#49 – Coveys Great Adventure – September 2018 – WY, UT, ID, OR

#49 – September 2018 – WY, UT, ID, OR

We are finally slowing down; just four states and ten campgrounds this month.

We don’t do much detailed planning anymore. We used to, but after a couple of years we got pretty cavalier about making reservations more than one campground ahead. This summer, though, we have been quite surprised at the number of new RV’ers on the road. Lots of other geezers have decided to buy a trailer or motorhome and (queue Steppenwolf) “head out on the highway, looking for adventure.” RV sales are at record levels, but there are few new camp sites being added anywhere, so the competition for space is getting pretty intense, especially for major attractions like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.

Wind River Canyon has several miles like this

We had intended to continue across Montana to Glacier National Park, but fires closed the park. Despite what I just said, we decided to try to visit Yellowstone and then Grand Teton on short notice, instead. None of the campgrounds that are actually within Yellowstone have sites long enough for Ripley, so I started looking at parks near Cody and the east entrance to Yellowstone. We finally found a site at Buffalo Bill State Park just west of Cody, but had a few days to fill before we could get in. For no particular reason we chose Boysen State Park’s Tough Creek Campground  in Shoshoni just to slooowww down for a bit, and to see that part of Wyoming.

Tough Creek Campground is on a peninsula jutting out into the Boysen Reservoir, which is formed by the Wind River. We almost had the place to ourselves, and picked a beautiful shaded site right on the shore of the lake. The dogs had the run of the shoreline around the whole campground off-leash, a real treat for them. The only negative were the swarms of bugs drawn to our lights. The screens just couldn’t keep them all out.

The drive from Thermopolis to Tough Creek Campground on US 20 through the Wind River canyon is very scenic. Boysen Reservoir is very large and surrounded by rolling ranch land that was pretty brown at this time of year. I’ll bet it’s spectacular in the spring and early summer. This area is pretty remote and fuel and food need to be planned. Thermopolis is the only big town around and it’s about 30 miles from the campground.

Searching for the perfect taco

It seems like everything within 50 miles of Cody is named “Buffalo Bill  <fill in the blank>”. We were underwhelmed with the state park at first, but it became one of our favorite places this trip. Despite what the reservation system claimed, the lake shore site we had reserved was too small for us and obstructed by trees that would have added even more scratches to Ripley’s battle-scarred flanks.

North Fork Campground

As we were trying to figure out what our options were, the park manager showed up, quickly agreed that we wouldn’t fit and sent us a few miles down the road to the park's North Fork Campground first-come-first-serve section. It turned out to be one of the best places we’ve stayed this year. The site was huge, surrounded by grass in a park-like setting along a river with pretty spectacular cliffs on two sides. No utilities, but we loved it and so did the dogs.

Cody is clearly a tourist town, and to be fair, it seems to do a good job at that. It is big enough to have all the services you need, a good thing because Lucy needed to see a vet. Stephanie White, DVM at Cody Veterinary Hospital was able to see us right away and prescribed some medications to treat her problem and to make the old girl more comfortable. If you need a vet in Cody, go see Dr. White.

Bubble, bubble, etc.

I should have spent more time looking at the map, because using Cody as a base to explore Yellowstone is sub-optimal, at best. Most of the popular sites within the park are much closer to  the west side than the east. It’s 100 miles from Buffalo Bill State Park to Old Faithful, all of it two-lane road. Two major road construction projects added significantly to the slow pace of the many gawkers who seemed to have no particular place to go and all year to get there. Despite being mid-September, Yellowstone looked full to me but I was assured that what I considered  crowds were nothing like what they had been before Labor Day. I can easily foresee the day when you’ll need to make reservations just to enter this park.

Old Faithful lived up to our expectations. It is really neat to see steam and boiling hot water come billowing up out of the ground, especially on a schedule. Kids of all ages were excited by the show. The visitor center has a pretty interesting movie about the geyser and the park that is worth seeing. We did see a moose, a long way off, but still, clearly a moose. No buffalo, but we had seen enough of them in South Dakota. The bears must have been taking a break after the busy summer season because we didn’t see any of them, either.

Colter Bay

If I’d spent more time planning and map reading, I’d have realized that Old Faithful is just 40 miles from the Colter Bay RV Park in Grand Teton National Park, our next stop. We had planned to stay at Gros Ventre Campground near Jackson, about 30 miles south of Colter Bay. The National Park Service website claimed that space was readily available at Gros Ventre after Labor Day. That site needs to be revised, because when we arrived on Wednesday afternoon two weeks after the holiday, there were no sites left for anything over 30’. Did I mention that RV sales to retirees had exploded? They may be sold out until the snow falls. We immediately got on the phone  and got the last spot at Colter Bay RV Park for three times what we planned to pay at Gros Ventre.

The cost aside, Colter Bay turned out to be a neat place to stay and a good base for exploring the area. Colter Village is on the shore of Jackson Lake, surrounded by forests and possessing a terrific view of the mountains that everyone flocks here to see. The general store/deli/gift shop/laundromat/shower house was also the local Wifi hotspot, so lots of people (including us) congregated there throughout the day.

It turned out to be possible to get sensory overload in a place like this and to finally become blasé about the next spectacular pile of rock or pristine mountain lake that crops up. It takes awhile, but it happens. Judy Powell (Hi, Judy!) told us that the view from the deck of the restaurant at the Jackson Lake Lodge was the best in the park. She’s right, especially when accompanied by a martini. If I didn’t have to drive, we would have had a couple of martinis because that view really is special and the drinks were pretty good, too. Unfortunately, smoke from the fires to the west made it hard to get decent pictures.

Michelle Shober had recommended we visit the  National Museum of Wildlife Art just outside of Jackson. We were very impressed by what we found. If you come to this area, be sure to add at least a couple of hours to visit this museum. It is filled with an extensive collection of important, predominantly American wildlife paintings, drawings and

sculpture that spans at least two centuries. The museum building itself is pretty interesting and the exhibits are well organized and curated. We really enjoyed ourselves. There is a café in the museum that has a good rating, too.

The town of Jackson reminded me of Cody but on a smaller scale. It exists as a tourist center, but it isn’t tacky at all. Traffic and parking will certainly be an issue during the summer but wasn't a problem when we visited. Unfortunately, the road to Moose and Teton Village from the north was closed for bridge repair and the other route to those towns would have meant a 50 mile detour, so we didn’t get to see them this trip. One tip: Don’t buy fuel at the Chevron station at the north end of Jackson. It’s way, way more expensive than any other station I saw.

On the way to Jackson we hit a large antelope at about 60 mph. I saw it cross  in front of us, but I didn’t see it reverse direction because it was obscured by the side mirror. It hit squarely in the middle of the coach, killing it instantly. I didn’t have time to hit the brakes, but I wouldn’t have been able to avoid it even if I had been able to see it. Most of the damage was to the generator bay cover. I’ll be able to fix most of it when we get to Benson this winter. We also have an air leak that we need to get looked at. Apparently it hit something as it passed under the coach.

We were feeling a little pressure to keep moving west to make our date to camp host on the Oregon coast, but we decided to detour through Salt Lake City to see Liesa for a couple of days so it was time to leave. SLC is just under 300 miles from Colter Bay, a full day’s run. We planned a route that minimized interstates and were rewarded by great scenery for most of the day. We have stayed in North Salt Lake on our other visits, but decided to try the Salt Lake KOA this time because it is less than two miles from Liesa’s new apartment. It also backs up to the city park that contains one of our favorite dog parks. Like every KOA we have stayed in the sites are fairly close together, it's a little expensive and seems overrun with kids. It’s ok for a couple of nights but we’ll stay at Pony Express RV Park when we return for two weeks around Thanksgiving.

Kayeanne had flown out from Boston in June to see Liesa, but I hadn’t seen her since Xmas, and neither of us had seen her new apartment. She looked great. She’s done a "grownup" job on the apartment, it is nicely decorated and feels quite homey and comfortable. This is her first time living alone and it seems to be agreeing with her. I’m glad we decided to make the detour.

We decided to stop at Twin Falls, Idaho to have a shop we know there look for an air leak that had occurred when we hit the antelope. While not a problem, it did need to be attended to. At the same time I asked them to take a look at the chassis air conditioning. This trip we decided to try the RV park at the Twin Falls Fairground. The RV park is right next to the barns and corrals used during the county’s annual farm and livestock events. The space we got was certainly long enough and it had some shade, but it was very close to the adjoining site. Luckily, it wasn’t taken during our stay. They had just built a new shower house, one of the nicest I can remember in quite a while.

Twin Falls Truck Repair fixed an air leak, but not the major one. We’ll try to get by until we can take it to Kaiser Brake and Alignment in Eugene. The air conditioning problem looks like a dead compressor. I’m not sure what to do about that yet. I can change it, but I don’t have access to the equipment to evacuate and recharge the Freon in the system. I've got time to procrastinate, it’s getting cooler now.

We can make the trip across Oregon to the coast in two days if we have to, but we decided to slow down a little and take a look at Klamath Falls and Medford, two cities that we have wanted to see for some time. We also wanted to see the logging museum at Collier Memorial State Park in Chiloquin. We had committed to camp host there last year but had to cancel when Liesa was injured.

We’d been through Burns, Oregon a few times on the way to someplace else but hadn’t stopped. Burns RV Park sounded like a good place to stay for the night and it certainly was everything we had hoped, but they were full! On a weekday in mid-September! Did I mention the record RV sales? The owners couldn’t have been more accommodating and they set us up with a space that wasn’t on their park map. They said that they had been full every night since they opened for the season on May 1. Burns is not a destination, it’s just the intersection of US 20 and US 395. Sheesh.

Old iron junkies will love this place

We couldn’t get a space at Collier State Park either, but Sportsman’s Retreat RV Park nearby had an opening. I think we were the only non-residents in the place. It was ok, just lacking the ambiance we like to see.

The Collier Logging Museum was very interesting. People have been logging commercially in the Northwest since the 1850’s on an ever increasing scale until the 1980’s when it became clear to everyone, including the wood products companies, that the methods and practices needed to change. The museum is predominantly about the equipment and techniques used by the timber harvesters and how that has evolved over time. There is an interesting section that focuses on the lives of the loggers when most of them lived in camps that moved frequently to cut fresh timber.

Klamath Falls is large enough to have all needed services but it didn’t look like it was thriving. I think it was in its hey-day when the timber industry was booming. It doesn’t seem to be going downhill, but I got a sense that people are marking time, waiting for the next economic wave. Luckily it did have a large tire store because we needed two new ones in a hurry. We forgot to release the car’s parking brake when we loaded it onto the tow dolly and dragged big holes in the rear tires as soon as we started down the road. Two flat tires caused a logistics challenge but three hours later we were on our way, poorer but wiser.

We have wanted to explore Medford, Oregon for some time, and we also wanted to see more of the areas around Grants Pass, so the Valley of the Rogue State Park was ideally situated roughly halfway between them. And, it is right across the river from the Del Rio winery, one of many good ones in the area. Aside from the noise from I5, Valley of the Rogue is a great park. The sites are spacious and there are fields and trails for the dogs to enjoy.

Medford is a real city, complete with Trader Joe’s and Costco, two of the hallmarks of civilized living. We didn’t spend a lot of time looking around, but our overall impression was positive. Several of the towns on the back road route from Medford to Grants Pass were quite attractive and small wineries seem to have sprung up everywhere.

We always look forward to coming to Eugene. We’ve been here so often it feels sort of homey. Eugene has all the services and amenities including (Trader Joe’s and Costco, of course), but is still pretty easy to get around. Traffic can get heavy but it never seems to get so clogged up that you can’t get where you want to go. I couldn’t get an appointment at Kaiser on short notice, so we had lots of spare time at Richardson County Park, just west of Eugene to catch up on laundry, cleaning and coach upkeep. The dogs really like it here, too. We’ve stayed at this park before and it's quite nice aside from the annoying lack of cell service. For some reason it is a dead zone for AT&T. We got an end site with lots of space and no close neighbors. We even got PBS on the antenna and watched Antiques Roadshow for the first time in months.

On September 30 we rolled into Nehalem Bay State Park for the fourth time in five years to camp host through October.

More soon.