Trod Bogs Sadly – Oddstray's Blog

We’re going to take up a whole blog post on GNP. It was probably the highlight of the trip, and had the most stunning outlooks and heart-stopping overlooks.

We took the ‘Red Bus’ rather than trying to drive ourselves on that winding narrow road (Going to the Sun). A jolly good thing, in our opinion, as we could concentrate on seeing things rather than driving. The road through the park, as a whole, was a complete zoo. My opinion is that they should ban private vehicles, and just have the buses. Then, everyone would have some room.

Anyhow, enough opinion, let me introduce you to Lauren, our bus driver and extremely competent tour guide, even though it was her first season:

We traveled from the East (St Mary) to the West (Lake McDonald Lodge) and back, and the photos, which are largely unremarked upon, are roughly in that order.

This photo above is, in addition to a waterfall, a slot canyon.  It is also an earthquake fault.  That slot goes back into the rock for a mile or so!

All so absolutely stunning.

More to come…

We’re back home, now.

Kinda stopped posting in northern California. But we have a few items that might be interesting…..

B is (obviously) on the right. On the left is Gary (pau hana) who happened to be in a different RV park near Susanville, CA. He also has a Lance trailer and is a prolific contributor to LOA (Lance Owners of America). We went for a pretty nice lunch and wandered around the town.

This is Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho.  We camped nearby at Farragut State Park. Day-tripped to Coeur d’Alene (very pretty University city). The lake is sooo long that it goes all the way up into Canada. Got rained on. Not very hard.

This is one of the falls of the Kootenai River, MT. We stayed at a great ex-KOA RV park in Troy (Kootenai River RV Park), and on the advice of the owners…

”’ went on a huge loop north, nearly into Canada along the Yaak River (falls photo above), and back down the Kootenai River in a big circle.

This is a view from our campsite in Kalispell, MT, of the Flathead River. Those mountains in the distance are where Glacier National Park is.

Hungry Horse Dam. Near the western entrance to Glacier National Park. That big orifice is for when they need to release flood water in a big hurry.

More later.

Here’s a link to a Google map showing where we have been on this trip. Given some kind of internet connection, we’ll try to keep it up to date.

When this post was first written, we were at Juniper’s Reservoir RV Resort, where we were camp hosts a couple of years ago.

We’ve moved on a lot since then….

Happy times 🙂

There is Gold Lake:

And, along the side of Hwy 49, east of Sierra City:

Extremely shaky zoomed image at the Imogen Heap concert in San Francisco:

Whilst at Lake Solano, we saw beautiful peacocks:

North Fork, Yuba River:

A few weeks ago, we ordered and received some Vantech Roof Bars for the van. The main idea was to provide support for one or more solar panels.

I’ve taken a while to get around to installing them, but yesterday, I had the inclination and opportunity. Here they are:

It wasn’t a particularly difficult job, but why, oh why, did they require the use of both 12 and 13 mm metric wrenches?

Not much to add except that they didn’t fall off when driving along today.

The last couple of nights we spent at Coyote Lake County Park, above Gilroy, CA (garlic capital of the world!!!).

It’s a really lovely park, along by the reservoir.

But each camp site had ‘bear boxes’ and taped to them was a warning that wild pigs that weren’t afraid of humans abounded.

The following morning, B got lucky and got a few shots of the pigs:

Later that day, I was sitting outside the trailer, listening to music over headphones, and one of them came up and nuzzled my leg. I don’t know who was more surprised when I jumped.

Subtitle – Some you can, some you can’t

We planned on heading to Horse Creek Campground at Lake Kaweah, where we enjoyed a stay a few years ago. It’s a Corps of Engineers facility, which, in our experience, are generally very good.

This time it was not to be, as the campground gates were locked shut. It turns out that the campground was flooded from all the rain and snow melt coming off the mountains to the East.

So we stayed overnight at Lemon Cove Village RV park, a few miles down the highway, and booked a site for a couple of nights at Camp Edison on Shaver Lake for the following 2 days.

Holy cow! The road after the Auberry turn-off goes from about 2,000 feet to 5,000 feet in just a few short miles, literally going up the side of a mountain. By the time we reached Camp Edison, we were near 6,000 feet up.

Clear, sunny and warm in the morning, thunder and rain and cool in the afternoon both days. That’s fine 🙂

Well, we’ve started out on this summer’s trip. First stop was Glen Helen Regional Park, at the base of Cajon Pass, the place where railtracks and Interstate 15 combine to make an overnight stay less than peaceful.

We moved on the next morning and headed to Tehachapi, to Mountain Valley (really) RV park, which is a pretty relaxing place, so we decided to stay two nights.

One of the features of Mountain Valley is the Glider Port abutting the RV park. So it’s kind of neat watching the tug plane towing the gliders up into the sky. Photos follow:

Getting ready

getting started…

airborne…

tow plane…

glider…

up and away…

It took 12 months to realize that our van conversion just didn’t work. Main complaints being that there was too little space between the shelves for 2 folks to sleep comfortably, and that accessing whatever was on the shelves was a PITA, requiring scrambling around on knees, finding the correct container, and so on. Plus, we found that if we happened to have a 120 VAC connection nearby, there was no easy way to bring that connection into the van, and shut the door at the same time.

We also wanted to keep to the idea that we could turn it back into a plain van. So, no permanent structures that would impede full access.

So, we got rid of the shelves. Sold them on Craigslist.

The issue of the 120 VAC connection was easy to solve. We got San Diego Trailer Supply to install an external socket….

and a 20 amp breaker and 4 way socket….

So now we can hook up our Indel B fridge/freezer and a 400 watt battery charger for our ‘house’ battery (plus charge up or power anything that needs 120 VAC).

To solve the storage issue, we got a MorRyde Slide out tray and had San Diego Trailer Supply install it…

That thing is just fantastic! It’ll support 400 pounds and slide out 80% of its length.

To remedy the sleeping problem, I used rivet nuts and lengths of 1.5 inch aluminum right angle bolted to those rivet nuts along each side of the van, to support half inch birch ply, itself braced with aluminum C-channel, to create a bed platform above the slide out tray…

 This turned out to be pretty darn rigid, but we have some ‘legs’ that we can brace it with, if needed.

This now means that we have plenty of space for the inflatable mattress…

We haven’t yet actually slept up there, but we’ve tried bouncing around as though we might have been, and it seems solid. My pals were concerned that the stresses on the rivet nuts might be too much for the inner side walls. This does not seem to be the case.

More to follow….