Stranded!... or, Elkharting Again

We were getting ready to leave the other day (Tuesday 6/25), heading for Randle, WA, which is near Mt. Rainier National Park. We were staying in a nice little park in Ellensburg, WA, right on the Yakima River.

We were doing our usual stuff to get ready. In general, I handle the outside stuff and Cathy handles the inside stuff. Her duties include pulling in the slideouts. Well, one of the slideouts jammed. Bad. Here's what I'm talking about:

As you would expect, the top and bottom of the slideout are supposed to go in and out together. This one has not.

The really upsetting part is that not only does no one know why this happened, they don't seem to know how to fix it. We managed to get a mobile RV repair guy out the same day this happened. He disconnected the motors that move the slide, which allows for simply pushing the slide in or out; I've seen this work on another slide of ours. Unfortunately, it didn't work here. The repair guy's theory, which I agree with, is that the weight of the slide is sufficient to preclude manually moving the slide. This makes sense: this slide is 11 feet long and contains another, smaller slide, a king-size bed and the contents of a six-foot-wide closet. It is a BIG slide.

While all this was going on, the owner of the RV park, an old farmer, wandered by. Old farmers are among the most resourceful, self-reliant guys on the planet. When he heard our theory, he opined that he could probably lift up the slide with his John Deere tractor and some carefully placed timbers.

So, the next morning we tried his tractor.  That didn't work, either. His tractor isn't all that big; he moved the slide upward slightly, but he didn't have any more power to lift it higher.

Our unsuccessful attempt to lift the slideout

So, on to Plan C. This involved carefully and slowly driving our now 10+-foot-wide trailer to the local RV repair facility, some five miles away. Plan C had been discussed both with the mobile repair guy and the RV place in advance. No one ever advocates doing what we did... dragging this thing up the road that way. However, we kept the speed low and managed to get it to the dealer safely and successfully.

The repair place committed to looking at the trailer that day. This is remarkable service. We fully expected to need to wait for a week or two; summer is the busy time for RV dealers and their service departments always get backed up. We ran into this last summer, seeing scheduled waits for service running three weeks or more.

Well, they looked at it and determined they needed advice from the manufacturer. Like the mobile guy, they've never seen anything like this. They emailed the slide manufacturer - Lippert Components, Inc. (LCI) of Elkhart, Indiana - for advice. The slide jammed on Tuesday morning. We got it into the shop on Wednesday, and they emailed LCI the same day. As I write this on Friday morning they have not heard back from LCI. My feelings towards all things Elkhart are well-known; LCI's actions here simply reinforce them.

The only good thing about all of this is that we bailed out of Ellensburg - on advice from the RV guys - and headed for Orcas Island and Scott and Sara's cabin. We were headed here, anyhow, just not so soon. Our original plan was to spend the week of July 1 here, hanging out and helping them put a deck on their cabin.

So, we canceled a bunch of other reservations, made a reservation for the ferry and let Scott and Sara know we'd be hanging out here for awhile. They have a beautiful, rustic little cabin. We'd never been here before; so far, we're really enjoying the place.

Me and the boys, on the ferry from Anacortes to Orcas Island

We're trying very hard to be philosophical about all this. We will celebrate our one-year anniversary of being full-timers on July 1... with our home in the shop and, as of right now, no idea when we will get back on the road.

Big Sky Country

That's what the state of Montana puts on their license plates: Big Sky Country. They ain't kidding. If I were king of the USA, I'd make the whole state a National Park; it is that spectactular.

As a reminder, we've spent the last three weeks or so wandering throughout Montana. We entered the state on I-15 from Idaho in the southwest part of the state. We spent a few days in Bozeman and headed east to the Little Bighorn Battlefield area in the southeast corner of the state. We then backtracked on I-90 through Bozeman before turning north to Helena. I-90 from Billings almost to Bozeman follows the Yellowstone River through endless miles of ranchland.

The RV park we stayed in in Garryowen, right outside Little Bighorn Battlefield NHM

From Helena, we spent a couple of days at Glacier National Park. After sojourning a few days in the Idaho panhandle, we returned to Montana for the grand finale. Cathy's brother Steve and his wife Linda last year bought a cabin on 20+ acres of land outside the small town of Thompson Falls.

The Clark Fork River, Thompson Falls, MT

Steve and Linda's place is like a little wildlife preserve. It has not one but two creeks running through the property, which abuts Lolo National Forest on their southern boundary. In the couple of days that we were there we regularly saw deer grazing right outside their cabin windows. Steve has numerous photos of elk and moose grazing; there's also regular sightings of wild turkeys.

Deer grazing; photo taken from Steve & Linda's porch.

Their cabin can best be described as having a lot of potential. Steve and Linda are incredibly self-reliant and are no strangers to hard work. I am sure they will turn their place into a warm and cozy home for themselves. Cathy and I are already planning a return trip.

On top of everything else, Montana's the home of Big Sky Brewing, purveyors of the ambrosial Moose Drool.

Glacier

As I mentioned in my previous post, we were able to visit beautiful Glacier National Park. Glacier sits astride the Continental Divide and abuts the US-Canada border. There is a Canadian national park, Waterton Lakes National Park, that is contiguous with Glacier National Park.

Glacier National Park is, naturally, famous for its glaciers. We didn't get to see any. When we visited on June 18 Glacier was still digging out from the winter. The only east-to-west road in the park, the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road, was still closed due to avalanche damage and wasn't scheduled to open until June 22. Most of the other roads that led to higher elevation were similarly closed.

Nonetheless, we enjoyed our time in Glacier. It is a beautiful place; I am sure that it is spectacular in the higher elevations.

We took a hike that led us along McDonald creek, which at this time of year is a raging torrent.

McDonald Creek - a river in all but name

Lower McDonald Creek, emptying into Lake McDonald

Lake McDonald

As we were finishing our hike, we had one of those magical moments which are not uncommon in National Parks. We were walking down a closed road, back to the Beast, when I noticed a deer browsing by the side of the road up ahead. Deer - indeed, animals in general - are not very skittish around people in National Parks. They probably get used to seeing people all the time. Additionally, there's no hunting in National Parks.

Regardless of the reason, this guy browsed right past us. He (she?) was clearly aware of us, but seemed indifferent. He walked right by us along the side of the road, passing less than ten feet from us.

Out of Touch

We left Garryowen, MT a few days ago and drove from southeastern Montana to northwestern Montana to visit Glacier National Park; I'll write about Glacier in a separate post. This took us two days - Montana is a BIG state, and we pretty much went corner to corner.

The RV park we stayed in was just a few miles south of Glacier NP, and just a few miles west of the Continental Divide. It's in a large meadow, surrounded by mountains completely covered in pines - or some other type of conifer like fir or spruce. It was quiet and serene; I loved the place.

It was also completely isolated electronically. There was no cell phone service in the entire area - like for maybe 20 miles in either direction. The park technically had WiFi; there was a network available, although the guy in the office told us we could only connect by sitting in the pavilion where the hardware was. What he didn't say was that the WiFi network was just barely in touch with the outside world.

We pulled in there in the afternoon of Father's Day. I knew that our children would be reaching out to me for that. I did manage to get a text message out to the kids alerting them to the situation and giving them the park's landline in case there was an emergency.

This was the first time on our travels that we've been this isolated. Sure, it's not uncommon to be out in the woods some place, especially in some of the National Parks, and be out of cell phone reception. However, usually RV parks are in "civilization" of some type. Until now, we've always had decent if not robust cell phone and/or WiFi reception.

It was kind of disquieting. I didn't think that we were that hooked into our online life... but we were. Text messages, Instagram, Facebook (for Cathy), ESPN, the news... all gone. The only contact we had with the outside world was through TV on the ever-reliable Dish network.

When we left there yesterday and got to our current domicile (in Sagle, ID) and got reconnected, Cathy and I plopped in chairs outside and probably spent 45 minutes getting caught up - not talking, or really enjoying simply being outside.

There's a message or a moral there, somewhere; I'm not sure what it is...

Custer's Last Stand

Yesterday we visited an interesting place, the Little Bighorn Battle National Monument;

this was formerly known as the Custer Battlefield National Monument and was renamed

to correctly include the Native American perspective. Little Bighorn is in eastern Montana,

right off I-90 50 miles or so east of Billings.

We are staying in an absolutely gorgeous RV park a mile or so east of the east end of the

Monument. We are situated on a gentle slope up to the same ridge line that Custer and

his men fought and died on.

The battlefield is quiet and serene now. The loudest noises are the gentle mooing of cows

grazing nearby and the occasional noisy truck on I-90 a couple of miles south. Custer’s

really bad day was June 25th, so we’re here about the same time of year that he was.

The gentle slopes around us are full of wild mustard and meadowfoam in bloom. How

different it must have been that day.

This soldier rests peacefully looking out over the Little Bighorn River valley.

We had no preconceived notions of what to expect. One of the things that I noted was
that of the 200+ men under Custer’s command, only maybe 40-50 were killed on what
is called Last Stand Hill. The rest are scattered over a huge area.

That's Last Stand Hill on the horizon. Custer's body was found right next to the stone memorial.

The NPS has done a good job of presenting the Native American perspective here.

There is a very well-designed memorial, as well as markers denoting where Indians

fell in the battle.

All in all, this was an interesting and moving place to visit.

UPDATED! Two Choo-Choos

We spent a couple of days in Brigham City, Utah, which is on the northern end of the Wasatch Valley, some 50 miles or so north of Salt Lake City. Why there? When we left Cedar City, we knew we wanted to get through the Salt Lake City metro area, which stretches for nearly 100 miles along I-15.

More importantly, Brigham City is the nearest city to Golden Spike National Historic Park - a place that I really wanted to see. Golden Spike NHP is the location where the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

The actual sesquicentennial was just last month, on May 10th. Not surprisingly, they had a huge celebration on that day. One of the rangers told us they had 30,000 people onsite! The parking lot holds, maybe, 100 cars. This place is at the end of several miles of two-lane road; there's no other place to park. I have no idea where they put everybody.

Golden Spike NHP didn't disappoint this lifelong railroad and history buff - nor did it disappoint Cathy. We knew from prior reading that GSNHP had working replicas of the two steam locomotives, one from the Central Pacific RR and one from the Union Pacific RR, that met for the completion ceremony. We also knew that the steam engines ran every day in the summertime, with demonstrations set for 10:30AM and 1PM every day. We made sure we were there for the afternoon show.

Working steam locomotives are fascinating devices. They are hot, noisy, complicated and belch steam and hot water from odd locations at odd times. For their place and time, however, they were easily the most sophisticated mechanical devices in regular use. We were fortunate enough to be able to see, up close and personal, not one but two of these devices in action.

Here's a couple of photos.

I still haven't figured out how to embed videos without first uploading them to YouTube... way too much work for me. However, I did upload the several videos I took to a shared album on my Google Photos account. If you're really interested, you can see them here; you may need to cut-and-paste this address...

UPDATE: With some help from Cathy, I finally managed to get videos into a place where I can upload them to a blog post! Here they are...

After we left the viewing area, we took an auto tour that took us onto the roadbed that the Central Pacific built and used. During construction, both railroads were reimbursed for construction costs by the government. They were partially reimbursed for building the grade - the cuts and fills and construction of the roadbed; this is the hard part of building a railroad. Laying track is easy in comparison.

Because they were reimbursed for building grade, and until the government decreed Promontory Summit as the meeting place, the railroads built grade - miles and miles of grade! - right  past each other, in some cases only a few yards part. Why not? They were getting paid for it!

Anyhow, we traveled for several miles on the Central Pacific grade; the UP grade was maybe 100 yards away.

Later, we took a 1.5 mile walk along a different portion of the grades; the walk took us out on the Central Pacific grade and back on Union Pacific's. This walk was narrated by a cell phone app that described the work that was done, mostly by hand, to build these railroads.

Watching the locomotives was a spectacular experience. If you are at all interested in railroads, or just mechanical devices in general, or in American history, Golden Spike National Historic Park is a must-visit!

Cedar Breaks

We spent a week or so in Cedar City, Utah. That's actually a little misleading: our home spent a week in Cedar City. As I reported in my last post, we left the trailer there and drove to LA for our daughter's baby shower.

Cedar City is a lovely little city sited at some 5800 feet elevation, with the Dixie National Forest starting just a few miles out of town. We were staying at an RV park that was part of, and in back of, a Best Western Plus hotel. While that sounds a little odd, it worked out just fine for us. On top of the general loveliness, we were literally across the street from a microbrewery!

When we returned we had a couple of days to kill before we left town. One of those days was consumed with business: laundry and groceries, primarily. The other day we drove to Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is only some 25 miles from Cedar City.

Cedar Breaks is at some 10,500 feet elevation. When we went on June 5, it was still largely snow-covered. In fact, we weren't planning on visiting until a lady at the hotel told me that the road had just opened. Although the road to Cedar Breaks was open, nothing else except parking lots and a single restroom was open. The visitor center is scheduled to open today; the ranger we talked to was still shoveling snow off the sidewalk.

Like every other National Monument we have visited, it was well worth seeing. One tends to think of National Monuments as sort of a junior-varsity National Park: maybe not quite as nice or spectacular as an NP, but still worth preserving, and seeing. That certainly applies here. Cedar Breaks looks like Bryce Canyon National Park, on a somewhat smaller scale. You can see what I'm talking about in the photos below.

That's the roof of the Visitor Center in the background.

You can't really see it, but Cedar City is in the distance at the foot of the canyon. 

LA

We took a road trip to LA over an extended (Thu-Mon) weekend, last weekend. The occasion was to host a baby shower for daughter Heather, who is due with her first child, a little girl, in late July.

We decided it was easiest for us to simply leave our trailer behind and find an Airbnb place near Heather's that would take us and our dogs. There's simply no good place to stay remotely near to where Heather and Dan live. So, we simply buttoned up the trailer in Cedar City and drove to LA, some 450 miles away.

On our trip down we stopped for a break for what is claimed to be the largest Chevron station in the world, in Jean, NV. I can't verify that claim, but I can tell you the place is huge. There are 93 pumps in this place!

I, of course, had little to do with the preparations for the shower. I simply went where I was told and picked up what had been ordered. Kudos to Cathy, Sherry and Jill for pulling together what was, to my male eye, a beautiful, thoughtful shower for Heather and the little one. Here's the group, with Heather and granddaughter Madeline:

For those of you who don't know everyone, that's Sherry, Cathy, Heather, Madeline and Jill (L to R)

During  the shower, son-in-law Dan and I took the dogs and visited a couple of local craft breweries; his knowledge of the local brewing industry is extensive, and led us to some delicious brews. Afterward, we returned to their place for the tail end of the shower. We got to visit with my sister and two of my nieces as well as several of Heather's old high school buddies.

On our way out of town on Monday, we stopped at the iconic Randy's Donuts.  I've always wanted to visit this place. Randy's has been standing for decades right off THE 405 at the corner of La Cienega and Manchester, just north of LAX. It is visible to millions of Angelenos. Not only is it iconic,  the donuts there are absolutely delicious. Definitely worth the stop.