Karen & Collins' Great RV Adventures: Yellowstone

July 13^th felt like we were finally escaping IL.

After Eye Surgery, Dr. appts & rehabbing two condos and selling one, we were ready to get out of Dodge!!

Our first stop on the way to Yellowstone was a big FMCA RV Rally in Gillette, WY. For us, it was a good place to get some needed RV maintenance work done.

Our main reason for going was to get our satellite TV working correctly. There is only 1 person we’ve ever been able to find who knows RV satellite TV’s like this guy. We knew he’d be at this rally, so we called ahead & made an appt. We also needed new (canvas) toppers for a couple of slides & I wanted awnings for 2 of the windows in our living area. The one thing we didn’t know we’d need within a week of leaving was a new toilet. For those not familiar with RV toilets, you step on a pedal to flush the toilet. Ours decided to break after arriving at our Yellowstone RV Park. Unfortunately, those are not easy things to find in the middle of nowhere. Thank heavens for Amazon Prime which immediately shipped a new one to our next stop. “Supposedly” they’re easy to install. Fortunately, we were able to work around the problems & enjoyed our stay at the North Entrance to Yellowstone.

I tried in Oct to get us reservations within the park itself, but that was not to be. Yellowstone is huge, so while one can view the park in 2 days if you only hit the basic highlights, we’re quite lazy sightseers and spent a couple weeks. We like to go out for a day, then kick back for a day or two. So, we decided to work our way around the park from different outside campgrounds.

From the North Entrance we spent a few days viewing the Hot Spring Terraces & the upper loop of the park.

We also decided to take a day & go whitewater rafting on the Yellowstone River. I didn’t want to paddle & Collins had bruised his right hand the day before, so we were in a raft with 4 young guys & a guide. It was a lot of fun & needless to say, we came away drenched!

The new toilet arrived & Collins installed it. It wasn’t a 10 minute job, but 1 trip to the hardware store, luckily right next door, and about an hour later & we had a new working toilet.

The entrance from West Yellowstone into the Park was really a much better location. One could go just about anywhere in the park without too much backtracking.

Yellowstone has several areas of different geographic features. Of course, the most known would be the geysers, of which there are over 300, plus thousands of steaming calderas. Some are beautiful colors & others look like giant steaming mud puddles.

Old faithful was a bust. It’s eruption was probably no more the 15’ high & very anti-climatic.

There is also the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”. The canyon has some pretty colors, plus we saw several of the beautiful 290 waterfalls.

This Barren Mountain has pockets of steam rising out of it

One day we took a trip into W. Yellowstone to see an old car show. It was really interesting to see all the different models so lovingly restored

One day we road our bikes into town & did some window shopping.

We enjoyed our 2 weeks of exploring before we headed off to the Tetons for another couple weeks of sightseeing. This turned out to be a bit more exciting than we anticipated. To get to the Tetons requires driving through Yellowstone.

As we were traversing Yellowstone at about 10 MPH, our towed car broke away from the rig & decided to pass us on the right, going over a small embankment & ending in a field.

Fortunately, the car remained drivable, although the tow bar was toast. Had it occurred most anywhere else, things would have been much more dire to the car & other people.

Since there is virtually no communication in the Teton's Campground where we were staying, or anything else for that matter, after we had the car towed up the embankment, we headed back to our old RV site & made the necessary calls needed to get us back on the road.

After a few days of getting things taken care of regarding the car we again headed off to the Tetons. We started our sightseeing, taking portions of the park a little at a time.

Jackson Lake

Overlooking Jackson Hole

Then came problem #2: the Tetons are 6,000 to 8,000 ft high and we quickly realized Collins couldn’t breathe (literally) at that elevation. After tracking down a two person clinic an hour away, they “suggested” we immediately head to lower elevations. It took about a week for Collins to regain normal breathing.

The next day, we left the Teton's & went to Cody, WY for a few days. This is an interesting little town developed by Buffalo Bill.

One day we paid a visit to the Buffalo Bill Dam & Reservoir. At the time of it's completion it was the tallest dam in the world. We watched a film about it's building. To say the project was a nightmare from the beginning, would be an understatement. We love films at these types of places.

We also went to the Buffalo Bill Museum. It was quite surprising at the size of it. It was really interesting & took most of a day to view.

This completed three of our four remaining un-visited states, with only Kansas remaining. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to come up with a reason to visit there, so that may go un-visited.

Since our plans had been interrupted & we didn't need to be in IL til mid Sept, we spent a couple weeks in South Dakota. We had spent a lot of time there a couple of years ago, visiting all the usual tourist places, so we mostly just kicked back & did a whole lot of nothing.

One day we decided to make a trip to Sturgis & Deadwood. Sturgis is a nothing town when there are no motorcycle rallies going on.

Somehow we managed to hit Deadwood on a weekend when they were having a big car show.

Interesting bar stools at the restaurant

We wandered around the town as best we could, stopped for lunch & decided to head back to home.

Pretty Sunset in South Dakota

By mid Sept we were back in Illinois. While we were there, we decided to take our kids out to celebrate our 33rd Wedding Anniversary. It was such a fun evening.

We also had the opportunity to attend our granddaughter Becca's White Coat Ceremony at Elmhurst College, where she's a nursing student.

Finally, after completing several doctor appointments, in mid Oct we headed to Breaks Interstate (KY & VA) Park for 10 days of relaxation and watching the leaves turn golden red, orange & yellow.

This Park is clearly in the top five we have stayed in, offering most every type of outdoor activity one would want.

We saw deer in the park almost everyday. One day when we drove to a nearby town, we saw a moma bear & 3 cubs dash across the highway.
We considered staying longer, but we kept our reservation at the Redstone Army Arsenal RV park in AL. & headed south.

The drive south was spectacular: the tree colors through the mountains continued to amaze us around each turn, as did the mountains themselves, with their numerous shades of colors.

We had decided Huntsville, AL would be far enough south to keep us warm for the following five weeks, as well as be able to enjoy the changing of leaves again, and we weren’t disappointed in the trees, but the weather was cooler than we hoped. We had a lot of rain & daytime temps in the 40's.

Hope he doesn't fall

We arrived at Redstone just as the leaves started turning, we've spent the past few weeks enjoying the views & getting the rig ready for winter storage.

One wouldn’t think after having lived in it full time for the last eight months this would represent much of a task. However, it entails emptying the basement of everything, cleaning all items, dumping bags of no longer wanted items, then thoroughly cleaning/polishing the outside & winterizing various rig systems, plus doing the same with the inside for a 41’ long, 12’ high rig: this is no small task.

This is a nice campground. Nothing fancy, but large, well cared for & friendly. Last Sat we had a Thanksgiving Pot Luck. The hosts smoked 3 turkeys & a ham.

Everyone brought a dish to share. There were over 30 of us, so we had some interesting & delicious shares.

We didn't know it when we arrived here, but Huntsville has a huge Space Museum & a lot of test equipment here on the Army Base.

Engine from a Space Craft

One day, we took a bus tour of the Army test grounds. It was so interesting.

We were able to see many of the places where they tested many of the parts being used in the spaceships.

Space Craft preparing to dock at Space Station

Purely by coincidence, we were also in an operation center when one of the space capsules carrying supplies for the International Space Station docked there.

When I think of these things going into space, I never stopped to realize what is really involved.

We also saw a display of how they actually turn urine into purified drinking water. Not only is water heavy to carry into space, but expensive.

About a week after our tour of the Testing Grounds, we toured the Space Museum. It was interesting to see so much of the actual equipment.

The space capsules are so small, it's hard to imagine being cooped up in one of those for any length of time.

They also had the lunar land rover on display.

By the end of the first week of Dec, we were making our way back to IL. We parked the RV in a KYcampground along the way for about 5 days & took the car to Lexington to visit my sister & mother. I wanted to visit with her before we left for the winter.

We were able to find a huge warehouse for the RV this year. We were really happy to be able to store it inside.