The Weather Outside is Frightful

Because of the impending rain we hitched up the trailer to the truck today. Gassed up the truck, filled the freezer, bought fresh groceries and loaded them up. Played with batteries and flashlights - I found my flashlight on a head band. Only looked for it in the same drawer three times! I have wanted to leave early all week but had to do some online banking today and the last load of laundry etc blah blah blah, but the main reason I couldn't leave was that I have a hair appointment tomorrow! The Ace's sister gave us a good bye party this afternoon. She is ecstatic as she gets the house for two whole months to herself!
I am seriously wondering about what my handy and always reliable GPS is up to. I recently loaded it with updates but I know it can't hold enough data for completely updating the whole country. It is only a Garmin Nuvi 200 and either needs an extra data card or needs to be replaced. I programmed in our first two stops but when I tried to program in the Gateway Arch in St Louis and our timeshare in Branson, it didn't recognize my input locations. UMMMMMMM makes me wonder, if I won't be buying a new one or using maps the whole way.
Until I can figure out how to put a picture directly on the blog it will end up separately on Facebook.

Backing up is SO WRONG

There is a bit of work to checking out all of the systems for the trailer. There is a 12 volt battery and propane so that we can do what is called dry camp. We run the electricity off the 12 volt, heat water,  cook and heat with propane. When dry camping there isn't enough power to use the A/C, microwave or electric percolator. We have a 30 gallon water tank and grey and black water storage systems so if we conserve, we can use the bathroom, shower and kitchen sink.  If a camp ground has facilities we hook up to a 30 amp circuit and to city water and sewage. Then we can use the A/C, microwave, percolator and hair dryer. From my experience of using the RoadTrek RV that I used to have, it is best to use the provided facilities when dry camping whenever possible and not fill up the tanks. At some point you have to get water, find a sewage dump and buy more propane. But the truck engine charges the trailer 12 volt so as long as we keep that charged we will be OK.
I got a 4g iPhone to use on the trip but there are a lot of remote areas and mountainous areas where there is no 4g coverage. Then we will have to look for free wifi or wifi at campgrounds.
There is a TV on board with an antenna but we aren't counting on that working very well. Some campsites have cable so we have that capability. Hopefully watching TV will be the last thing from our minds. Don't tell me who wins Dancing with the Stars!
To help with the budget we plan to park overnight at some Walmarts. Walmart publishes a list of their stores that do not allow parking but we have to ask each manager permission and park where they tell us. Yesterday we were playing with our leveling blocks in case the ground or campsite is not level. Should be interesting to back the trailer up onto leveling blocks.
I took the truck with trailer attached ( a combined total of 46 ft) for a spin around town. I only rubbed the back trailer tires twice on the curb!!!!!! We had to add extra mirrors to the existing ones in order to see around the 8 ft width of the trailer.  Backing up is so WRONG! It is so counter intuitive! You have to send the rear of the truck the opposite direction than you think! We have walkie talkies so that we can guide each other without shouting to the whole world that we are backing up. People tend to come out of the woodwork to watch people back up their rigs. And then they snicker, snicker, snicker. For some reason campsites love to make the trailer sites so that you have to back into them!
So from what I have read we are obliged to stay in the slow lane, let people pass and try not to get ourselves anywhere where we need to back up, with the exception of campsites. I will pay extra for a pull-through! The first few days are just interstate driving with Walmart stays so we should get the hang of driving the rig before we encounter more difficult conditions.  (She says with her eyes rolled skyward!) The rig is 10 ft 3 inches high, remember that 10 ft 3 inches! I intend to tape a sticker on the dash with that height just as a reminder!

OH NO NOT AGAIN, the grand circle tour redux

I met a friend, The Ace, who has a 21 ft Avenger RB travel trailer and since he has done little traveling in the past he wanted to start now. So I signed on as first mate. So far my duties have included: itinerary researcher and writer, reservation maker, equipment list maker. The Ace has concentrated on the vehicles and their care and upkeep. We are only days away from leaving with just a few important things left to accomplish. Last winter the trailer was winterized and we are waiting for mother nature to be kind enough to take out the non-toxic antifreeze, flush the systems and refill. We have tested the refrigerator and freezer, installed the wireless TireMinder, checked the tire pressure, greased the wheel bearings, tested the battery and hooked it up, loaded the propane and tested the heating and A/C. We have loaded our clothing and basic staples as well as all the equipment needed to live and eat like a King and Queen for 63 days. Yup, it is a long one and very intense. But if you followed my last blog you know I drove 9654 miles in my Prius by myself and camped the whole way over a period of 10 weeks. Compared to that, this should be much easier………… we hope.

How do you write a Grand Circle Tour itinerary? This time I started with maps of the US spread all over the house and jotted down what The Ace needed to see and what I wanted to see and tried to fit them into a logical sequence. I have already traveled to some of the places but there are musts for The Ace. But I have added a twist where possible and added places I missed the first time. We'll have our first major stop in Branson, then to the west to Canyon de Chelly, Four Corners, Monument Valley, "The Wave", Bryce, and Vegas. Then we intend to get all the way to the Pacific and do the whole coast road Route 1 north from San Luis Obispo to Olympic National Park. That stretch will be 1000 miles done over 10 days so that we can drive a few miles every day but still have time to LOOK AROUND. Then we will work our way back east via Mt Rainier, Coeur d'Alene, Glacier, Yellowstone, and the Black Hills.

Our home away from home has pretty much everything we need. The Avenger 21RB is considered an ultra light trailer so you can supposedly tow it with a large SUV or pickup. If you Google the floor plan of the unit you can see it has a great lay out. TV, CD/radio, refrig, freezer, banquet table and booths that makes into a bed, Sofa that makes into a bed, double sink, 3 burner gas stove, oven, microwave and tons of over-head storage. There is a heater, fan, A/C, separate bath with tub shower, vanity, bath sink and toilet and a separate queen bed area with hanging storage. Under storage across the whole front and a back storage area for the barbecue. Sewer, electric and water hookups when necessary/available. 12 volt battery and propane. Awning that extends electrically, lights for the awning.

We have reservations at a few key locations or places I felt would be heavily trafficked. We have already heard from a State Park in San Simeon that they have no water because of the drought. We also wanted to be on the side of Yellowstone where you can only camp if you have a hard sided trailer. Why you ask???? I wanna see a bear…….. from a distance. The last trip the Bear Policies in every national park were different and it was pretty funny particularly at Kings Canyon where they wanted us to guard our food if a bear came along. That was so that the bears wouldn't learn to steal food. Yikes. I would have run so fast despite carrying a canister of Pepper spray all the time! Apparently the bears in all of the different national parks have different levels of experience of living near campers. Some, as the sophisticated ones in Yosemite know what a cooler is, what it contains and will tear into a car to get to it.

The Ace just bought a new camera in Sint Maarten so we are all set for taking some great pictures which I hope to post on the blog for you. If we get in to see "The Wave" near Kanab, UT (done by lottery on the day of) I will be ecstatic. We also intend to see a different slot Canyon in Antelope Canyon near Page.

Kickoff day is coming and I am very excited. I could be gone as soon as we do the water system! I will post on Facebook when I have posted to the blog.

The final Post

One reader of my blog questioned why there were no foothills in the Tetons. I  hope you can examine the picture and see that the Tetons, which are the newest Rockies, raised up as a huge block along a fault line and "the hole" sunk at the same time. The mountains haven't had much time to erode, geologically speaking and the hole is still sinking

Nighttime traffic jam. It was a huge herd of mamma's and their calves. (taken through my windshield)

Mammoth Hot springs with travertine features.

The travertine terraces look like desolation and things are fuming.

Wonderful patterns made by algae in the travertine.

More travertine terraces

More colorful patterns. As you might have guessed I love seeing patterns in nature

That hat!

Mud pots burbling

Why the Yellowstone is called the Yellowstone. This is the Great Canyon of the Yellowstone, just below the upper and lower falls. The valley is ochre colored rock.

Lower falls of the Yellowstone with a large patch of snow still in the valley

More traffic jams

Willie Coyote

Mountain goat

Wild Buffalo Bill Cody bronze

Encounters of the third kind at Devil's tower. Sacred Indian site but now a rock climbing Mecca.

The Quad. Washington's eye is 11 feet wide and his mouth is 18 ft wide.

It got up into the 90's when I entered the Badlands.

The Badlands and the last picture I took before I started my mad dash for home. I am outside of Cleveland tonight at my trusty Motel 6 and will get  home late tomorrow afternoon. As of tonight I have put 9156 miles on my car since I left home and have about 500 more miles to go to get home. Phew. Grand time! And thanks to all my readers for sticking with me on this crazy Odyssey!

The next to last blog entry

I am on a grand three day push to get home and Motel 6 is my savior. Today I covered an enormous amount of territory by going from Gillette, SD up to Devils Tower, then down to scenic Spearfish Canyon in the Black Hills to Mount Rushmore. After a short lunch stop there I traveled to Rapid City and then on Route 44 through some of the last existing real prairie lands still in the US over to the Badlands. I drove part of the loop road and then headed north to Wall, SD, home of the famous Wall Drug. Too kitschy for me but I did get my 5 cent cup of coffee and then drove another 200 plus miles to Mitchell, SD.  I hope to be able to do 500 miles per day for the next three days to end the trip.

My trip summation is that this is one heck of an immense country that is truly beautiful in so many ways. I would like to have just a penny for every fence post I encountered, especially the wooden ones. All of those post holes amazes me! They make some mean snow fences out here also.

But then the US I saw was very much of a “Don’t fence me in” kind of place. Wide expanses of desert, mountains, valleys, plateaus, farm land, range land. You can see the stars at night and most of the air is not polluted. This land is full of hard working farmers and ranchers.

The National Park Service does a magnificent job with a shrinking budget but an increase in tourism. They are the keeper of the country’s real wealth, its scenic beauty.

I want to thank my can of Bear Spray for allowing me to hike alone in bear country but I am sure it gave me a false sense of security. They say don’t run when you see a bear. Hah!

My Prius has been one slam dunk of a fine car. I averaged 49 mpg, fully loaded and doing flat and mountain roads.

The trip allowed me to hear and see nature and view wildlife, birds and flora and fauna that I had never experienced before.

I appreciate all the phone calls and email contacts from my friends along the way. They kept my spirit up. And especially want to thank all my benefactors who helped out with the trip. Without you it would have been very rough!

Motel 6 is a great low cost motel chain that has been around for 50 years. Bed, bath and internet. No tissues, radio, or blow-dryer but who cares! Clean and adequate and perfectly spaced for mo purposes on the way home!

The western part of the country has great roads and they seen to have gotten all of the Recovery Act money to put into their roads. Really on the ball with projects funded and in the works.

Benjamin F. Richason PHD was my geography professor and I have him to thank for grounding me in geology, geography and physiography so that I could better understand the landscape through which I was travelling. All this some 45 years ago!

AAA maps are spot on with their green dotted scenic routes and their regional as well as state maps.

My trusted Garmin Nuvi 200 guided me the whole way and made it so easy for a single driver to negotiate the US road system. Without “Lorraine” talking to me it would have been so difficult to navigate alone.

With the exception of hay fever in Kentucky I have stayed in good health. Being out of doors 24/7 for weeks at a time is a nice thing but it wears thin after a while and I feel very weary. Not tired of what I am seeing, as that is exciting but bone weary from the stress of dealing with the everyday living in a tent and everything that that implies. I loved seeing the wild lupines blooming in Sequoia. As I moved along with spring I kept seeing wild lupines and when I crossed the Bighorns yesterday, I ran into lupines blooming again and all I could think was “those freaking things again.” So I knew it was indeed time to head home. I will miss the Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings I had planned to see outside of Chicago but I can see them when I go out for my 50^th college reunion.

I will be coming home to one less cat, as my beloved Lynx (a lynx point Siamese) escaped from the sitters about a week after I left and has not been seen since. I dream that he will have made his way to Manchester and is sleeping on the chair cushion of my porch furniture. He used to take week long walk abouts and find his way back looking very healthy and never hungry, so I am hopeful that something of the kind has happened.

 There are a few good shots still in my camera that I will download as my last blog entry.

One of four arches of Antelope Antlers in Jackson

Mormon Barn with Tetons in the background. Motif #1

Reflections of the northern Tetons

Hot Springs next to Yellowstone Lake

Who knows how deep

Edge sediment patterns

Algae like the weird waters

Lone Star Geyser

Me at Lone Star Geyser

Erupting on time

Moms and calves

Fields of fuming things

Hot spring

Erupting

Love the colors

Most famous hot springs but you have to see it from the air to get it all into view

Funky shapes and colors 

The winter coat is starting to come off. They rub up against trees and roll in the dirt to get it off.

What you don't see is that I was hiding behind a Toyota Tundra

More patterns

Yowee Yellowstone

Just when I had thought Yosemite beat everything, I saw the Grand Tetons and now Yellowstone.  Each is so spectacular in different ways.

Yellowstone Park is basically a huge caldera from an ancient volcano (640,000 years ago) and my campsite was near the western rim of the caldera. The whole park is still an active “Hotspot” as evidenced by all the geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, mud pots and travertine terraces.  There are lush green valleys with winding streams, waterfalls, and some raging rivers full of spring runoff. The 1988 forest fire devastated great swaths of the park, but after 24 years the trees have reforested themselves and are standing 20-30 feet already.

In one area there were some local earth quakes. The trees withstood the earth quake but then the ground heated up so much that the trees died from the ground temps. As you drive along you can see things steaming or blurping or hissing or rumbling. Some of the features have wonderful colors as certain algae thrive in the fuming waters, so the palette of colors is amazing. Mammoth Hot Springs, with its travertine terraces, was the only bummer as the day I was there only 2 little streams were running and all the other terraces and features were dry.

I have seen bison everywhere and when they get on the road, major traffic jams occur as the animals don’t seem to mind cars. I also saw a coyote trotting next to the road. One bison crossed a wide trout stream and scared some fishermen and then decided to chomp on grass in the mid strip in a parking lot. A Bull Moose created a huge traffic jam as a bus even stopped for photo ops. I have also seen the aftermath of two major car accidents and this is only June. I cannot imagine how crazy the place must be in summer.

I carry my canister of bear spray, which is only good for one shot. The first day in the park I hiked out 5 miles to a remote geyser. It erupted right on schedule and I was very privileged to have been there for the eruption. They say there are over 10,000 hotspot features and I think I did a good job of covering many! Spent several days hiking at every spot marked on the maps.

The rules about the bears are crazy. These bears do not know what coolers are or break into cars to get to coolers. So instructions are to keep all food, coolers, cooking utensils, stoves, water, and personal care products in your car. We had rain and thunderstorms on and off all week and then snow yesterday. What are you supposed to do about cooking if it is raining and they don’t provide shelters? They also would not let you pour any dish water on the ground. You had to wash dishes in a community sink with cold water.

The park now does a good job of providing boardwalks and paths to keep tourists off the sometimes thin crust surrounding some of the features. My mother’s brother was killed at Yellowstone as a young boy by falling into something. My mother was born in 1910 and both her brothers were younger than she. One was blind and hit by a car and died and the other one was killed at Yellowstone. In the old pictures on display, you can see people standing up close to things erupting. Gerald Ford was also a park ranger there in the 30’s.

The drive over the Bighorn Mountains on my way to S Dakota was very interesting. The Bighorn Forest Service has posted signs describing the age and names of the strata through which I was traveling.  The foothills were really old stuff but very interesting to look at. Finally out of the Rockies I was back to beef and irrigated fields and that is when I put a CD in! I hope to make Devils Tower and Mt Rushmore tomorrow and then on to Wall and the Badlands.