Jump to content

Roadtrekingmike

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    669

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    17

Blog Entries posted by Roadtrekingmike

  2. Roadtrekingmike
    Yellowstone National Park is America’s first national park, a national treasure and a must visit for every RVer. A place so big it lies in part of two states, Montana and Wyoming.
    We just finished our second trip to Yellowstone in less than a year. I was warned before the first that the place will get in your blood and you will keep coming back, again and again.
    http://youtu.be/e7iUKCJY95Q
    So if you haven’t been there yet, I pass along the same warning.
    It’s that spectacular for those who love the wilderness and getting up close and very personal with it.
    We did lots of hiking.
    There are 12 campgrounds in Yellowstone. They all fill up nightly. Only five - Bridge Bay, Canyon, Fishing Bridge RV Park, Grant Village, and Madison – take reservations. Those are the sites with hookups. They’re okay, but tend to be very crowded. The other seven - Indian Creek, Lewis Lake, Mammoth, Norris, Pebble Creek, Slough Creek, and Tower Fall – are first come, first serve and have fewer amenities. People tend to line up at 8 AM during the season in hopes of getting a spot. Most are filled by 11 a.m.
    Our first night there, we found no room at any of the campgrounds. So we went a few miles outside the northeaste gate and found a beautifully secluded spot at the Fox Creek Campground in the Shoshone National Forest. Then we reentered the park early in the morning and got a spot at Pebble Creek, which has no hookups or plugins, vault toilets and no showers.
    No problem. In our Roadtrek eTrek with solar power, we had our own power and running water.
    We love Pebble Creek. Also Slough Creek, another no frills camping spot few miles down the road. Here’s a hint for those of you on the northeastern part of the park: You can get cell phone coverage at Slough Creek. Take the two-and-a-half-mile washboard road leading to the campground down a few hundred yards to the first pullout and, voila, for some strange reason, the signals make their way around and through the mountains and you can get a great three-bar Verizon signal. I don’t know about AT&T and other providers.
    We love this northeast section of the park because it is home to the Lamar Valley, a popular wolf and grizzly watching area.
    We saw no wolves this trip but did spot several grizzly females with cubs, as well as elk,antelope, mule deer, coyotes, black bear and of course, lots of bison. We had bison wandering through the campground all day and a curious black bear came very close. A lone bull moose also traipsed through the campground one morning.
    The folks who camped at Pebble Creek were also interesting. One guy, Bill, spends from April through August and loves to find and watch grizzlies. Debi Dixon is a professional photographer and a fulltime RVer. She stores a 22-foot travel trailer in nearby Sheridan, MT and is spending the summer at Pebble Creek in a tent. Check out her stunning wildlife photos at flickr.com/photos/seasideshooter. There were two wolf researchers from the University of Washington also tenting at Pebble Creek.
    Every morning, at first light, usually around 5 or 5:30, you’d hear this group head out, separately, in search of wildlife. They’d usually not return after dark.
    What do we do at Yellowstone?
    We also watched animals. But we also hiked, a lot. Every day we did at least two trails. We sat in meadows and breathed clean air. We took afternoon naps. Gazed at the mountains and used a pair of binoculars to spot the big horn sheep. We explored the thermal areas that are everywhere, like at Old Faithful.
    The sad thing for most of Yellowstone’s visitors is people rarely get off the loop roads that circle the park. Some don’t even get out of their cars. With three million visitors a year, those roads can get pretty congested, especially with critter jams, the traffic tie-ups that frequently occur when animals are on the road or along its edges. But Yellowstone encompasses 2.2 million acres, and the loop road is just a tiny part of the park. Yellowstone is one of America’s premier wilderness areas. Most of the park is backcountry and managed as wilderness. Over 1,100 miles of trails are available for hiking.
    That’s where we like to be.
    We loved every moment of it and can’t wait to return.
    Yellowstone really does get in your blood.
    The above video gives you a idea. Come along with us ....
  3. Roadtrekingmike
    We just hit the road after a long weekend boondocking in our Roadtrek eTrek in the wilderness of northeast Minnesota, spending the weekend in it miles from civilization when the overnight temperature dropped to -21F/-29C.
    Call us Ice Station eTrek.
    Those frigid temperatures in the woods were the ambient, real temperature. But we had a very stiff northwestern wind that not only swirled up snow drifts all around s but made for wind chill readings of -50F/-45C.
    We could not have been more comfortable. Seriously. Inside, the Webasto heater cranked out a constant 60-70 degrees of comfort. We dropped it down at night for sleeping and raised it during the day when we were going in and out of the Roadtrek a lot.
    We were up in Minnesota as a communications volunteer for the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, a 400 mile route from Duluth to the Canadian border. I’m an amateur radio operator and I was stationed at a spot where the musher’s trail crosses County Road 8 north east of the tiny, remote hamlet of Finland, about 85 miles into the gruelling race and smack dab in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
    I’ll have a full report and video on the gorgeous country, the race itself and the sheer adventure of it all later this week.
    But many have asked how it all went and how the Roadtrek handled it.
    First, Jennifer and I are agreed that we are hooked on winter camping. The snow was so beautiful, three feet thick off the trail. At night, the stars were so bright and close that they made you gasp. We heard wolf howls as we spent a lonely night out there Sunday and Monday morning, a hundred yards from us, a big black wolf – the Alpha Male of the pack according to one of the other volunteers we met – twice showed himself as curiosity drew him close to us.
    We were dressed properly for cold weather. That’s the secret of course, and we limited our time outside to no more than half hour stretches when we weren’t helping keep track of the passing mushers. Tai, our double-coated Norwegian Elkhound, thought he had died and gone to heaven, though he was noticeable spooked by the wolf. I took him out early Monday morning and he stopped, sniffed the air and had the hackles on his neck raised. I didn’t know why at the time but Michelle, who later joined us at the crossing, said dogs typically are very spooked by wolves. “Sometimes a sled dog team will stop and lie right down when wolves are around,” she said. She’s a musher herself, from Minneapolis, and said the same black wolf, along with a female, were seen last year, too.
    As to the Roadtrek eTrek, except for one minor glitch due to the cold, we couldn’t be more pleased.
    On the advice of locals, I used a blend of the normal #2 diesel fuel with the hotter burning #1 to handle the extreme cold. I used about a 60% #1 blend. Some stations let you mix it yourself from adjacent pumps, others up here sell it blended 50-50. Either way, the #1 helps prevent diesel gelling, which can shut down an engine that starts up after having been sitting all night in the cold.
    But… all was not without incident. When I went to start it this morning – it got down to -23F here last night with a -55F wind chill – the engine turned over but did not catch. The starter battery seemed low and it cranked very slowly. I called a local garage that works on diesel and Greg, the owner, came to the motel with a huge tow truck. It took him all but five minutes to hitch the Roadtrek up and haul it to his warm garage where he got a rapid charger on the battery and thawed out the engine a bit.
    “The cold just sapped the battery to where it had trouble cranking and the oil got pretty stiff with that severe cold we had last night, ” said Mike, the mechanic who worked on it. “It just needed to be warmed up a bit.”
    We were on the road by noon.
    Other than that, the Roadtrek performed flawlessly. I have become a huge fan of the Sprinter chassis and Mercedes engine. The vehicle handles well on ice and snow. And I’ve already raved about the Webasto heater Roadtrek has. Mine has been running continuously since Friday. It’s now Monday morning and we are in Ironwood, MI, in the Upper Peninsula. We stayed in a hotel last night so we could shower. The heater stayed on all night.
    The heater runs on diesel from the engine. Based on our use, I would say that four days of running it has not used any more than two gallons of fuel.
    The only downside I can think of about this is you can’t use running water – the Roadtrek is winterized. You can use the toilet…just flush it with RV antifreeze. Ad finding room for the extra clothing – parkas, boots, hats, gloves, insulated bibs, etc. – can also be challenging.
    I realize the cold and winter camping is not for everyone. That’s okay. That’s why God made Florida and the southwest.
    But Jennifer and I are still healthy and we absolutely love the outdoors and the wilderness. And seeing this country in the winter, covered with a pristine blanket of snow, is soul-soothing.
    In fact, Jennifer thinks it was one of the top most enjoyable boondocking.

×
×
  • Create New...