Jeff’s Place

Before we went to bed last night, we decided that we would extend our vacation an extra day in order to spend more time in Yellowstone.  This morning we made a beeline right on over to the campground registration booth to see if we could stay another night at Grant Village.  We were in luck (a rare thing, lately), there were a few sites available.  When camping with an RV, it’s nice to have full hookups.  This means electric, water and sewer.  We can, however, survive quite nicely without any of the above.  The motorhome has two large batteries devoted just to the living quarters.  These will easily last a few days and they recharge off the vehical’s alternator while traveling.  In addition, there is a 4000 watt generator that powers the camper when away from shore power if 120 volt power is needed (air conditioner, microwave, etc).  I discovered that the more full featured campgrounds are also a bit spartan.  Grant Village, while lacking hookups, has larger sites with firepits and has a much more rustic feel.  I liked it.  We finally got a chance to break out the smores supplies that Heather, our neighbor, had given me as thanks for snowblowing her driveway.

After signing up for the extra night, we headed out for the day.  The majority of Yellowstone’s geothermal features lie along the western half of the park so this area was our destination.  The first stop was the Kepler Cascades.  This is a series of waterfalls that is quite amazing.  Next up was Old Faithful.  When I was a kid, Old Faithful erupted every hour.  Fast forward to today and it’s not quite as faithful as it used to be.  Eruptions occur approximately every 111 minutes.  During our visit ten years ago, the times averaged about 80 minutes, so things are slowing down.  It’s still an awesome site.  I wanted to make sure I got a bunch of pictures but I had to remind myself to actually WATCH the geyser and not just shoot it.

North of Old Faithful lie several geyser basins, springs, mud pots, rivers, and you name it.  On our shortened schedule, we would never have time to see everything but we did pretty good.  The Lower and Midway geyser basins contain enough to keep you busy for hours, if not days.  When we stepped out of the RV at the Lower Basin the steam from one of the hot springs was being whipped into a mini tornado.  It was perfect timing.  I was able to grab a handful of shots before the wind dispersed the funnel.  The prettiest feature in this area is the Grand Prismatic Spring.  Everyone’s seen pictures of the spring but the average visitor can’t get the view that these images were taken from.  The most impressive photos are taken from the air where you can see the spring in it’s entirety.  It’s still gorgeous from the ground, however. To give proper credit, the photo below on the right is not mine, but Greg’s! He can’t put the camera down (that’s my boy!).

Our last stop for the day was simply a short hop off of the main loop.  There were a ton of bison grazing and wading along the river.

We hopped in the camper and headed back to the campground.  We wanted to get back by dinner time to give the kids a chance to ride their bikes and just goof off a bit.  After about 10 minutes, Greg came running back and alerted us that Leslie had ridden her bike into a tree.  I sprinted up to where it happened and, at this point, learned two very important things:  I’m not a kid anymore and I can’t carry Leslie like I could when she was 6.  She came out of her battle with the tree with a bad skinned knee, a scratched up finger nail and numerous scratches and bruises.  Many tears were shed.

This marked our last night at Yellowstone, and while I’d love to have the two lost days back, I feel we did okay.

On a side note:  Parking was a nightmare around the Old Faithful grounds.  I finally managed to park when a tour bus pulled out.  As soon as we stopped, we all caught a wiff of something burning.  My alarm bells went off and I exited the camper to check things out.  I discovered that a VW Microbus had pulled in behind me and proceeded to burst into flames.  The owners were frantically trying to put out the flames but their extinguishers weren’t working.  They asked if I had one and I raced back into the camper.  I pulled it out of it’s bracket and handed it to Geri to give to the people.  I immediately started up the RV and pulled it up 20 or 30 feet.  There’s no way I’m going to let some die-hard hippies burn up my camper.  It was at this point that I discovered just how much it costs to be a good samaritan:  $22.  You see, after literally saving these people’s van, they thanked me, and that was all.  Not a one of them offered to reimburse me for the cost of my extinguisher.  For God’s sake!  If it was me, I would have treated them all to dinner.  I’d do it again, of course, but it would have been nice to not have the money come out of my pocket.

This day started out just perfect and went steadily downhill from there.

We ate breakfast and hit the road for a full day of sightseeing in Yellowstone.  Our campground (Fishing Bridge) is on the eastern side of the park midway up.  We were going to head to the west side and explore that region.

After stopping to see the Mud Volcano and the Upper Falls on the Yellowstone river we started the drive west across the park.  Ten minutes later the motorhome’s transmission shifted out of overdrive.  I think my exact words were:  “Uh oh!”  I manually shifted into drive and then that cut out as well.  This wasn’t looking good.  All I had left was 1st and 2nd gears as well as reverse.  I pulled over and tried to work the gear shift a bit in a pointless attempt to figure out the problem.  There was much profanity.  I turned us around and headed back to the Yellowstone garage 10 minutes away.  I ended up having only 2nd gear as 1st wasn’t working any more either.  I presented the mechanic at the garage with my problem and found out that they can’t handle transmission problems.  The closest place that could help me out was in Gardiner, Montana, which is just outside the Northwest park entrance.  The mechanic called ahead to the good folks at the Tire Iron in Gardiner and warned them that I was attempting to limp my way up there.  An hour and fifteen minutes later I rolled up on the Tire Iron and said hello to Chuck Ludwig, the owner.  Technically, the Tire Iron was closed but you’d never know it from how hard he was working.  Chuck said he’d be able to get me rolling again, but his best guess was that it would be late in the day on Tuesday.  Keep in mind, this was Saturday night.  This would pretty much destroy the whole Yellowstone National Park portion of our trip.

Chuck was a great guy and offered to set me up in front of his garage with electricity.  I was going to take him up on this but we noticed a nice RV park just up the hill from the garage and elected to stay there until the Tire Iron’s transmission tech arrived on Monday Morning.  It was assumed that I would need a new transmission but they would need to run some diagnostic tests to make sure.  The mind numbing price tag for a new tranny is approximately $3000.  So, not only did it look like we were loosing our entire stay in Yellowstone, it looked like it would pretty much drain our vacation fund.  The plan was to order up a transmission on Monday.  It would be shipped out of Billings, Montana to the Tire Iron’s supplier in Lawrence.  On Tuesday morning it would be brought the rest of the way by Mike, the transmission tech who happens to live in Lawrence.

The folks at Rocky Mountain Campground were just wonderful.  They didn’t have any sites available on Saturday so they set us up in front of their garage with 30 amp electrical service.  The next night they moved us into a full hookup site.  Pete, one of the owners, kept thinking positive thoughts for me in regards to my transmission.  Nothing to do now but wait for Monday to come.

Today is strictly a travel day.  We left Devils Tower and are on our way to Red Lodge, Montana.  We’ll stay here tonight and head off through the Beartooth Pass tomorrow.  The Beartooth ends up at Yellowstone National Park’s Northeast Entrance.  Today’s total mileage should be about 360.

We had a lot of stuff planned for today.  It was a minor miracle that we actually got it all done without rushing too much.

The first stop on our itinerary was The Mammoth Site.  This is a paleontological dig site in Hot Springs, South Dakota.  Back in the late 70’s a mammoth skeleton was discovered during a construction project here.  It turns out that the site was an ice age sink hole that had trapped hundreds of Mammoths and held them until they died.  The site was preserved and a building was constructed right over the top of  it.  This place is amazing.  Geri had to practically drag me out of here.  This is a real, live, active dig site.  There is enough material here to keep paleontologists busy for years, if not decades, to come.

Next up we headed north up to Wind Cave National Park. Wind cave is one of the most complex caves in the world.  As of today, the cave’s explored sections total 132 miles in length, which is contained in a one square mile area.  This is considered to be about 5 to 10 percent of the cave’s total length.   We missed stopping at Wind Cave during our last visit 10 years ago because of brake problems with our previous motorhome.  Instead we spent a day sitting in a garage in Rapid City.  This time we made it, however, and “WOW” is all I can say.  We took an 1:40 minute tour of the cave which was quite strenuous but well worth it.  Wind Cave doesn’t have the stalactites or stalagmites like most people are used to seeing.  Instead, it has what is called boxwork.  Boxwork is actually older than the cave itself.  It is composed of calcite that once filled the cracks in the rock.  The calcite was left after the rock was eroded over the eons.

After Wind Cave, we continued up to The Crazy Horse Memorial.   This memorial is the largest mountain carving in the world.  In fact, all of Mount Rushmore could fit in just the head area of Crazy Horse.  Chief Henry Standing Bear and sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski started carving the sculpture back in 1948 and progress has been slow.  The sculpture is a visual representation of Crazy Horses famous saying: “My lands are where my dead lie buried.”  This memorial is a fitting tribute to a truly heroic Native American.  The best estimates on when the sculpture will be completed are somewhere in the range of 40 years from now.  Maybe I’ll live to see it done.

Next up on the agenda:  Mount Rushmore National Memorial.  Everyone’s seen or heard of Mount Rushmore but nothing beats seeing it in person.  The following quote from the creator of Mount Rushmore sums it up best:

“The purpose of the memorial is to communicate the founding, expansion, preservation, and unification of the United States with colossal statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.” Gutzon Borglum

This was a lot to do in a single day but we managed to do it all without feeling too rushed.  The only thing left was to check in at our campground near Mount Rushmore.

Below are a few of the sights we saw along the day’s journey:

We’re off.   After months of planning and tons of upgrades and repairs to the motorhome, we’ve finally departed on a two week trip to Yellowstone National Park and everywhere inbetween.

We hit the road late (very late) Saturday night and before we were 15 minutes away from home I had some kids throw a rock onto the top of the RV from a railroad overpass.  I pulled over and called the police.  No apparent damage to the motorhome but it could have ended the trip if they had shattered the windshield.  It’s not like I can run down to NAPA and pick up a new one.  I only managed to drive about an hour before I had to pull over and sleep. I was exhausted.  You see, just before we left I filled the water tank and fired up the toilet.  As soon as I flushed the toilet I noticed a persistant water leak from the back of the thing.  It was 10:00pm already on Saturday night so there wasn’t much I could do about it.  There was much profanity.  I hit the road with the intention of stopping at an RV service station along the way for either a repair or replacement.  The problem was that this would be on a Sunday and nothing would be open.  In the back of my mind I assumed I’d have to wait until Monday to get the toilet fixed.  I had to keep a towel crammed up under the back of the thing to sop up all the water and we could barely use it without a puddle forming at your feet.

We awoke early Sunday and continued on our way.  Our first stop was in Austin, Minnesota at the Spam Museum.  Yep, you read that right, the Spam Museum.  How could we resist?  Spam is a cultural icon.  After learning everything we’ll ever need to know about Spam, we headed off for another long trek to Mitchell, South Dakota and the Corn Palace.  The corn palace is a theater that is completely decorated with corn and corn husks.  It’s something that everyone has to stop and see when traveling through the area.  From here, we headed over to the local Cabelas.  All we needed was a place to park for the night and Cabelas allows RV’ers to hole up for the night in their parking lot.  They even have an RV dump station.  We cooked up some bacon flavored Spam and made sandwiches out of it.  Not bad.  At almost 600 miles, day 1 of the trip is one of the farthest driving days that we’ll have.  This day was more about making miles than it was about sight-seeing.

Tomorrow we’ll have to get up early and head over to Jack’s Campers (a local RV Store) and pray to the RV Gods that they have the parts we need to make our motorhome whole again.