Rachel and Eli's visit to the trailer

The series of pictures I took of Rachel and Eli's visit to the trailer while still in California gives a good idea of what it is like to be in the trailer, so I include these pictures.

Jan sitting at dining room table. Kitchen is at left.

Rachel sitting in Jan's Lay-Z-Boy chair with "fingers" Eli exploring.

The Kitchen has a decent amount of counter space (for a trailer).

Eli playing in the entery way with Mom looking on.

Eli coming up the stairs into the bathroom area.

Eli playing with the hangers in the bedroom closet.

Jan showing Eli her "Huge" refrigerator (not!). I guess he wasn't interested!

Saturday September 10, 2011: Into Colorado

        As we left Laramie before 9 o’clock, skirted Cheyenne, and headed towards Denver. Even though we were headed to the “Mile High City”, we were headed down as Laramie is at 7200 feet. As we entered Colorado, I noticed that everything was getting greener and more populated. There were even fields of corn that look like it was ready to be picked. The soil in Wyoming was rocky and sandy and only good for meager at best grazing of cattle. Then we suddenly encountered more lanes and tons of traffic through Denver. We used our trusty Garmin GPS to assure us that we were on the right path. Since we were at Wal-Mart the night before, we needed to dump out our tanks before the trailer sat at Rachel’s. We located a dump station at a shell station about 1 exit from Rachel’s. Maneuvering 53 feet of rig in a busy gas station requires planning, so I stopped near the entrance and had Jan scout out the place. She said the dump station was in the back and to go to the left side of the station to get to it. Unfortunately, a pickup truck was stopped at the air pump and blocked my way, so I had to stop and wait…and wait….and wait. He was using the air pump to clean his dusty sander and power tools and must have been doing a very thorough job. I finally got out of my truck and asked him when he thought he’d be done! We did maneuver into position and dumped our tanks. It was free with a fill-up, so we filled up there, too. This required more planning and maneuvering. We finally got to Rachel’s early in the afternoon. She thought we might be able to park the trailer in the driveway as it was long enough. I took one look at the driveway entrance and said, “no way” as it was very narrow with a mailbox on one side and a chain link fence on the other. We parked it successfully in the front of the house, but of course, it took up the whole front.

Friday September 9, 2011: Leaving Yellowstone and passing through The Grand Tetons

Dave with the marina and the Grand Tetons in the background

        It was our last day at Yellowstone and we realized that there was so much more to do, but we had to leave as we had to get to Colorado Springs before Sawyer, Rachel’s baby, was born. It was still 3 weeks before his due date, but the baby was already big and Eli was born 3 weeks before his due date, so we didn’t want to take any chances. We decided to go out the South entrance and through Grand Teton NP, if anything so we could get our picture magnet and stamp, so we could at least say that we’d been there. It was a beautiful clear day and those famous mountains stood out grandly as we took some pictures and were on our way.

The truck and trailer at the Grand Tetons

        Since it would be a 2 day drive to Colorado Springs, we decided to drive as much as we comfortably could that day and make a shorter drive the next day. As we left the Grand Tetons, we climbed up to Togwotee Pass at 9,658 feet. This wasn’t a steep climb like it was through the Bighorn Mountains, but there was a lot of road construction. We had to stop before the pass and be escorted, single file, across a bumpy and muddy dirt road for what seemed to be 10 or 20 miles. I had seen other dually trucks with mud flaps before and wondered if I should get some as the trailer is always right behind us. Sure enough, mud was splattered up on the front of the trailer, so I’ve added a pair of mud flaps to my buy list.
        From there, the road wound down onto a high and semi-arid empty plain where only little scrub bushes grow for miles to the horizon. The occasional rock out-cropping would punctuate the boredom. I remember Clint Eastwood in the movie “High Plains Drifter” and imagined seeing him sitting on his horse on one of the rises. The occasional ranch work truck or car would pass us on the 2 lane roads, but mostly we were the only man-made thing in sight. I cringed at the thought of a break down there. Each town we passed trough had no outskirts; it was desolate right up to the edge of town. We laughed as we passed trough these towns as they cleverly named the streets 1^st street, 2^nd street, etc. I don’t think anyone of the towns made it passed 4^th street! Any road that branched off from the main road was gravel. I couldn’t imagine what was down any of those roads and it reminded me an episode of the TV show “I shouldn’t be alive” when a family turns off onto a road like this as a “shortcut” and almost doesn’t make it back. We were glad to get onto I90 at Rawlings and made our way to the Wal-Mart parking lot at Laramie just as the sun was setting. We were hoping that tonight was not the night for the street sweeper and, as it was Sunday, it wasn’t.

Thursday September 8, 2011 Yellowstone Day 3: Geysers, Geysers, Geysers!

Typical Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin

       On our 3^rd day, we decided to visit the geyser basins north of Old Faithful. Our 1^st stop was the Norris geyser basin. It turned out to be quit a large basin as we were there at least 2 hours and must have walked about 2 miles. This place had everything, geysers, hot springs, steam vents, and mud pots. Every feature is different, but by then, we started getting “geysered out”.
        There is a huge hot spring that I remembered visiting back in the 1970s and I wanted to see it again. It is as large as a lake, but I wasn’t sure about the name or where it was, so we stopped by the bookstore to find out. There was a picture of it on the cover of one of the books. It was called the Grand Prismatic Spring and it was on our way back to the RV Park. We passed by the Lower Geyser Basin and didn’t stop as we both agreed that we had seen enough geygers for one day.

Hot Spring in Norris Geyser Basin

Excelsior Geyser (Huge!)

        To get to Grand Prismatic Spring from the parking lot, we crossed the Firehole River on a foot bridge. Right next to the bridge, there was a thick stream of colorful water flowing down the embankment into the river. The temperature of the water in the hot spring is at the boiling point, so I wondered how warm the river water was. I was tempted to walk down to the river and put my hand in to find out, but being a good, law abiding citizen; I obeyed the signs, which read “stay on the path”. We came upon another large hot spring there called the Excelsior Geyser. I liked this hot spring because it was large and colorful and from the boardwalk, you could look down into its bubbling depths from the high walls which surrounded it on the high side. The Grand Prismatic Spring disappointed me because the boardwalk was slightly lower than the hot spring, so all you could see was a huge cloud of steam. We were told that if we hiked the trail on the far hillside, we could see the hot spring, but it was getting late and our feet were getting tired, so we were satisfied at looking at the picture.

Grand Prismatic Spring (Actual spring in is in the background)

Wednesday September 7, 2011 Yellowstone Day 2: Canyon and Mammoth Hot Springs

        On day 2, we decided to head north towards Mammoth Hot Springs, stopping at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone with its 2 large falls along the way. The road winds north along the Yellowstone River, which is the outlet to Yellowstone Lake. By the way, the river begins at Fishing Bridge and as you approach Fishing Bridge, there is a sign that says, “No fishing from bridge”! Why that is I can’t contemplate as there are walkways on both sides. I suspect it is either environmental or litigious, take your pick. It is a beautiful drive along the Yellowstone River. The water was high and it didn’t flow very fast in most places and there were moderate rapids in some. The road at this point was just a few feet above the water as the local landscape was quite flat here, but got steeper as we got closer to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. I mentioned to Jan that I would have like to have had the 4 man raft I used on the American River near Sacramento to drift lazily down the Yellowstone. However, as we later found out, that would have turned out to be a very bad idea!

I have a video of the Dragon Hot Spring which I'll try to post

        We stopped at the Mud Volcano area and walked the 2/3 mile loop with its mud pots, acid lakes, and churning caldrons. It turns out that Mud Volcano blew its top more than a century ago and is now a seething bubbling mass of mud. The mud comes from the sulfuric acid in the water dissolving the surrounding rocks. The most interesting feature was Dragon’s Mouth Spring, which bubbles and churns in a cave in the hillside. The echoes inside the cave from popping gas and sloshing water make sounds like a dragon.

Bubbling Mud Pots

Jan with a mud pot and the countyside in the background

A short dive up the road there was sulfur caldron. These hot springs were near the river, but up higher on the steep river embankment. Across the river was a herd of buffalo grassing and as I looked down into the Yellowstone River from my lofty point, I noticed a pool of bubbles coming up fro the river bed. I presumed that these were hot springs, too. I wondered what it would have been like floating down the river on an air mattress feeling that cold water and then, “Ouch, hot!”

Seeing Buffalo from the truck

        We left and a few miles up the road, we ran into a traffic jam as the road left the woods and into an open grassy area. There was a large herd of Buffalo on both sides of the road with some buffalo lazily crossing the road. There were many buffalo youngsters and I saw one youngster nursing its mother. 2 large male buffalo were knocking their heads and horns together as if fighting, but they soon quit with one of the buffalo then rolling around in a dry dirt patch. It kicked up a cloud of dust and he looked funny on his back with his legs pointing skyward!

Upper Falls

Jan and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

        From there, we drove up to Artist Point along the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The Canyon is not nearly as big as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, but it is steep and deep. What makes it so spectacular are all the soil colors (lots of reds and yellows) from the volcanic activity. As we looked up river, we could see the lower falls and surrounding canyon as you see on many post cards. Looking through my binoculars, I noticed some people standing in a railed area at the very precipice of the falls, so of course, I had to go there. Jan’s feet were hurting her at this point, so when we got to the parking lot for the precipice overlook, I walked down there by myself. While I was standing there looking at the water careening over the cliff, I imagined my rafting trip coming to an abrupt halt as we all went screaming over the edge. In many movies, you see the hero escaping from the bad guy or vicious creature by diving over the falls into a nice deep pool of water. Not so with this falls. The water hit some rocks and went splashing back into the air, so our “hero” (and my raft & crew) would have been spattered to bits.



Jan and the Lower Falls

Dave in front of the terraces. That white is not snow!

From there, it was about a 33 mile drive to Mammoth Hot Springs, which is at the north end of the park. We headed to the visitor’s center, which was in a very old building made of stone. There were rows of other similar buildings around it. We found out that these building were built in 1915 and housed the army who administered the region before there was a park service. Here the water from the hot springs spills down a hillside to form beautiful terrace-like structures. The bacteria living in the water create tapestries of color where hot water flows among the terraces.

Beautiful terraces

        On the drive back, we came to a screeching halt on the 2 lane road because somebody had stopped in the road to take a picture of an animal. It was just a deer! These guys must have been just off the boat from the city. There we also people pulling off the road to photograph herds of buffalo miles away! Apparently, they hadn’t experienced the herds by the side of the road that we had seen that morning.

Tuesday September 6, 2011 On to Yellowstone and Old Faithful

I had made reservations at the Fishing Bridge RV Park in March as it is the only campground in Yellowstone with full hookups, i.e. electric, water, & sewer and I was afraid it would be full. But, wouldn’t you know it? There was a “vacancy” sign every night as we got back from sightseeing. We met some RVers in Cody who said that they tried to make reservations a week before for the same time slot, but couldn’t. Maybe some people just didn’t show up? We had heard that it was “tight” for big rigs, so we were a little worried about fitting in. Check in time was at 11AM and we wanted to get there as early as possible to give us plenty of time to park the trailer in a tight spot and get in some sight seeing. We left the Wal-Mart in Cody before 9AM. It was easy to leave early because the trailer was already hooked up to the truck and all we had to do was retract the slides and we were on the road!

We drove along a 2 lane road that meandered along a stream through a scenic valley that had jagged cliffs on both sides. There were small ranches and some ranch type establishments that offered lodging, probably for Yellowstone visitors who couldn’t find lodging in the park.

Once we got into the park, we noticed that the air was smoky. Jan found out that there were several fires burning in the park and that’s where the smoke probably came from. Going down a hill and around a curve, I suddenly had a scare as I had to slam on my brakes for some cars stopped in the road. Now stopping 21,000 lbs of vehicle is no small matter, but we got stopped in time as we saw a buffalo walking down the road as slowly as you please.

We got to Fishing Bridge at about 10:40AM, checked in, and drove on to the camp site. It was very tight for a rig our size, but the biggest problem was that the road on front of the sight was narrow and across the road, there was a forest of long pole pine trees. The worst of it was that there was a pole planted in the ground about 4 feet high right across from our site that had a night light on it, so I couldn’t swing the truck’s front end around when backing up the trailer. To make matters worse, there was a large pine tree on the corner of the site, so I couldn’t cut the corner. I had to drive around the camp loop at least 3 times as I failed to get the trailer in the right spot. Finally, I got it squeezed in within a couple of feet from my next door neighbors. The trailer just made it not sticking out into the road and when I parked the truck next to it, the truck just made it, too. When we let the slides out, the living room slide banged into a pole and we had to retract it about 2 inches to fit, but that didn’t make too much difference in our living space.

The parking and trailer setup took about 2 hours, so we had some time that day to do some sightseeing. We headed towards Old Faithful and stopped at our first Geyser Basin at West Thumb, which was the only Geyser Basin along the lake. Yellowstone Lake is a very large lake and at 7,700 feet, it must be the highest biggest lake in the U.S. I “Googled” it and found that it is 87,000 acres and has 110 miles of shoreline. For comparison, Lake Tahoe is bigger at 122,000 acres, but it is “only” at 6,200 feet. As we drove along the lake to reach our destination, we could see one of the fires burning on the other side of the lake. I was amused when I saw a sign at one of the turnouts that said “Natural fire, do not report”. Apparently, they get a deluge of calls from concerned visitors who see the fires from across the lake. Almost all of the forests in Yellowstone seem to be at some stage of recovering from a fire and you see many hillsides of burnt out tree trunks. Jan & I wondered which burned out forests were from the 1988 great fire and which were from more recent fires.

Arriving at West Thumb, we saw columns of steam coming from several places. The wind was coming off the lake that afternoon, so it was very chilly. We walked around the loop and watched steam vents and bubbling pools of water. There was one Geyser a few yards offshore that formed a small island and had a hot pool of water in it. I read that in the early days, men would catch a fish from standing on the island and then swing the fish (still on the hook) around and cook the fish in the hot pool!

We drove another 20 miles and arrived at Old Faithful. There must be a lot of traffic around there in the summer because it was the only place in the park that had a 4 lane highway, an overpass, and on/off ramps to get to the Old Faithful complex. We parked and walked over to “viewing deck” around the geyser. Luckily, we were there at the right time as a few minutes later Old Faithful shot up a plume of water about 100 feet into the air as maybe 100 people snapped pictures and took movies. I wondered how many pictures must have been taken of the geyser since it was discovered. It lasted only a few minutes, but was a thrill to see. From there, we took the trail around the geyser basin in back of Old Faithful. Some of them sputtered, most were bubbling pools of water, and others were vents of steam. Some formed tall volcano-like cones. All were very colorful with hues from green, to red, to yellow and brown from the various bacteria that live in the water. Some pools were crystal clear and you could see deep into a pit that seemed to have no bottom. As we were walking along, Old Faithful went off again! It gave a different view of the Geyser from our more distant perspective.

We then took our usual trip to the gift shop to buy a refrigerator magnet and stamp for Jan’s book.