We're going on an adventure!
Ferrett and I celebrated our 20th anniversary this year. One of the things we've talked about doing in the future is renting out or selling the house and living fulltime in an RV-maybe even before we retire, since both of us work remotely. But he has no camping experience, so I proposed that we celebrate this momentous anniversary by outfitting our Ford 1998 F250 cargo van, Sebastian, for camping and go out to Yellowstone, then wander back across the country. (The acquisition of Sebastian is another story; ask if you are curious.) Ferrett immediately dubbed our trip a "vanniversary." So, after getting new tires and a thorough once-over for Sebastian, we set out at the end of October. This is the tale of the trip.
Vanniversary Day One: We didn't get through one day without an adventure! About four hours from home, just outside South Bend, Indiana, all the sudden Sebastian was slowing down and losing power. In the pouring rain we pulled over to the side of the Indiana toll road, and blessed Past Gini for joining AAA.
We were towed to a garage, where they confirmed Ferrett's diagnosis of a bad alternator. Did we mention that we had a new alternator put in literally six days before we left? Fortunately, the people at the garage were very nice, and our regular mechanics, Drellishak’s, are very awesome. Between the two of them they arranged for our alternator to be replaced with no money out of our pockets-no “pay now and we’ll get you a reimbursement” nonsense.
But that put us about four hours behind our scheduled driving plan. Which meant we would have trouble getting to Yellowstone before midnight or so the second night. I called and was able to move our two-day reservation back one day. This was our first night of sleeping in the van--it probably would have been smart to take a practice run in the driveway, but we believe in living dangerously! We pulled into a TravelCenters of America at about 1:30 in the morning. Getting a settled was a bit of a comedy, but once we were, we slept well. I worried that sleeping in a parking lot would be scary, but there were many other cars and vans stopped overnight, so we felt very safe.
Vanniversary Day Two: The TravelCenters of America parking lot where we slept was just over the Wisconsin border into Minnesota--I'd planned on us being all the way across Minnesota by the end of day one, but all things considered I figured we'd done pretty well. Got up in the morning, grabbed McDonald's, and headed out.
After a very good start, we discovered that Ferrett’s laptop cord had finally broken, AND our stuff wasn’t charging. So we stopped at Best Buy in Bismarck, ND. After a total of FIVE trips into the store, which included returning things that didn’t work, we got on the road again, with the plan to get to Bozeman.
I wasn’t counting on two things: 1) Just how close you have to get to Billings for ANY civilization to appear, and 2) that the low fuel gauge on Sebastian stopped working at some point. So there we were, once again on the side of the freeway, out of gas just 6 miles (as it turned out) from a gas station and thanking the stars for AAA. At least it wasn't raining, and we were at the wide place of a freeway entrance. So it wasn't scary, just frustrating.
Ferrett took Shasta out for a widdle, and when she tried to jump back in the van, she slipped off the running board and tore out a rear toenail. I realized this when I saw bloody footprints all over the upholstery of Ferrett’s seat. So we had to break into the first aid kit we'd brought at the last minute. We bandaged her up and stopped the bleeding. (The paw has healed nicely and she never even limped on it--the only time she reacted at all was when we were bandaging it!) Crisis over, but Ferrett's seat had a Hannibal Lecter vibe by the time we were done. We made jokes about hoping the cops didn't stop.
Gas arrived via a local tow truck company, and we drove on into town. So there we were, still 200 miles from our hoped-for destination for the night. It was well after 9, and in a show of impressive self-control, I stifled my compulsion to get back on schedule. Instead, we stayed the night at the colorfully-named Town Pump truck stop.
Vanniversary Day Three: got up early and headed for Yellowstone. Ferrett was just as wowed with it as I'd hoped. We started from the north entrance, and hiked around some of the volcanic features there, then worked our way down into the park and the really impressive stuff--geysers and fumaroles and bubbling pots. We even managed to arrive at Old Faithful just before it went off--no waiting around for an hour.
Then it started snowing. Weather predicted 6-10”.
We headed to our campsite and made dinner among the pines in the kind of picturesque drifting flakes that recall all those Hallmark cards. I was happy, because this was the first day that had gone as we'd planned. (Spoiler alert: it was also the last day to go as planned.)
The dog, in the meantime, was cold and upset that we weren't getting back in the van and turning on the heater. We had her on a long lead, and she jumped back into the cab of the van and glared at us. So we called it an early night and climbed in just as it was getting dark.
The most strenuous part of the trip was getting settled in every night. The memory foam mattress did a great job of helping keep us warm, but it’s like crawling across a marshmallow. With two hefty adults, three big quilts, and a dog, something is inevitably on top of the thing you’re trying to lift--often that something is part of yourself. So settling in was a comedy of coordination. The dog was just fed up and wanted to curl up under a blanket. She didn’t understand the need to organize and kept snarling at us for moving her around. But finally we were snuggled down and slept warm.
Day Four dawned with about an inch of snow, but quite cold. Ferrett was frigid through and not in a mood to stand around in the cold waiting for food. (This day really pointed out our difference in experience: he thought it was an extremely difficult experience; I put it as about a 3 out of 10.) So I suggested we drive into West Yellowstone and get breakfast before heading for Yellowstone Falls.
As we headed out we noticed that half the gate for the campground entrance was closed, but since they were closing the campground as of the next day I figured it was to discourage campers. The road had some ice, though not much, and was vacant.
Until we got to the gate. There, we saw all the incoming traffic backed up, and all the entry gates were blocked. Well, we didn’t want to be closed out at the west gate, so we turned around and headed back in, figuring to go to the lodge and grab something to eat before we headed to the falls. We passed the campground-where the gate was completely closed now-and got to the junction.
Which is where we saw that they'd closed the Park Roads. We were baffled, because the roads weren't really bad. Ferrett suggested that we drive back to the campground and ask. Turns out, we were the last people to escape the campground before they shut the gates to keep everyone in. They said they were not allowed to let anyone out, because all the roads were closed. "We'll open the gate and let you back in," the attendant said. "Or," I said, "we can NOT get locked in and leave the park instead." She said the rangers weren’t letting anyone drive and we might get a ticket. I said it was worth the risk to not be stuck in the campground.
So instead of another day in Yellowstone, we headed toward Devils Tower. The west entrance of Yellowstone was not the ideal place to start from, but since they were saying more snow was in the forecast, I didn’t want to spend several days stuck in a campground.
We arrived at Devils Tower after dark. It was kind of cool, seeing it loom up as a silhouette against the night. The campground was open, so we once again got to cook our dinner and briefly enjoy camping life. We even had a hot breakfast in the morning!
But by the time we cleaned up the dishes and repacked on Day Five, fog had settled all around the tower. We drove up there anyway-it was visible up close, through the mist. We hiked all the way around the base in increasingly bad weather-rain, then snow. So we hightailed it for Mt. Rushmore and the Spirit of Crazy Horse Monument.
As we drove up toward the park entrance, could see Rushmore from outside the gates, but the snow was getting more serious, so we decided to skip going in and head for Crazy Horse. Which was pretty amazing. We could see the monument through the snow when we went into the visitor's center, where they invited us to watch a short movie. At the end of the movie, you exit the back of the theater to a large, airy room with huge windows that provide a spectacular view of the monument. I assume. All we saw was a white-out. We just had to laugh.
The visitor center is an impressive museum of indigenous handicrafts and history, but we had to rush through it because the snow was really starting to worry us. We drove back down out of the mountains and stopped for gas in a howling wind. The folks at the gas station told us that Highway Patrol was closing the gates on I-90. Wanting to avoid, again, getting trapped, we made a break for Badlands National Park via a state highway. (Don't we sound like bandits?)
We drove through the western edge of the park, but had no idea what the camping situation was there and no signal to investigate. We quickly outpaced the storm, but by that time we were running on junk food and desperate for real food. So when we reached the wee burg of Interior, SD, we looked for restaurants.
My experience with small towns verging on national parks is that they become little tourist traps-cute boutiques to entice tourist dollars. Apparently this portion of Badlands does not attract enough visitors to encourage such a transformation. All the housing was mobile homes, and there were exactly two restaurants, both of them looking to be more biker bars-no, more like movie sets for biker bars-than eateries.
We stopped at one of the two and asked if they had food. "Only pizza," the bartender said-meaning something like Totino's, no doubt. He said the other place had steaks and burgers. We thanked him and headed back out to the van.
Sebastian wouldn't start. Dead, in the three minutes we'd been inside.
We sat there for a moment, horrified. Would AAA even be able to find us?? Fortunately, we have a little battery jumper cable--everyone should own one, I swear. Ferrett attached that, and we were able to jump Sebastian back to life. But at this point, camping in the depths of Badlands seemed like maybe not the best idea ever? So we hightailed it for the interstate.
We stopped for gas a little while later, and Sebastian started right back up. So, fueled with gas and fed some protein, we drove on to Sioux City. There we spent the night in the lot of a Flying J, which was by far the dirtiest truck stop I've ever seen. And they blared country music all night long-apparently their way of discouraging overnighters but not actually throwing them out. Didn't matter to us, though; we collapsed into a dead sleep.
Day Six started well. Sebastian kicked right over, we drove into Sioux Falls and had breakfast at a cute little place that even let us bring Shasta inside. Buoyed by this experience, we decided to slow our pace and enjoy a leisurely meander the rest of the way home. Starting with a visit to the actual Sioux Falls.
If you ever get a chance to go there, I highly recommend it. This was probably the most picturesque waterfall I've ever seen. Rugged, with multiple cascades, and just impressive. We walked around the park with Shasta until we were all getting cold, then headed back to the van.
Sebastian wouldn't start. Oh, we were able to jump him back to life, but now we were worried about how many times we were going to get away with that trick. So off we went on I-80, headed toward home.
We stayed the night in a really nice TravelCenters of America lot-they will be my go-to for any further camping adventures, and had to jump the van in the morning. For the rest of the drive we just idled when filling up the gas tank, and arrived back home on Wednesday. But I'd taken Thursday and Friday off, so by gum, I took Thursday and Friday off. I needed the rest-driving over 3500 miles in seven days much of it in howling winds that made me fight to keep the van on the road (Sebastian is as aerodynamic as a sail) left me pretty darned pooped!
All in all, though? It was a great trip. We saw lots of cool things, showed that Ferrett is okay with camping, and kept our sense of humor and adventure through the entire trip. I have to take Sebastian in to find out where this short is that's causing problems, but otherwise he was great to travel in. Next fall: South, for a better chance at good weather.