Theodore Roosevelt National Park

 We had debated for quite a while whether the trip over to North Dakota was worth a 3 day drive. In the end, we decided it was, because we’d never spent any time there, and although there doesn’t seem to be all that much of interest, there IS a national Park.

Unfortunately the drive there was not uneventful. Driving down the highway we heard a loud popping noise. We both froze, listening and watching, to figure out what happened.  The truck was still running and the trailer was still where it should be.  About 5 seconds later, Paul- I am always thankful that he is so technically inclined- said “ we blew a hose”.  There was no shoulder and nowhere to pull off.  I looked on google map and found a pull off 4 miles ahead.  Luckily it wasn’t so serious that we couldn’t make it that far.

Sure enough, the cold side Turbo something or other hose was not only  disconnected, it was broken. A bunch of duct tape later, we were able to continue on our way to the nearest town with a decent RV park. Finding a new hose was not a piece of cake. There are 15,000 of them on back order with Ford. NO one had one. Realizing it wasn’t going to be a quick fix, I canceled our reservations for the next few days.  

We (he) finally found one, but when we called to see if they would overnight it, it turns out they didn’t actually have one- but he actually emailed us later in the day to tell us that his competitor does have one in stock. We didn’t care for the price and it wasn’t the exact hose we needed but it took 3 days just to find that one, so we had them overnight it. We still ended up spending 5 days in the little town of Glasgow Montana dealing with all this.

The upside for me was that the RV park was part of a motel, and there was an indoor pool, suitable for swimming laps, hooray!

Because the truck was still usable, we were able to do some food shopping and even went out to eat one night. Once we knew the part was on its way, we went off exploring for a day. The only thing of interest that we could find was the Fort Peck Dam. 

As seems to be the case everywhere we go this summer, Lewis and Clark came thru this area on their famous expedition. At that time, this was just the Missouri River, but the dam was built in the 1930s, creating Fort Peck Lake, the 5th largest man made lake in the U.S.

Once the new hose was installed, we were on our way to North Dakota. 

Theodore Roosevelt National Park has 3 sections- we explored two of them. This park was created in the 1940s to commemorate all that Teddy Roosevelt did for conservationism. In fact, while president, he was responsible for creating The U.S. Forest Service, 18 national monuments, 5 national parks, and 150 national forests- 230 million acres of land.

These badlands were where Roosevelt had his ranch- and the peacefulness he felt here is partly what inspired him to conserve so many wild areas for future generations.

The south section of the park was full of wildlife- from adorable prairie dogs to feral horses. 

If you’ve never seen what a prairie dog town looks like- this is it.  

A field of holes. Usually prairie dogs are standing watch just outside their homes, but there are not many predators here, so they seem more comfortable without the lookouts.

Bison are prevalent here too, as we discovered when we got stuck in a bison jam. 

It doesn’t bother me when people stop briefly in the middle of the road to take a picture, but it annoys me when they essentially park there for 10 minutes, blocking traffic.

At least I got a couple of decent pictures myself.

The north section is an hour away and deserved an entire day of exploring. Although there is wildlife here as well, we were focused on the hiking.

We chose a 4 mile trail – Caprock Coulee- which turned out to be an excellent choice.  

The first half mile was an interpretive nature trail. There are two types of erosion at work in the badlands- rivulet erosion, which you can see-the channels in the stone are created by rain. The other is differential erosion. The under layer erodes away but the rock that creates the cap is harder and doesn’t erode as fast.

The rest of the trail was just fun- with great views and some interesting rock formations to hike on. 

Eagle Nest and on to Colorado (07-01-20)

Looking at a map, our goal was to find someplace that looked interesting, where perhaps we had never been and someplace cooler than 90 degrees.  The small town of Eagle Nest, NM- population 300- fit the bill.




The most popular pastime in this area is fishing, and seems like everywhere we looked, whether it be Eagle Nest Lake, or the nearby rivers, we saw people doing just that.

This is one of the tightest RV spots we have ever had to squeeze into, and I don’t want to say how long it took.  But once in, the people in this park are some of the friendliest we have encountered.

 We were told that in a normal year there would be more socializing, but with Covid, they were just doing a distance Happy Hour on the pavilion.















We even had someone play the guitar for us one night.  It was definitely fun and it felt good to be in the company of others.














With a name like Eagle Nest, I had my eye out for some eagles, but we never did see one.

We hiked two trails in our 4 days here.  The first was Oeste Vista Trail. It was about 3 miles and 500 ft of gain, but the altitude is almost 9000 ft, so we were huffing a bit, for sure. The view from the top wasn't spectacular but there was a nice bench to sit on, and overall the trail was decent.









On our way home we stopped at a very well done Vietnam Vet Memorial.  We could only walk the outside, so I never found out why it was here, sort of in the middle of nowhere.

Our second hike was shorter but more fun. The trail follows Clear Creek, with several small waterfalls and a few bridges that crossed over the creek.

Once we reached a pool about a mile in, the scramble started- up a very steep embankment and along a rock ledge. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it past that part, but I did- no pictures though, I was too busy trying not to fall.  Ironically, once we made it past the tough spot, I decide I had had enough.

From the trailhead we drove down the road to the historic town of Cimarron. To get there we passed by Philmont, the 140,000 acre Boy Scout camp. We would have explored more if more things were open but as it was, we just decided to have lunch in the very historic Express St. James Hotel. 






The Hotel was originally built as a saloon in 1872 by Henri Lambert,  and hotel rooms were added later. Well known guests included Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Annie Oakley. During it’s wild wild west days, the common question around town was “ I wonder who got killed at Lamberts last night?”

Its much tamer now, and has a great outdoor patio, and the food was great!













Our visit to Eagle Nest finished, we plotted our course for our next destination- Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Colorado is full of mountains, so it does take some planning. We chose to go up and over Wolf Creek Pass.

This sign along the way was quite ironic, as the landscape surrounding it was definitely dull and brown.

As we chugged up the mountain, with a 7 percent grade in some places, Paul realized that the truck has yet another issue.  The turbocharger that we had replaced about a year ago is not working again, and we crawled up the hill at 30 mph. Not good.  We did eventually make it to the top of the pass, thankfully, but our relief was short lived.

As we started the trek downward, we were bombarded with signs of all sorts, some detailing the location of hair pin turns, others warning us when we were going over the 25 mph speed limit, and yet others letting us know how far we were from the runaway truck ramp.

I was so busy being nervous, I could barely enjoy the gorgeous scenery around us.  Imagine my horror when the truck started beeping an alarm and the “CHECK BRAKE SYSTEM” alert started flashing on the dash.






As Paul was calmly trying to explain to me what the problem was, I literally couldn’t understand him and told him he needed to pull over to talk. Being a good husband, that's what he did, and then explained that there was no problem with the brakes, it was just a bad sensor. Most of me believed him, but I was still happy when we got to the bottom of the hill.

At that point I could pay attention to the gorgeous scenery, and the colors of Colorado went from brown to beautiful shades of green.

The day ended on a high note when we got to our campsite and saw how close it was to the river. Now we could relax with an adult beverage ( or two).

The First Few Days (05-24-14)

We've already experienced some of the differences between the camper and the trailer. After leaving Yosemite, we came across a small museum in Mariposa and easily stopped in to learn about the history of the area.

Mariposa became more heavily populated in the mid 1800s when gold was discovered here. The museum is home to many artifacts, including a collection of interesting letters- titled Dear Charlie- that were written by a young man who came here from Boston to Strike It Rich, and wrote of his adventures to his buddy back in Boston.

 
 
 





 
 
We moved to Carson City where we spent the night in a casino parking lot, a first for us. In the morning we met with friends Margie and Crys for breakfast before moving further north. The only picture I took was of the casino where we ate, because we actually got lost in there trying to find our way out.
 
 
Eventually we made it out and hit the road. Technically, I know that everything has to be stowed before we move anywhere, and yesterday I was reminded of how important that actually is. When we stopped for lunch, the coffee pot was on the floor and its contents were spewed all over everything. It took a bit to clean it all up. Apparently though, that wasn't enough of a reminder for me because when we stopped later in the day, the fruit was all over the floor. I had taken it out of the sink, where it travels, to clean up the coffee. Hmmm, hopefully I've got it figured out now.

Dozer is slowly acclimating to all the changes for him. He is still trying to find some spots to sit where he won't be in our way and/or get stepped on.

 
 
 







 
 
 
We didn't bring his huge automatic feeder, so he is re-learning to beg us for food. He eats so fast that he chokes on it ( you would think that after 12 years with us, he would know that there will always be food!) so we have been using his food ball to feed him. There are holes in the ball and he has to bat it around for pieces to fall out, which they do- one at a time. Keeps him from choking and serves as entertainment for him at the same time.




 
We have also managed to change his feeding times to 6:30 am and 6 pm instead of 5 pm and 4 am.


We hadn't decided whether Dozer would be better off traveling in the truck or the camper so I rode with him in the camper for a short distance to see what happened. What I discovered sent us to the internet searching for a solution. The camper rocks a lot. Too much. So we found a Lance dealer in Reno that was willing to order the stabilizers we need. They were shipped overnight to him and we picked them up.

When we left Reno we had no destination in mind. We have a basic route we plan on taking and we figured we'd just drive and see how far we get. We got to Oregon, where we spent the night on BLM (Federal ) land

. We pulled about a half mile off the main highway and just pulled over for the night. Once we were set up and relaxing, we looked and saw what we though was an approaching squall line, or fog, coming from the Cascade Mountains.





  We were glad we were off the road. The squall line turned out to be a dust storm that blew through, cutting visibility substantially. It was a fun storm to watch, since we didn’t have to drive in it!






The next day was completely clear- a beautiful day. We both thoroughly enjoyed our night on the BLM land. We were the only people for as far as the eye could see, and it was so peaceful, not to mention, free!  We couldn’t have made it down this road with the trailer and its exactly the reason we decided to make this trip in a truck camper.




We are about 2 days from the Canadian border and are trying to make sure the rig is functioning the way we want before we cross. Shipping anything we might need to Canada or Alaska would be pretty pricy! We already have another issue to address.

 The air compressor isn't working and will need to be fixed before we go much further. We bit the bullet and reserved a campground near the border where we can have the part shipped.  It’s been ordered and should be there Wednesday.  In the meantime, Paul has installed the stabilizers and we will determine tomorrow if they are enough of a solution.  If they aren't, then we’ll have to have some new sway bars shipped to us in Idaho, and that will delay us another few days.