Nap time for Muffie.

Craters of the Moon

We didn't see any green men or the old man in the moon but we did see a lot of cinders and hardened lava.  Craters of the Moon is an unusual place.  The most recent eruption was about 2000 years ago.  I'm not sure how they determine these things.  It is a guess based on how much vegetation has grown back.  

The visitor center had a video which describes how it is believed this volcanic area was formed.  It was quite interesting.  It showed rock formations we see here in Craters compared to rock formations found on live volcanos in Hawaii.  The comparison helped you understand the various structures you see here.

Take me to your leader.

These volcanos emitted vast quantities of cinders along with lava.  Walking around here reminded me of our driveway at home where I grew up.  We had cinders for a driveway topping.  The crunch, crunch, crunch as you walked brought back memories.

I climbed to the top of this cinder cone.  That little spec you see at the top is me.
Quite a hike for an old man.  That wasn't even the top.  I had to go up another section like this.

There are lava tubes you can enter to view the bats that live there.  I opted to pass on that hike.  It was over a mile and I was pooped from the cinder cone deal.  As we walked through various areas you could see where lava tubes had collapsed.  There was a hollow area beneath them where lava once ran.

The Green Man!  I'll be darned.  I missed it.

The video showed lava carrying large pieces of rock down the mountain as the cone collapsed as lava spewed out.  Sometimes these pieces of rock were carried long distances.

Another example of these "floaters"

We met a woman who had just visited Mt. St. Helens.  She said it was a disappointment as you were not allowed close to it.  I guess there is still some activity there.  She said this area is completely different from there though.  I guess Mt. St. Helens spewed ash rather than cinders.  I've seen the ash in Guatemala.  It was light like styrofoam.  People there dug it out of the hillsides to use as bedding.  A bucket of it wouldn't weigh a pound.

Wildflowers on the cinders.  We missed the best bloom of the wildflowers.

We will leave here tomorrow and head for Dillon.  There isn't much else to see around here.  There is a museum of atomic energy up the road but it didn't look to interesting.  I don't know if they mine uranium around here or what but there is a lot of of things making reference to atomic energy.  I tried to ask someone about it but couldn't find a local with much knowledge.

Another piece of rock hahaha.

We've been getting bugged!

Darlie had a bug for a couple of days.  She feels better now but still not 100%.  This morning I woke up with the same affliction.  We almost decided to stay another day.  In a couple of hours I felt better so we moved on.

We drove over to Arco, ID.  We are camped in a nice park there.  It is near Craters of the Moon national monument.  We will drive there tomorrow to check it out.  Darlie decided to do some more laundry today.  All the doggy clothes and blankets needed washing.  We were starting to smell like a kennel according to Darlie.  I can't smell anything.  Some people think I'm nuts to have 3 dogs anyhow.  I say so what!  I like what I like and you can like anything you want.  I might think your likes are just as ridiculous as you think mine are.  So there!  Thank God we aren't all alike.  It would be a boring world.

While she was down to the laundry here in the campground, we had a real bad hail storm.  It piled up an inch or so deep.  The noise of the hail hitting the top of the camper terrified the dogs.  They went hiding under the bed.  After the storm I went down to see what Darlie thought of it.  She said she didn't hear any hail.  She just thought it was raining hard.  Ear wax, I think. 

It's a rare sight to see ice next to a Florida tag.

We are on the move again.  We stayed over at Gros Ventre an extra day.  Darlie has not felt well for a couple of days.  She spent the whole day Monday sleeping.  She is feeling better today.  She even felt like going out to dinner tonight.

We drove over to Idaho Falls, ID. so I could get the truck serviced.  It was time for an oil change and fuel filter change.  They gave the truck a clean bill of health saying it was 100%.  After the service stop I made a stop at the local Walmart Supercenter.  It was a brand new store and very busy.  It is the first stop we have made for major resupply.  We packed about all we could from home before we left. The freezer finally had some room in it for new things.

We are parked at the Snake River RV park tonight.  It is a busy place and it is packed.  Our site is one of the tightest we have ever had.  My slide out is almost touching the awning of the trailer next to me.  We will only be here one night.

We have reservations this weekend in Dillon, MT.  It is the busy holiday weekend.  We didn't want to be left without a campsite over the weekend.  Until then, we thought we would drive over to the Craters of the Moon national monument here in Idaho.  I guess it is a large lava bed from an ancient volcano.  I know there are many hot springs in Idaho which is evidence of its volcanic past.

For my Florida friends:  the temperatures here are low 70 daytime and mid 40s at night.  Beautiful cool dry weather.  People around here are complaining about the heat.  I saw several people carrying fans out of Walmart.  I find all that quite humorous.

Beautiful yellow fields in Idaho.

Idaho is a very fertile farming state.  Of course we all know about the famous Idaho potatoes.  They are also a leading wheat producer.  We don't know what this yellow bloomed crop was.  The plants sort of looked like some kind of peas.  

What the fancy RV sales brochures don't show you.

We have been camped at Gros Ventre for a week.  We love this place.  We have wide open campsites with nature all around us.  We have seen a cow moose and a bull moose right behind us.  A mule deer buck, still in velvet walks by every evening following the same trail.  He passed 20 feet ahead of us last night when I was walking the dogs.

This tank is called a Smart Tote.  I haven't seen it do a smart thing yet.  I handles the nasty job of dumping waste when you are not on full hookups.

The downside to this park is you don''t have full hookups meaning you lack water and a sewer connection at your site.  You have to dump waste at a dump station near the entrance and you have to fill water jugs and bring it back to fill the trailer holding tank.  It isn't a real big deal for me.  Some would pass a place like this by because of it though.  It is their loss.  You don't find the setting we have in full hookup parks.

Oops, a little spill there.

We will move on tomorrow, reluctantly.  The weather here has been beautiful with low 70s days and 40 degree nights.  I am glad I packed a huge blanket Darlie bought some time ago.  I call it the wooly mammoth hide.  The thing is over an inch thick.  I don't know what she was thinking buying a blanket like that for Florida.  We never could use it there.  But as we were loading up I remembered we  had it.  I put it in the trailer just in case we hit some real cool weather.  It has been my lifesaver this week.  Darlie loves the cold and sleeps with no covers while I am buried under the mammoth hide and two other blankets.  I hate to crawl out from under it in the morning.  Darlie won't let me set the heat above 50.

Cleaning up the spill.

I need to get the truck oil changed and have my exhaust brake checked.  It doesn't seem to be working.  We will head over to Idaho Falls to a Ford dealer there.  We reserved a couple of nights in Dillon, MT for this next weekend.  There is an old ghost town there that is now a state park.  The town is called Bannack.  It used to be the capitol of Montana back in the 1860.  From what I read the buildings are in remarkably good condition so you can walk through them.  We may head up into Canada after that and make our way back east.  We may spend some time around Lake Superior before heading back south.  It will be hard to face that heat and humidity again though.

Something Stinks

Yesterday after Darlie came out of the bathroom she said, "something stinks."  I replied, "should I be surprised?"  She said, "No.  Really.  Something stinks."  I mixed up some of the brew we put down the toilet to deal with such matters.  When I poured it in and flushed, it blasted right back out at me.  We must have a back up.  

Our camp

For those who have no idea how an RV toilet works, it is basically a hole that leads to a tank under the floor.  When you push the flush peddle the contents drop down this hole into the tank.  There happens to be an elbow that can catch matter and plug things up.  After astute analysis of the situation  I determined that is what has happened to our system.  The problem now is that our toilet isn't like the one at home where you pull out the plunger and pump away.  This toilet has no water in it.  You have to run water in to the bowl with the foot peddle partially depressed adding enough to successfully wash deposits down the hole.  Our problem occurred when one of us didn't fill the bowl sufficiently to accomplish the job.

Black Eyed Susan

So how do you handle a situation like this?  Well you could put on a rubber glove and probe down in the hole to see if you can dislodge the clog.  That idea quickly gave me a mental image of an arm stuck in said hole.  I could imagine rescue personnel coming in to extract me laughing uncontrollably as they discussed how to get me loose.  I quickly shelved that idea.

I decided to cut a piece off one of our water hoses and use it like a rotor router to dislodge the clog.  It worked.  I hated to ruin a perfectly good hose to accomplish this but the bright side is I have a handy dislodging tool for the next back up.

Teton Sunset

We have always enjoyed viewing wildlife out here in the west.  Yellowstone and Grand Tetons always teams with such critters causing traffic jams as people leap from their cars to take pictures.

This year however, we have been unable to locate many animals.  Where have they gone?  A park ranger said the predators had a very good winter.  Since the reintroduction of wolves to these parks the number of elk has dropped dramatically.  Rangers claim they were too numerous and numbers had to be reduced for the health of the herd.

Fat and Happy

We have been leaving just before sunset and driving back roads to known areas where elk and other wildlife can be seen.   There has been little to see.   We drove 70 miles last night until after dark searching for elk.  Places where we had seen them in the past failed to produce.  Darlie, armed with her camera, was on alert the whole time hoping to get that perfect shot.  Our efforts produced one photo of a distant elk.  

We see more wildlife in our backyard than we have seen here this trip.  It is difficult to imagine so many thousands of acres of land without anything visible.  We saw a few birds and ground squirrels and the herd of buffalo that occupy the same field day and night along the Rt 191.  At home I see alligators, otters, raccoons, opossums, herons, ibis, lizards and even a green iguana now and then right out my back window.   The plus side though is that it is much cooler here right now.  We were down into the 30s last night.

Western Bluebird

We have enjoyed our week here traveling dirt roads exploring.  The view of the mountains changes with the day.  We love it here.  But time has come to move on.  We have no destination in mind.  We think we will wander over into Idaho.  I need to get an oil change and have my exhaust brake checked.   This area has little to offer in those kinds of services.  We will probably go to Idaho Falls or somewhere nearby to find a Ford dealer for service.   I made reservations for July 4th weekend in Dillon, MT. .  We don't want to find ourselves without a place to stay over the busy holiday.  There are a few things in that area to explore while we are there.  From there who knows?  We have traveled this area extensively so there are few new things to go see.  We will just bump along until we find something interesting.

 The Grand Tetons.

This is the glacier on the Tetons.  Not what I would call a glacier after seeing them in Canada and Alaska.

The Kids say hello.

We have been on the road quite a lot this visit to Grand Tetons.  Before we had the motorhome without a car so we were limited to places we could go.  We have been hitting the backroads to get a closer look at this fantastic place.

View from our site.

We are so pleased with our campsite here.  It is set amongst cotton wood trees, sagebrush and green grasses of various kinds.  A moose makes it's bed out back of us.  The campsites are widely spaced also so you feel like you are actually camping unlike a stay at the KOA.  I don't know how to describe a stay at a KOA.  It certainly isn't camping.

Moose in the backyard.

We ventured up into some National Forest land that borders the NP.  The mountains were very beautiful.  Many mountains here have patches of pink or lavender streaks on them.  They remind me of a ripening peach.   Came upon a lake called Slide Lake.  A huge part of the mountain slid down in a landslide damming up the Gros Ventre River forming the lake.  The scare on the mountain side is still very visible and looks like it was recent but it occurred in 1925.

The Slide

Slide Lake with Lavender Hills in background.

We came across an old homestead probably used sometime around 1862 when Congress passed the Homestead Act.  Darlie had to get inside to check out the kitchen.  Little did she know then she was standing in a patch of stinging nettles.  They sting like a jellyfish.

See the nettles?

The homestead

In the park are the remains of a Mormon family settlement.  The buildings are in pretty good shape being they are well over a hundred years old.

Barn on Mormon homestead.

Another barn on the property

Cabin on Mormon homestead.

We found a quiet place to sit next to this stream.

We traveled up Signal Mountain.  It was similar to climbing Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.

Wildflowers on Signal Mountain

If I look grumpy it's because I don't like drop offs.
View from Signal Mountain.

My bride with Tetons in the background.  I took this photo and it looks pretty washed out.

Oxbow Bend.  One of the most photographed places in the world.

Grand Teton NP

We left the Snowy Range in the rearview mirror and headed toward the Tetons.  We took Rt 289 out of Rawlins, WY.  We have never been this way before.  The scenery was absolutely stunning.  Wide desert valleys stretching as far as the eye can see was an awesome sight.  

We made our way to Dubois, WY where we spent the night.  I paid the most I have ever paid for a dry campsite (one without water and electric), $40.  We first stopped at the KOA but it had been flooded so most of their available sites were water damaged.  They referred us to this other place.  The site we had had been flooded a few days before.  Fortunately, it was a hard gravel site.  

We were up early on Monday and on the road before 8:00am.  We were headed for Gro Ventre campground in Teton NP.  We have stayed there before.  It is situated along the Gro Ventre River.  It is a very large campground in a woods setting.  We have a moose lying in the grass behind our trailer today.  

We wanted to arrive early in hopes of getting one of the few electric sites they have.  Most sites are dry.  We did manage to get one of two that were available.  We have a generator but having power at the site saves work and a generator can only be run certain hours.

We ventured out into the park later in the day looking for wildlife.  We saw the usual buffalo and pronghorns but nothing else.  We found a nice quiet sitting area next to the Snake River at the end of Schawbacker Landing Rd..  We sat there listening to the water as it rustled by.  We had the Tetons in the background which made the perfect setting.  

I think the Grand Tetons is the most beautiful place in America.  The Teton mountains spring up out of a very wide sagebrush covered valley.  There are no foothills to block the view as with other mountains.  

Snowy Range

Today we took a drive up into the Snowy Range.  The highest peak in the range is a little over 1200 feet.  There is still many feet of snow up there.  Some campgrounds were still buried under 20 feet of snow.  The ranger said some won't be open until mid-July.  We were hoping to find a NFS campsite for a day or two but there was nothing available.

Standing on 20 feet of snow

The trip up passes through open range.  We saw many pronghorn and mule dear.  The mule dear were in velvet.  It makes their horns look real fat.  They were running across the range for who knows where.  It is open land as far as you can see.  It really is incredible land.  It is so open and huge.  

Pronghorn

We passed by a Wyoming gated community.  Homesites were 40 acres apiece.  There was a huge arch and iron gate at the entrance.  It is odd to look out over the range and see houses spaced so far apart.  Not that is my idea of a gated community.  You don't have grass to mow or trees to trim either.  I bet it is really cold in the winter.

Pups seemed to enjoy cold wind

As we climbed up the mountains, the temperature dropped from 70 degrees in Laramie to 45 at the pass.  The wind up there was blowing so hard you could hardly stand up.  It had to be 60 mph.

I lost my hat many times.  Once it would have been gone forever but it hung up in some brush.

You couldn't take a breath facing the wind.  You had to turn away from it or the wind pushed your breath back down your throat.  

Wind was tough on hair dos

We passed through the old frontier town of Centennial.  They had a small area with the old train station and some old buildings and equipment that were once used there.

Medicine Bow peak

There is a lot of logging going on in the National Forest.  The pine bark beetle has killed most of the trees.  It is very sad to see this.  The mountains are covered with dead spruce trees and lodge pole pines.  Some areas have been closed because the hazard of falling trees is so great.  I am glad I saw the west before the trees died.  It will take decades to regrow.  The ranger told me the logs are being sawn for lumber.  The ranger station ceiling was made from beetle logs.  It was very beautiful.  So I guess that is a very small silver lining.  The campgrounds are stark and ugly though.  Once the campgrounds were in deep forest.  Now they are open lots with tree stumps.   It is sad to see.  The trees had to be removed because the danger was too great that one could fall on campers.

One of our last stops was at Medicine Bow peak.  It is the site of a United Airlines crash in 1955.  All 69 people on board perished.  It was one of the largest ever airline disasters at that time.  Back then, airlines often operated by visual flight rules and flew below 10,000 feet as they didn't have pressurized cabins on all flights.  This particular flight was bound from Denver to Laramie when it hit the fog enshrouded Medicine Bow peak.   There is a monument in memory of the flight.

Monument at Medicine Bow peak

We came back to Laramie for a late lunch.  There isn't much of a selection of restaurants here other than the standard franchise outfits.  We ate at Perkins.  Yuck!  Laramie is a city with communities on both sides of the tracks literally.  On one side you have the University and the assorted buildings and residences you would expect.  On the other side of the track it is all mobil home communities and apartment buildings.  That happens to be where the KOA is located also.

Mountain Wild Flowers

Laramie is a worthy place to visit.  If you like nature, hiking, fishing, rafting and viewing wildlife this is a good place to spend a few days.

Snowed In

Laramie, WY

Today was interesting.  We lumbered on across Nebraska.  Gone was the corn and grain elevators.  Grazing cattle and even some lamas filled the fields along the road.   We had entered the high plains.  Off in the distance we could see the snowy peaks of Rock Mountain NP.  

Shortly after crossing into Wyoming the wind began to pick up.   Warning signs stated winds were gusting to 45+.  My gas mileage dropped from my usual 12.7 to 8 mpg.  We were towing a big sail into the wind.  Darlie though my bed cover was going to be ripped off the truck.  We stopped and secured it better.  I couldn't open the door against the wind.  I have never been on the road in this kind of wind.  I guess it is very common in this area.

Tonight we are camped at the Laramie KOA.  The trailer is rocking around pretty good.  We are just happy to be off the road and relaxing.  We made a run into town to pick up some things.  This is an old western cow town.  There are some interesting things to see here. 

Darlie got out to ask for directions.  She went up to an old pick up.   An old guy with a scruffy beard was more than obliged to help a damsel in need.  Darlie got back into the truck laughing.  She said she had never met anyone like that before.  He was an old cowboy.  See asked if there was a Walmart around.  He said there was but it was way outside of town like you were going to Cheyenne.  She asked about how many miles out.  He said or gosh 4 or 5.  I guess that would be along ride on a horse.

I finally got to wash the truck.  It was a mess.  It was bug blasted and covered with road grime.

Tomorrow we will ride up into the Snowy Range to look around.  There are some National Forest Service campgrounds up there.  We want to see if we can get our rig in there.  Sometimes the roads are too narrow and curvy.  We will check out some of the other interesting sites in the area too.

We finally found beautiful weather.  It is in the low 70s and overnight is supposed to be in the 40s.  

We have the windows open with the breeze blasting through.

Boy, another very boring day.  They call it the plains for a reason.  Nebraska is a very long state with very few features to draw your attention.  Grain elevators and corn is about all we saw today.

We spent the day on I-80 only to make this go by faster.  It is interesting though that this route follows in the footsteps of the Oregon Trail.  The trail split west of here depending on where folks were headed.  Some on to Oregon, others to Salt Lake and still others on to the gold camps in central California.  I-80 follows the route those seeking fortune in the gold camps would have followed.  It passes very near Donner Pass in California where the Donner Family was stranded in the winter.  It is said they ate the dead to survive.  It is a horrible story.

I have read quite a bit about those who traveled these trails.  They laid everything on the line to find a better life.  Many died along the way.  I forget how many graves there were per mile of the trail but it was high.  Much of what they left home with was jettisoned along the way because oxen died or mountains were too steep to haul the heavy loads to the top.  I can only imagine the tears that mark this trail.  I'm sure most of those tears belonged to women.  Children died.  Family heirlooms were discarded along the way.  Loved ones back home would never be seen again.

Most don't realize those on the trail walked most of the way.  The wagons carried supplies leaving little room for human cargo.  Plus the added weight would have added to the load the oxen had to pull.  Can you imagine walking all day chasing kids, building fires, cooking meals, washing clothes in a stream not to mention the many unknown terrors that lie ahead.  I'm sure most of those tears belonged to women.  I have an awesome respect for those people I never knew.  They were courageous strong people.

Enough of that for today.  Not sure about tomorrow's route.  We are in Ogallala, NE tonight.  We have the choice to continue on 80 into Wyoming tomorrow or to follow Rt 26 along the North Fork of the Platt River to waypoints on the trail such as Chimney Rock.  Tune in to see.


 

Got on the road just about 9:00am.  I dumped our tanks in the Hermann City Campground before we left.  The dump station tank was filled to the top.  I was afraid all my "stuff" wasn't going to go down.  What would I do then with a hose full of poop?  I waited patiently and it slowly took it.  I was worried for a few minutes.

Camped on the Missouri River just over the Nebraska line tonight.  It was a very long hot day.  We left Florida looking for cooler weather but we haven't found it yet.  We are in a State Recreation Area tonight.  It is primitive but there is electric hook up.  I am glad for that because it would be a very uncomfortable night without it.

Missouri River

We left Hermann just in time from the weather report we are getting from our friends in Bellflower.  They are expecting severe thunderstorms tonight with possible hail.  I hope they get the much needed rain but no hail.  That would be very bad indeed.

We had a small problem tonight when we pulled in here.  I reversed my Hensley hitch.  I know you have no idea what that means but it is a pain to fix.  I basically have to disassemble the hitch and reinstall it.  It was a  nice hot greasy job but it is done.  Now I just hope it is adjusted properly.  If not the trailer will not pull right.

A guy from Oregon pulled in here tonight.  He spent last night in Casper, WY area.  They had sever wind storms all night.  He had to move his RV for fear it was going to flip over.  He said portions of the interstate were shut down too due to the wind.  I guess it gusted up to 70mph.  The place we are in tonight had a sever thunderstorm early this morning with very high wind.  Many limbs are lying around.  We had to move some off our site to park.  We parked far enough from the trees that they wouldn't fall on us if there is another storm.  They are cotton wood trees which are very brittle and split easily.

Telling fish tales

This recreation area has a very busy boat ramp.  Everyone is out fishing for flathead catfish.  According to the guy in the photo above they run over 100 pounds in the Missouri River.  He had a photo of a large one he caught recently.  I asked him how many he had today.  He said he threw them all back.   Likely story.

We will head up towards Scotts Bluff, NE tomorrow.   We probably won't drive as long as we did today so will probably stop well short of there.  We aren't in a hurry.

Not a very interesting day but that's how some are.  See you tomorrow good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

We have spent the past two days with our friends Russ and Sue.  We have had a wonderful time visiting and touring the area.  Sue made delicious smoked pork chops yesterday.  I haven't had them in years.  I forgot how good they are.  If we had room in the freezer I would buy some to take along.
We topped off a great meal with coconut cream pie.  It was a huge pie and we made a huge dent in it. It was all from scratch and very good.

After dinner we got on the mules, I guess that is what you call them, and took a ride around the farm. This is beautiful peaceful country.  I can understand why they love it so much.  I think they were very fortunate to grow up in farm country and work a farm all their lives.  There is an independence I don't think you can find anywhere else.  Farming is a gamble.  Russ seems to always be watching the sky for rain or fair weather.  Everything depends on the weather, good or bad.  Good harvest or lean.

Small town people know everyone and care for each other.  That is so unlike where we live.  We are lucky to know a couple of neighbors.  Everyone keeps to themselves.  Here it seems everyone is family.

Today they took us to the El Capitan restaurant for lunch.  It was good homestyle food and my Florida friends would not believe the price.  I had chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and green beans.  It was the daily special for just $5.95.  It was all I could eat.  The restaurant was packed with locals who stopped in for lunch.  They get a lot of food out fast in this place.  They erased the daily special after a few minutes.  I guess it was so popular they ran out.

The building has all kinds of memorabilia hanging on the walls.  Old signs for various products, old road signs and circus posters.  Out front is an old black and white police car with the old gum ball on top.  It said Mayberry PD on the side.  In the dining room was a large sign that said, Bellflower population 403.  Today when we drove through Bellflower I noticed the sign said population 393.  I guess some people left town.

We stopped by the Purina plant where their daughter, Sherry, works.  She has been there forty years.  They make feed for everything from dogs to elephants at this plant.  Russ sold corn to them in the past.  Maybe your pooch ate some of Russ's corn.  We toured around Montgomery City for a time.  It is a small farming community.  It seems to be full of life and wholesome people.

Back at their house we were in for another treat.  Sue made homemade strawberry ice cream.  It was very tasty.  I think I need to buy an ice cream machine.  Sue said when the kids were little, she would make ice cream and put it in a tin outside the house in winter.  The kids would come home from school and scoop up a big serving of homemade ice cream from the tin.  One time the tin disappeared.  Some varmint probably got its head stuck in the tin and walked off with it.  Sue said she thought it would turn up in the spring when Russ started preparing the fields but it never did.

We had hours of good conversation.   It has been so good to get together with them again.  They feel like family to us.  How many people do you meet in life that you feel that way about?  Not many.  That is what makes them so special to us.  I hope they get down to Florida this winter.  If they don't I guess I will just have to drive out here again.