On to Yellowstone ... or our tour of stinky holes in the ground

Okay, despite my sarcastic title, Yellowstone is a really awesome place. It has to be one of the most natuarally active areas that I have ever seen. It is geologically very active, the wildlife activity is unreal and even the weather when we we there was intense. We had on and off thunderstorms while we were there. The day after we left, it snowed in September! Over two days we did the quickie tourist tour, but I could definitely see spending a few days here hiking and biking off the beaten path.

The best way to describe Yellowstone is through pictures, so lets start with stinking holes in the ground. Yellowstone is a still active volcanic caldera with a lake in the middle. Not very far under the lake is a pool of molten lava that keeps pools of water above bubbling, steaming and spewing at nearly every turn around the caldera rim.

Our first sighting of thermal vents as we entered Yellowstone on the west side.

Here Rhonda stands next to a natural hot tub in West Thumb Geyser Basin. The water is actually scalding, so it is not safe to take a dip.

Deep calcite encrusted pools in West Thumb Geyser Basin.
 

Hot springs in the Mud Volcano area of Yellowstone Valley. The bubbles on the surface of the water is actually steam being released from underground.

Pools of primordial bubbling sulphur mud in the Sulphur Cauldron area of Yellowstone Valley.

 A pit toilet near Yellowstone Lake. Hey how did that get in here? I guess its another stinky hole in the ground.

 

Mammoth Hot Springs on the north side of the park. Absolutely spectacular and the rain cleared just in time for us to get some pictures.

Another shot of Mammoth Hot Springs.

Old Faithful. The grey plume on grey skies doesn't make for a good picture, but it was a sight to see in person.

At every turn we also saw wildlife in the park. The wild Bison were everywhere to the point of almost being annoying as they just stood in the road holding up traffic, the elk were common and on our last day we caught a Grizzly in the distance that I was able to pull up with our telephoto.

Yellowstone Elk

Yellowstone Bison posing for tourists.

Yellowstone Grizzly Bear taken with a telephoto. I wasn't going to get too close.

That concludes our two days of Yellowstone, next we headed to South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore.

Across Idaho

We didn't end up taking many pictures of Idaho as we came across for whatever reason, but that in no way diminishes our opinion of the state. We encountered some of the nicest people in Idaho. After the "Hermiston Incident" I had a couple parts that I wanted to replace ... like the wheel hub that looked like melted cheese. As we checked store after store in Boise, unfortunately to no avail, the lengths that people would go throught to try and help us out was amazing. I guess I am used to a more general, "nope, don't got it, see you later." approach, instead, every store I went to was researching their catalogs to see if they could find it or referring me to another vendor that might. We ended up at a semi parts service center and while they did not have the parts I was looking for, they thought they had something "in the back" that might work and went looking for it. In the meantime, I swapped stories of trials and tribulations on the road with the chatty front desk guy. In the end, they didn't have what I needed, but I got to spend the day with some really nice, hard-working people that didn't help you because customer service was their business, but because they were the type of people to lend a hand to anyone that needed help.

We liked Boise. It seemed like a very active city, and lots of restaurants, hangouts and a sense of culture that develops around university towns, since this is where Boise State is located. For recreation there is a 25 mile greenbelt park along the Boise River through town or the Sawtooth mountains are less than an hour away. Our campground was right along the greenbelt and unlike other similar pathways, we saw dozens of bikers, joggers and dog-walkers all using this path. They use it, they are proud of it and they keep it well-maintained. I also have to give two thumbs up to 10 Barrel Brewing that has brewpubs in both Boise and Bend, OR. They had some great food and even better beer. I really liked their beer "Pray for Snow", which is pretty similar to one of my favorite beers of all time, Arrogant Bastard by Stone Brewing.

After leaving Boise, we took the backgroads across on highway 20. On this trip, one of our goals is to see lots of small-town America, the kinds of places you don't see from the highways, so when it makes sense, we will be trying to stick to highway 20 on our way across as much as possible. This road starts in Newport, OR and goes all the way to Boston.

While the interstate 84 through Idaho follows the Snake River, Highway 20 cuts up into the high desert and goes right by Craters of the Moon National Monument. This is an area of numerous cinder cones and barren lava beds. As a geology buff, I found the area interesting, but I wouldn't recommend a long diversion to see the area. We did pass through Atomic City and it wasn't until later with a google search that the significance became clear. Atomic City is where the very first nuclear reactor to generate power was tested. While a fraction of the size of modern reactors, it only powered four 200-watt lightbulbs. Today, Idaho National Laboritories is still located there. Supposedly they still have a couple of active nuclear reactors funded by the Department of Energy where they continue to run experiments to make nuclear power safer and more sustainable. However, with 4000 people working in this remote desert complex of thousands of acres of off-limits area behind chain-linked fence, the conspiracy theorist can't help but wonder if something more nefarious is going on out there.

We pulled into Rexburg, ID just about an hour and a half outside Yellowstone and ended up staying a couple days just to get a few preventative things checked out on the Jeep before we were truly in an area without auto mechanics. Highway 20, goes right through Yellowstone National Park, which is definitely an item to check off on the old bucket list. Consistent with our experience across all of Idaho, the campground host at Thompson's RV Campground, Connie, was one of the nicest and most talkative ladies I have ever met. For our time there, I was generally called "Honey" and Rhonda was called "Sugar". She was just one of those people that you find immediately endearing.

Escape from Portland

Welcome to our blog for our travels across country. As you can imagine when a lot is happening, it is hard to find time for blog posts and when nothing is happening, you finally find time to catch up. Right now we are sitting in Mitchell, South Dakota waiting for the wind to die down. Little did I know that much like sailing, when traveling across country we would have to watch the weather. We are not in a hurry, so instead of watching the gas gauge drop before your eyes as we try to pull the trailer into a 20 mph headwind at 7 mpg, we are hanging out here. After all, what better place to stop, since the biggest (and only) attraction in town is the Mitchell Corn Palace. (note the flags whipping in the 20 mph winds)

In the mean time I am backdating a few blog entries to catch you up on what has been going on.

We finally escaped from Portland, but we almost didn't make it. Since arriving in Portland it has felt like one thing or another popped up or broke that kept us in town waiting on something as parts arrived or loose ends were tied up. We actually had one failed attempt where we got as far as The Dalles and determine we were going to be a lot better off from a handling perspective if we installed a weight distributing hitch and a brake controller ... so back to Portland to wait on more parts to arrive.

We finally hit the road on September 12th. We actually made it as far as The Dalles again before we had our first break down. Fortunately a good samaritan flagged us as he drove pass that there was something amiss with our trailer tire. I had just repacked the bearings, so my first thought was, uh-oh what did I screw up now. My first thought was that I had not seated the bearings correctly and that was what was causing the wobble in the tire, so I snugged up the axle nut a little ... as I would later find out ... huge mistake, axle nuts should be a little loose, not tight. I only publish my stupidity here in the hopes this helps someone else out sometime. We still saw some wobble in the tire, so we pulled the trailer across the highway to the local Les Schwab in The Dalles. They confirmed that one of our tires was "off-round", which I have come to understand can happen when the trailer sits too long on one side as it had sat for the last couple of years. The heating and stress of starting this long trip had caused the plies to begin to separate and it had gotten worse fast. The thing I love about Les Schwab is they focus on quick customer service, so within an hour we had a set of new tires and were back on the road heading east. I did not think to loosen the axle nut now that we determined what the real problem was.

We pulled off the road near Hermiston and I immediately knew something was amiss. A pool of black grease from the wheel hub was all over the rim and the plastic dust cap that covers the hub looked a little like melted cheese. It was then that it dawned on me that I had not loosened the axle nut earlier in the day and that had caused the bearings to overheat. Later I heard horror stories about bearings fusing to axles and wheels just snapping off when this happens ... fortunately we caught it before anything like that happened. Of course I loosened the nut, but we decided once again to take it to the Les Schwab in Hermiston to determine what kind of damage I may have done before setting out on this big trip. I should get some kind of frequent flyer discount. Sure enough, the bearings on that tire were in pretty bad shape and took some coaxing with a puller to get them off. However, no damage was done to the axle, they had a new set of bearings and again within two hours we were ready to hit the road.

We decided we had all the fun we could take for the day, so we pulled into a campground in Umatilla nearby. Pretty much the only thing that anyone from western Oregon knows about Umatilla is that they have stockpiles of chemical weapons being incinerated there. Oh well, despite the town's dubious reputation, the campground was a really nice grassy field with a few trees with a great view over the Columbia river.

We contemplated returning to Portland a couple times that day, but each time, we figured nothing else could go wrong and there were services to fix the problems we encountered along the way, so we kept going ... and indeed it did get better from here.