Roadtrekingmike

Yellowstone National Park is one of our most favorite places to RV in all of North America. It draws us back and its sheer size and beauty is breathtaking. We couldn’t resist sharing the wildflowers with you. I don’t know the names of them. But I do know they are stunningly beautiful. I think you’ll agree. As macro as the place is, it is also meant to be seen on the micro level, close up. So it was on our most recent trip, which just happened to correspond to the height of the spring wildflower season. Every color of the palette was visible, in forests, meadows and sagebrush-steppe. http://youtu.be/_-IFQxwJmpQ The place was literally ablaze with wildflowers. We saw dozens of different varieties and colors. The National Park Service tells us that Yellowstone is home to more than 1,350 species. There is white mule’s-ears and phlox, yellow arrowleaf balsamroot, blue penstemon and lupine, and Indian paintbrush’s glorious reds and oranges. Magenta shooting stars, purple sugarbowls, delicate white woodland stars and leopard lilies So we missed a lot, We photographed as many as we saw, as you can see in the video.

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 ....

On June 22, 2013 – at sunset local time from coast to coast, across the U.S., into Canada, as far north as Alaska – 19 different Roadtrek owners took a photo of their Roadtrek. Some were parked at campgrounds. Others in their driveway. Some drove to a special setting near their hometowns. I was at a rodeo in Cody, WY with mine. The point was to get a photo of our Roadtrek motorhomes at sunset, wherever we were. We’re thinking about doing this sort of thing a couple of times a year. Maybe for special occasions like the 4th of July (for Americans). What do you think? This little slide show shows what came of our first effort. Should we do this again? When? Shall we theme the photos?

If you thought you saw Devils Tower in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, you haven’t seen Devils Tower. It’s much more impressive, even without the Hollywood special effects aliens. We made our way to the Devils Tower National Monument from Gillette, WY, about 55 miles away. It’s a great drive through lush and wide open Wyoming rangeland and prairie. There are two RV parks there, one from the National Parks Service, one from KOA. Both offer spectacular views of Devils Tower. But we drove up to the visitor’s center, parked our Roadtrek in a regular spot and spent a great afternoon. There is parking for larger RVs but it can be very tight and the area for big rigs often fills up. Devils Tower is a monolith of rock that protrudes 1,200 feet above the the Belle Fourche River, standing all by itself, like a lone sentinel over the surrounding grassland. You start to see it from about 10 miles away and, at first, it doesn’t look that impressive. Until you get up close to it. There is something mystical about it, spiritual even. Indeed, the site is considered sacred to the Lakota and other tribes that have a connection to the area. Prayer cloths, prayer bundles and ribbons are found throughout the area, attached to ponderosa pines by native Americans. So many people just look at this monument from a distance, driving by. If you come here, don’t do that. Hike the tower. There are several trails you can take but we opted for the 1.3 mile route that circles the tower. It goes up and down a lot and can be quite strenuous for those not used to exercise but there are lots of benches and places to sit and if you want to really experience the tower, you need to do this. Take your time. Listen to the silence on the north side, away from the visitors center and the lone road leading to the tower. Smell the pines. See the wild flowers. Look carefully at the tower. If you look close enough, you’ll see moving specks on the tower. Those are rock climbers. Bring along a pair of binoculars. They will fascinate you. Hundreds of parallel cracks make the tower one of the finest traditional crack climbing areas in North America. The tower was America’s first national monument, designated by President Theodore Roosevelt under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Allow at least three hours to experience it. No one knows for sure why its called Devils Tower. Some Indians called it Mato Tipila, meaning Bear Lodge. Other American Indian names include Bear’s Tipi, Home of the Bear, Tree Rock and Great Gray Horn. In 1875, on an expedition led by Col. Dodge, it is believed his interpreter misinterpreted the name to mean Bad God’s Tower, later shortened to Devils Tower. The Lakota have a legend on how it came to be: “One day, an Indian tribe was camped beside the river and seven small girls were playing at a distance. The region had a large bear population and a bear began to chase the girls. They ran back toward their village, but the bear was about to catch them. The girls jumped upon a rock about three feet high and began to pray to the rock, “Rock, take pity on us; Rock, save us.” The rock heard the pleas of the young girls and began to elongate itself upwards, pushing them higher and higher out of reach of the bear. The bear clawed and jumped at the sides of the rock, and broke its claws and fell to the ground. The bear continued to jump at the rock until the girls were pushed up into the sky, where they are to this day in a group of seven little stars (the Pleiades). The marks of the bear claws are there yet. As one looks upon the tower and contemplates its uniqueness, it isn’t hard to imagine this legend as fact.” – from the Crook County, WY Pomotion board On the way out, check out the prairie dogs. Black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus), to be precise. They once ranged the Great Plains from southern Saskatchewan to northern Mexico. Now, only in a few concntrated areas. Originally named “petits chiens,” or “little dogs,” by early French explorers, these highly social animals are not really dogs, but rodents. They are members of the Sciuridae or squirrel family, closely related to ground squirrels, chipmunks, woodchucks and marmots. There are five different species of prairie dogs, but only the black-tailed prairie dog inhabits Devils Tower National Monument. They’re curious and will chatter warnings to you if you get to close. But they are fun to watch and are natural posers for your photos.

RV rallys can be small or spectacularly huge. FMA's 88th Family Reunion and Motorhome Showcase in Gillette Wyoming, in June 2013 was one of the big ones. There were more than 2,300 coaches, 5,000-plus RVers and several hundred other vendors, dealers and exhibitors. Gillette’s massive 1,100-acre CAM-PLEX exhibition center was jammed with motorhomes literally as far as you could see in any direction. Big rallies like this are not for everyone. Camping spaces are cramped, with rigs parked just a few feet apart. Smaller RVs like Class B coaches are dwarfed by behemoth-size Class A machines. I found a group of six Roadtreks parked in the dirt off by some rodeo corrals. A handful of others were scattered through the vast complex. But most folks come to a big RV rally like this for other reasons besides camping. They come because this is where the action is. They come to learn, attend seminars, take organized tours of nearby attractions, enjoy musical shows and entertainment at night and to reconnect with old friends. Many used this western town as a starting spot for trips to nearby National Parks like the Tetons, Yellowstone or Glacier. The event celebrated the 50th anniversary of the FMCA. Older, beautifully restored motorhomes from the early days of RVing were on display. The CAM-PLEX complex offered pretty much all the amenities you’d want, full hookups, trash pickup and clean bathrooms and showers. Wi-Fi was widely available, though understandably slow at peak times because so many were using it. Same with BYO Wi-Fi offered through those hot spot cards like Verizon’s Mi-FI (which I use). With so many people now using them and in such a concentrated area as the CAM-PLEX, the cell towers were maxing out in bandwidth during prime time. This part of Wyoming doesn’t have a lot of trees and when a fierce windstorm whipped up Tuesday evening,dust and dirt blew everywhere. Fortunately, a strong downpour soon followed and the dust was washed off. But winds blew strong most every afternoon. Wednesday was particularly breezy, with some gusts over 40 miles an hour. Flags snapped in the breeze and antennas rattled on roofs. But the rally rallied on. At least there were no bugs. Not in these winds. Jennifer and I attended several seminars, I taught two of them, we checked out the exhibitors and visited with folks. But we also took day trips every afternoon, unhooking and driving to area attractions. Thursday night’s entertainment was by the Buckinghams, a popular pop group from the Sixties, who performed their hits and other oldies to the delight of many in the crowd who, 40 years ago, were the one buying their records. The crowd seemed delighted to reconnect with the music from their youth in Gillette. I could go on and write a lot more words, but pictures tell the story much better. Scroll down to see some photos that hopefully give you an idea of what a big RV event like this is like… click on any one to see it bigger, right click to save to your hard drive: