June 2016 – exitthecube.com

Glacier National Park, Part 1

The land mass that makes up Glacier National Park is long and narrow, shaped like a rectangle or a slanted parallelogram positioned vertically with the Rocky Mountains running lengthwise through the middle. The famous “Going to the Sun Road” which just opened for the summer season after snow plowing was complete, crosses from one side of the park to the other over the mountains. It seems the climate and terrain on each side of the mountains is different. There are park entrances on both the west side and the east side. Coming from Flathead Lake we entered the park on the west side. Still suffering from sun blisters on my ankles from our kayak ride on Flathead Lake I am forced to take a few days of downtime because my feet are swollen and I can’t even put on a sneaker or hiking shoe. The only thing I can get on my feet are some slip-on shoes that almost did not make the cut when I was packing the van. I can’t even wear socks with them so this makes for some cold feet in this wet muddy mess they have going on here. There are four campgrounds on the west side of the park, we decide on Fish Creek campground near Apgar with the mention of showers, even though it is the most expensive campground at $23 a night. They do accept reservations here at Fish Creek but we just show up and are able to get three nights. It turns out there is no hot water in the showers and only 4 showers for 178 sites not to mention they are very far away from where we camped, you are not allowed to drive to them and I have got some bloated feet. No shower at Fish Creek for me.

Lake McDonald is on the west side of the park and there is a grand old lodge built in the Swiss chalet style right on the lake. These old lodges in the park were built a long time ago so that they are a day’s horse ride away from each other and the tourists could go from one to another and experience the beauty of the park. Lake McDonald Lodge offers boat tours and red bus tours on the going to the sun road from the lodge and they also have a nice restaurant with good food. We plan on taking the red bus when we are on the other side of the park at St. Mary. Since it had been a few inactive days, and there was intermittent rain, we ended up spending some time sitting on the back porch of the McDonald Lake Lodge. It is there that we met Magic. I regret that I didn’t take a picture of him. He is a guide dog for a lady who is legally blind. He is a black lab and of course still has that friendly, playful lab personality even though he has graduated from guide dog school. The owner told us he was actually returned to the guide dog school by someone else and when she heard there was a lab available without a second thought she took him right away, not asking why he was returned. Well she now thinks it is most likely because he still wants to play. She said he was very excited about the ground squirrels popping their heads up and down on the lawn here. I did see his tail wagging when other dogs walked by and of course everyone who loves dogs had to stop and pet him. But Magic got to go on the Lake McDonald boat ride and the red bus tour up over Logan Pass even though he had to sit on the floor of the bus which must have been uncomfortable for the pooch. It looks like Magic has a job for the time being in spite of his happy-go-lucky attitude.

Leaving Fish Creek we stayed at a private campground right outside the entrance of the park. We were able to get showers and laundry. With the increased rainfall, humidity and muddy tree debris everywhere, including inside the van, I was getting more and more negative about this region. I just felt cold and wet and muddy. I try to convince Tim to cancel our camping reservations at Banff in Canada thinking this in not the climate for me, we are too far north already. He reminds me that the east side of the mountains has different weather so we should check that out before we make our decision on Banff.

There is a vehicle length restriction of 21 feet on the Going to the Sun road, we are 22.5 feet long. A sign at Avalanche Creek tells you to turn around there, don’t go any further if you are over 21 feet. To get to the other side of the park we have to take route 2 on the southern border of the park. We set our sights on Two Medicine which is a less visited area of the park but they have a campground there, beautiful views, hiking trails and a small ranger station. As we get closer the weather gets drier, the sun comes out, a good sign. Campground is self-registration, first come first serve, perfect for our vision of a non-committed, flexible lifestyle. We are able to get a site easily. The weather is dry and sunny. The scenery here is beautiful. There are wildflowers everywhere. Things are looking up. Two Medicine feels good to us, so we are staying.

View from campsite

Stopover at Flathead Lake in Montana

We are headed to Glacier National Park in Montana but we thought arriving at the park on a weekend would lessen our chances of getting a good campsite. Weekends are always more crowded in the parks. So we decided to spend a couple days at Flathead Lake to wait it out. There are many state parks around the lake but we settled on Big Arm State Park because it is the closest to Wild Horse Island, the biggest island on the lake, and Big Arm is only about 75 miles from Glacier National Park. The island is supposed have wild horses and other wildlife like bighorn sheep. We had thoughts of getting over to the island and seeing some animals. Montana State Parks have different prices for Montana residents and non-residents. However, as a non-resident you can purchase a non-resident pass for $35 and get the resident prices for all Montana State parks for one year. For us it worked out to be a better deal to get the pass so that is what we did. Many sites in the campground are right on the lake. They have a mix of flush toilets and vault toilets and they also have showers for $3.00. There were yurts for rent in the campground as well, it was actually very nice.

Every evening we would take a walk on Meadowlark Lane, a very peaceful street right next to the campground with houses right on the lake. We saw a deer one evening and there were always lots of birds. Most of the houses had boats on trailers, jet skis and camping trailers parked outside. I am not sure if these are just summer homes or if there are any fulltime residents. These horses looked like they had a pretty sweet life in this serene environment. Every time we walked by it seemed like they were eating.

Some things we learned while at Flathead Lake: 1) We need leveling blocks 2) It will take time for our bodies to adapt to the colder temperatures of the north 3) Kayaking is way harder than it looks 4) Never underestimate the evilness of the sun.

The first camp site we chose at Big Arm State Park was right on the lake and the ground slopes down toward the lake. No matter how the van was parked in the small space, it was tilted. Some RV refrigerators will not even work if they are not level but our refrigerator does not have that restriction so we never really thought we would have a problem with leveling the van. One day living in a tilted van proved otherwise. When opening cabinets or the refrigerator things would go flying. Also when we were in bed we just kept rolling toward one side. There are things called leveling blocks that are used in this situation for trailers and RVs. Basically they are plastic blocks that you put under your tires to lift one side or another to get the vehicle level. I even saw people using some wooden 2 x 4s stacked up. So we need leveling blocks but I am not exactly sure how they will fit into the limited space in the back of the van. We were able to move to a different campsite that has a more level parking spot the next day and it was still on the water so that worked out.

It is summer in Montana, people are walking around in shorts and flip flops and enjoying boating, water skiing, fishing, canoeing and kayaking on the lake. Even though the highs are in the 60s at Flathead Lake, sitting on the shore in our camp chairs in the shade with the breeze off the lake was nearly unbearable. I was all bundled up in multiple sweatshirts and a jacket with hood and still felt cold. It stays light until 10 pm up here but I could not stay outside long enough to enjoy the sunset because I was freezing. It is shocking how our bodies cannot handle the lower temperatures at all. Living in Phoenix for over 20 years our bodies are optimized for the heat. Someone once told me that after living in the heat for a while your capillaries are much closer to the surface of the skin. This is a cooling mechanism for the body, but also makes you much more sensitive to lower temperatures. Hopefully, we will adapt at some point.

We expected there would be some sort of shuttle boat over to Wild Horse Island so we could go over spend some time walking around the island but no such luck. It seems you have to rent a watercraft and get yourself over there. Flathead Lake is all about water sports. Not something that we have ever pursued in the past but we thought we should give it a try. We decided to rent a tandem kayak and paddle over. It is supposed to be about two miles and take about an hour to paddle over. We had no idea what we were getting into. The kid that helped us did not really give us any information, just gave us life jackets put the kayak in the water told us to get in and have fun. I was in front, Tim in the back and we start paddling. I had read that we are supposed to stay in sync and both paddle on the same side at the same time so we knew that, but our main problem was we could not stay straight. The kayak kept turning in one direction or the other. While we were floundering not far from the shore, the dad of the boat rental business yells out to us from the shore and says you can hook the straps of the back rests up. It turned out the back rests were not even up or attached. So each of us would try to get the straps attached on our own backrest while the other paddled and we were getting nowhere. I was just thinking we have to get away from the boat rental place because we looked like idiots. Eventually we got going but progress was slow. It was like we were paddling against the wind and the waves from the power boats out there. We kept paddling and paddling and the island did not look any closer. I honestly thought we would never get there, that we were just paddling in place. Our shoulders and arms were getting tired. Exhausted, eventually we got close to the island. We were not sure where we were allowed to land and ended up going ashore on some private land but it looked like the houses were not occupied so hopefully no one saw us. Since we only had the boat for five hours and it took us two hours to get there all we had time to do was rest, have a couple energy bars and then head back. No wild horse sightings. We did make it back in the timeframe with 5 minutes to spare so that is good but kayaking is way harder than it looks!

Living in the Valley of the Sun for over 20 years and being an avid hiker, you think I would know all there is to know about the evils of the sun. Apparently not. When hiking, my legs never really get much sun, I think it is because they are vertical. I have to worry more about my face, chest and arms as far as sunscreen. In the tandem kayak you sit on top of the kayak with your legs straight out, horizontal to the sun. Neither one of us thought to put sunscreen on our legs which ended up getting burnt to a crisp. Tim already had a biker tan on his legs but that is really only from the top of the leg of the bike shorts to the knee. In the kayak his shorts rode up higher on his thighs and they turned totally red. I had capris on and from my knees down to my ankles are red and blistered. Unbelievable!

Rainy and Cold in Missoula, Montana

We always envisioned Missoula, Montana as a cool, hip mountain town similar to other towns we have visited in the past and loved like Boulder, Colorado or Flagstaff, Arizona. But when we arrived in Missoula it was much more urban than we expected. There were lots of cars, stores and people. We decided to stay at a KOA (Kampgrounds of America) because it was in town and we really wanted to check out the town itself. KOA campgrounds have all the amenities – showers, laundry, camp store but the sites were packed in. We were able to plug in and now we actually have a coax cable to get some cable TV as well. They do have wifi but it was just too slow, we had to use our own cellular data. KOA ended up costing $44 per night.

Tim had thoughts of doing a road bike ride in Missoula but the weather was cold and rainy so ultimately we did not ride. We were able to catch the free bus to the downtown area. We had lunch and just walked around. There is a river that runs right through town and a walking path along side. They do have a cycling culture here as evidenced by all the bicycles outside the businesses downtown, so we like that. The Adventure Cycling headquarters is also in Missoula. They are all about bicycle touring. Touring is taking a several day trip on your bike with all your gear strapped on the bike and usually involves camping along the way. Of course there are bikes made specifically for this purpose which can carry the weight and make it up those hills with all the gear. Bicycling touring has always intrigued me, maybe one of these days we will try it.

And of course there are the breweries. We were able to walk to Highlander Beer from the KOA where we had to wait in line at the bar to get beer, then they give you two tickets. They are only allowed to serve each person three beers per day, so you have to trade in your tickets if you want additional beers. Some kind of law in Montana. Each state or county or town for that matter can have its own liquor laws, so we are never sure what to expect. The only food they had at Highlander was pizza and nachos which you also order at the bar and they bring the food out to you. We did have a slice. The beer and pizza tasted great but it was a little cold as we were sitting outside. At least you don’t have to worry about your beer getting warm!

When we were downtown we had lunch a Tamarack Brewing which was more of what we are used to – a full menu with table service in addition to the great beer. The Mafia Citra IPA was delicious! Food was good as well, I was able to get a vegetarian wrap and a side salad so I was happy.

Montana has some kind of legalized gambling. You see tiny “casinos” everywhere like in strip malls and gas stations. Tim kept encouraging me to stop in at Montana Lil’s and see if we could “double the nest egg”. This is a reference to an old movie from 1985 that someone suggested we watch before head out to go live in a van. The movie is “Lost in America”, a couple sells everything and heads out in an RV with visions of “dropping out of society”. Sounds good so far right? At the very start of their trip, the wife ends up gambling away the nest egg in Vegas. They are forced to go back to their old jobs in the city. Let’s hope our story goes better than that one!

As a side note, we had more of our mail forwarded to Missoula but it was a bit more complicated picking it up in Missoula than when we were in Baker, Nevada. Baker only has one post office, Missoula has three. When you address something with the words “General Delivery” you are supposed to put the city, state and zip, no address of the actual post office. Each of the three post offices in Missoula said they offered General Delivery services so since they each had a different zip code we thought our package would be delivered to the post office of whatever zip code we addressed it to. We had it addressed to the zip code of the post office that was within walking distance of the KOA. When we went there to pick it up they informed us that they do not do General Delivery at that post office and all Missoula General Delivery is sent to one of their other post offices. We were able to pick up the mail at the other location the next day. So it seems like the easiest thing to do when sending mail General Delivery is to send it to a small town with only one post office.

Idaho is Beautiful… Who Knew?

When I think about all the beautiful places I would like to visit I do NOT think of Idaho. However, as we spent a little time in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho I felt a strong attraction to the high snow covered mountains, tall pine trees, cool, clean, crisp air, wildlife and alpine lakes. This place is BEAUTIFUL! Stopping at a scenic overlook we struck up a conversion with a couple from Tucson who were snapping photos of their cute little dog Charlie on his adventures. After we bonded over the ridiculous heat of the Sonoran desert they told us about a backpacking trip they took many years ago in this area. They took a shuttle boat across Redfish Lake and went into the wilderness for 10 days. Their fond memories of this beautiful area is what prompted them to come back today. This story just solidified the idea in my mind that this is a very special place.

We found some cold weather when we spent one night at Murdock Campground, a National Forest Campground in the Sawtooth National Recreation area. The campground only had 11 campsites so I was worried that it was getting late and we would not be able to get a spot. When we arrived there were only 3 sites occupied, we pulled into a perfect site where you can hear the river running. Very refreshing after our night in the RV park. It was a cool 45 degrees when I got up the next morning. The camp host was interested in our van so Tim invited her in for a tour. She told us about her position, she is a manager responsible for 5 NF campgrounds. She works for a company that is a concessionaire for the Forest Service. Her and her husband act a camp host for 3 of the 5 campgrounds and the remaining two have their own hosts. Of course the manager position pays more than a host, but she did not share how much. Her company also has positions in other places. Since Idaho campgrounds are only open in the summer, as an employee you can work in other places like Arizona in the winter. Something to think about for the future.

We stopped at Redfish Lake for lunch. They had motor boats and paddle boats and kayaks for rent. There were also cabins and bicycles to rent and a little general store. It seemed very cold to me by the water with the wind but there were some young girls in their bathing suits sunning themselves on the beach and two poor girls were actually in the water. I don’t know how they were doing it. There was even a dog beach, an area where the dogs are allowed to be off leash. We loved seeing the dogs play. We couldn’t help but think of our boy Max who died over a year ago. He wouldn’t be content to play with his own toy on the beach like these dogs, he would be running up to every dog and person and jumping on them with wet muddy paws! With all the amenities and the beautiful lake, Redfish Lake would be a very nice area for a family vacation.

I really wish we could have stayed in the SNRA longer but we have some reservations that are driving us to continue making progress. Even though we have heard time and time again, don’t travel too fast, stop and immerse yourself if it feels right, we have already made a full-timer rookie mistake and we are pushing to get somewhere by a certain date and tiring ourselves out in the process. We have driven about 900 miles in our first week on the road.

As we move on we are thinking all of Idaho must be beautiful. Then the landscape starts turning into something vaguely familiar… no….can’t be… we are in the desert again! Bright warm sun, barren land, no trees, what??? We see National Forest campgrounds in full sun on the side of the road. Where the heck are we going to stay? It is getting late in the afternoon, I have a bit of a meltdown trying to figure out where we can stay. In the end we found a BLM (Bureau of Land Management) campground on the Salmon River with a grove of cottonwood trees providing some shade. $10 for our overnight stay. Not too bad.

First RV Park

It was time to do laundry and take showers so we figured we would try an RV park since they all have these things included in your nightly rate. Well the shower is included, the laundry is coin operated but at least it is located in the park. And of course the RV parks are expensive because they have to maintain all these services, this one is $35 for the night. RV parks always look like parking lots to me and I am turned off to them, but chores need to be done so we are giving it a try. Leaving Great Basin National Park everything seems very far away. It really is in the middle of nowhere. We have discovered that driving the van can be much more tiring than driving a normal car. Since it is longer than a car you really have to plan lane changes ahead of time and since it takes a little while to get going you have to have a decent gap when pulling out. So we have been swapping off driving every couple hours or so and we try not to drive more than about 300 miles a day. After all, there is no hurry, why kill ourselves?

The closest place to stop turned out to be the town of Wells, Nevada, a very small town next to the highway. We are staying at the Angel Lake RV Park. RV parks have full hookups – electric, water, sewer, this one also has cable TV hookup. We did plug the van in to the power source but discovered that 1) we do not have the correct hose to plug into the water source for a constant connection and 2) we did not realize that we would need our own coax cable to plug in the cable TV. If we had known we would have saved one from the apartment. So we are still working off the water in our 30 gallon fresh water tank. We have been using it for washing hands, brushing teeth, washing dishes and there is still quite a bit left. We did however dump our grey water when we were in Great Basin National Park because they had a dump station. Tim has done the dumping of the grey water once before so this was the second time for him, first time I have seen it done. So here’s the thing, we have a 30 gallon tank of fresh water and we have two grey water tanks, 10 gallons each, one for the sink and one for the shower. We have only been using the sink, not the shower, so the 10 gallon tank was filling up and had to be dumped but we still have plenty of fresh water.

Washers at the RV park were $2 each, dryers $1.75 for 45 mins. We got the quarters from the office and that all worked fine. Showers were fine, clean enough. It is finally cool, rainy and in the 50s at 10 PM.

View from the RV park. Industrial yes, but beautiful mountains in the background.

Leaving Wells and heading north we decide to stop in Twin Falls Idaho for lunch at Shoshone Falls Park. Amazing waterfalls and nice grassy area with picnic tables.

Great Basin National Park in Nevada

Our first experience with getting mail on the road went smoothly. We had the traveling mailbox forward our mail to “General Delivery” in Baker Nevada. Baker is a very small town right outside the entrance to Great Basin National Park. We arrived in Baker and the tiny post office was right on the main road coming into town. Picked up the package without incident and went on our way to the park.

Great Basin National Park is a place I have wanted to visit for a long time. A coworker had told me that it is a very quiet National Park and there is a lot of hiking, sounded perfect. I read that it is high desert terrain and the second highest mountain in Nevada, Wheeler Peak is there – 13,000 feet. We were hoping to stay at the Wheeler Peak Campground which is up the mountain at 10,000 feet. It must be cool there, right? It turns out they have not opened that campground for the season yet because there is still a lot of snow but they expect to open it this weekend. We will be moving on by then. We are staying at Baker Creek Campground, a couple miles from the visitor center down a well graded dirt road. It is all first come first serve, so we had to drive around and look at the tags on the site number posts to see if the last person had left the site and it was available for occupying. There were quite a few sites available so it was no problem finding something with a little shade over the table. It was very sunny and hot even though the campground is at 7500 feet, but I think this is still part of the heat wave that we had in Phoenix before we left and temperatures may be above normal. Once you claim your site you go to a self-pay station, put your money in an envelope, fill out the info and rip off the top part which shows the date and number of nights you are staying and that is what you clip onto your site number post. This is the cheapest camping we have had to date – $12/night. I have heard it is a good idea to secure your site with some items that show that it is occupied when you go out for the day. So in addition to leaving our camp chairs, I decided to put up my small backpacking tent to “secure” the site. The campground has all dirt roads the brand new van is getting very dusty and dirty inside and out. But this will be the new way of life!

There is a cave here, Lehman cave, the park service gives tours. I am not really interested in caves, but it is a main attraction here so we had to go on the tour. Very interesting formations in the cave, and interesting stories of its past. Apparently there was actually a wedding in the cave sometime in the 1920’s. There was also a “speak easy” inside the cave during prohibition where people would come from the surrounding towns and have a drink!

We decided to hike out the Baker Creek Trail. There is small trail from the campground about a mile to the trailhead. Once on the Baker Creek Trail you cross the creek several times, go through some pine forests, then to an open meadow, and on the way back it gets much sunnier and exposed and we even saw a few prickly pear cactus, which we are familiar with from living in the Sonoran desert.

We also hiked Pole Canyon trail to Timber Creek and I actually saw wild turkeys on the trail! They looked like big dark brown geese. Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough with the camera, but at least I saw them, so that was cool!

Great Basin has been designated an International Dark Sky Park. Other parks have this designation as well such as Big Bend in Texas and Canyonlands in Utah, but I am not clear exactly what the designation does for them. Somehow it helps preserve the night sky. We went to the ranger’s astronomy program which started at 8:30 pm as the sky is darkening. There were a lot of people there! The theme of the ranger talk was how as a modern society we have become disconnected from our night skies. He talked about how ancient people such as the Greeks made up stories about what they saw in the night sky such as the constellation Cassiopeia, a queen who was being punished because she boasted that she was more beautiful than the gods. This upset the gods so she was banished to sit on her throne for eternity in the night skies. The ranger believes the main reason we are disconnected from the night skies is the increasing light pollution in our cities. He encouraged us to make up our own stories about what we see in the night sky to become closer to it. The rangers then had two telescopes set up and we got to see the moon in detail, craters and all, then Jupiter and three of its moons. Since there were about 50 people it took a long time to get through the line to look in the telescope and we were getting tired. We left early and did not get to see the other planned object viewing. They are also building an observatory here but it sounds like it will be mostly for research and not public viewing.

I believe we as a society we are not only disconnected from the night skies but we are disconnected from the outdoors in general. We live and work in climate controlled environments that are optimized for our comfort. Living out on the road, we are feeling the effects of different weather, because we are out there in it! We are not used to that! So far we have experienced heat which is normal desert stuff, high winds, right now as I am sitting in the van and it is shaking and it is too windy to sit outside because all the stuff just blows away, and rain which cut our walk around the campground short.

I understand why this park is not visited by a lot of people. It is hard to get to and far away from any civilization. As we head out it seems like it will take a long time to get anywhere.

An Unexpected Gem

Heading north out of Jacob Lake we went into Utah. We had a quick overnight at Little Cottonwood Campground in the Fishlake National Forest, 6 miles outside of Beaver Utah. It turned out to be a very quiet place, not very many people, a multitude of different types of trees and the Beaver River running right through the campground which was very nice. There was even a concrete path down to the river for people to fish. Flush toilets, sink and water spigots for drinking water. A little hotter here that we would like, but hopefully we will get to the cool weather soon enough.

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We took a walk from the campground out to the main road and as soon as Tim said “this road is NOT cycling friendly” (no shoulder at all) a road cyclist went by, full kit and all!

We have not had a real shower since we left the apartment 3 days ago. Coming off a backing trip in Grand Canyon with my friend and her daughter, not showering for a couple days is nothing new to me, freshening up with wipes and soap and water to get by. If you are asking “what about the tiny shower in the van”, the answer to that is the bathroom in the van is acting as storage area at the moment so we are not ready to try that out yet. We have too much stuff and still need to thin things out and get organized. So the time has come to try out a pay shower at a truck stop. We went to a Sinclair in Beaver, $8 and we can go in together, so really $4 each, no time limit, they give you towels and wash clothes, what a deal! You get your own private room with shower, sink and toilet. It was great to get some high pressure hot water!

It’s a Brand New Day

I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it out of the furnace they call Phoenix. Unfortunately, there was a heat advisory the weekend we planned on leaving. The temps went up to 114 degrees. This made it very difficult to go back and forth to pack the van especially since the van had to be parked far away from where our apartment actually was. Going across the parking lot with boxes in that heat is draining. But I have to say my husband did the bulk of that work, with intermittent breaks in the AC. There was just so much stuff and it had to go into one of three places, the van, the Goodwill or the dumpster, the decision making was exhausting! We got up at 5AM and left town around 11:00 AM and then drove about 300 miles.

But it’s a brand new day and we are now in the ponderosa pine forest of northern Arizona where it is cooler but not as cool as we would like. It is still in the 90s during the day but 50s at night. We are staying at Jacob Lake Campground in the Kaibab National Forest which is 44 miles north of the North Rim of Grand Canyon. We have driven through here many times but never stayed overnight. The campground only has vault toilets and water spigots for drinking water and it was a bit pricey at $18/night plus a $9 reservation fee, so $45 for two nights. It is most likely because of the proximity to the Grand Canyon. We have trees on our site, bathrooms are clean and neighbors are quiet. We had Verizon LTE service the first day which was downgraded to 3G the second day. Went for a short walk from the campground on the KAI-VAV-WI trail. Mostly we are resting and recovering from the last couple weeks of getting everything ready to go.

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