school. I can’t remember the name because the sign out front just said “Diner”. We also looked at the railroad museum there. I wish I had thought to make reservations for the short train ride, but I totally forgot.

The vacation rental included one main cabin and a separate bunkhouse, each with two bedroom spaces. My oldest son’s family (including their three kids) took the bunkhouse, my daughter and her husband and baby took the upstairs bedroom in the main cabin, and my second son (single) took the second bed in the cabin. The cabins were in the woods, but there was a lovely meadow nearby where we parked the trailer. The new power converter Kevin installed a month or two back seemed to maintain the battery better than we expected. We were in a canyon without any cell service unless we had the cell booster turned on. With the booster we occasionally got two dots of LTE service on our Verizon phones. Just as often we would get one dot of 1X – voice but no data. We somehow burned out the transformer on our booster after the first day, but Kevin found one at a local store that worked just fine. One of the reasons I don’t have many pictures on this post is that I don’t like posting pictures of other people on a public site, and I did take lots of pictures of the family! We alternated spending a day primarily at the cabin with a day that had some sightseeing or exploring. It seemed to work out well for the little kids.

The last night at the cabin was Thursday, and everyone was gone by 10:00 on Friday morning. Kevin and I decided we wanted to stay in the Black Hills another day to do some sightseeing and relaxing. We ended up at the Rafter J, a really great private campground. It was also expensive at around $65. For that we got full hookups (including cable) and a pull through gravel site with lots of grass around it plus room to enjoy sitting outside. It rained quite a bit though, just like it had a lot of the week. We did get a chance to go through Spearfish Canyon and the Needles Highway though.

We had planned on staying in Rawlins, WY at the Walmart on Saturday night, but there wasn’t room in the parking lot! By 4:00 when we arrived there were already 3 vehicles with big trailers pulled in plus one pickup camper, and it has a small parking lot. We decided to go on to Rock Springs, and I am now in the Walmart lot there. It just kills me to pay $30-40 to just park for a night since we don’t need utilities, and I knew we would never find a public campground on a Saturday night in the summer. There is a lot of highway noise but no brakes or trains, so it should be ok when we close the trailer up to sleep. Continuous road noise acts likes white noise to me and doesn’t keep me awake. We should be home fairly early tomorrow since it is only four hours or so. Sometime on Sunday I will edit add a post with some pictures, but I wanted to write what I could now. Monday we will do laundry, go through the mail, and head to Bozeman on Tuesday to help my son move so we won’t be home long. I intend on being back Thursday night with a utility trailer full of his stuff while Kevin will stay until Friday. I am coming back early for the appointment with the ophthalmologist, and hoping for a good report.