EscaPOD Adventures

Friday, the day after our grandson's 8th grade graduation, we took off headed northbound with our intended stopping point of West Yellowstone. We chose it for a couple of reasons. First is that our older daughter and family were planning to travel up on Saturday to join us. We had originally discussed them camping with us, but in the end, they made motel reservations in West Yellowstone. It took much of the day to travel from South Jordan up to West Yellowstone. Again, it was a scenic drive.

We arrived in West Yellowstone in the late afternoon and checked in at the Pony Express RV Park. This is an adjunct to the Brandin Iron Inn, which seems to have bought out the Pony Express Inn and now uses it as expansion. The RV park is across the street from the P.E. Inn and next to the B.I. Inn. The proprietors were friendly. We had a pull-through spot which was apparently sized for motorized RVs. It was no problem to pull the RP179 into the spot and get it lined up for electric, water, and sewage hookups. The only potential issue was that the post was 50A. However, the office had adapters available for use without charge. The only condition was to turn it back in before we left which we did. The spaces were partially shaded. They were close together, but that was not an issue. The rates were reasonable, and we knew that we would not be doing much more than sleeping there since our days would be taken up with touring Yellowstone NP.

I had not taken pictures of the set-up with the awning deployed. The evening before we left, the wind picked up so I stowed the awning both to protect it and to cut down on the noise of the fabric flapping against the framework.

Since it was somewhat late when we arrived, we did not go into the park Friday evening. Instead, we went over to a new restaurant that had just opened, the Firehole BBQ which featured central Texas style BBQ. The owner had underestimated demand that first day, so much was sold out when we got there. However, they did have a rack of ribs which ended up being spit between my wife and me. They were very good and the side-dishes were pretty good also.

Since our daughter and family were driving up and not expected to get to West Yellowstone until early afternoon, we went into the park (using my Access pass). It is a significant drive from West Yellowstone to the Madison campground (full) and information center. This lies at the junction of the West Entrance Road and the Grand Loop Road, Madison-Old Faithful. We decided to first head south on the GL Road. Highlights were the Firehole Canyon Drive and Fountain Paint Pot areas. This was our first view of some of the volcanic activity evidenced by geysers, boiling springs, and mud pots.

Fountain Paint Pot:

Celestine Pool:

Fountain Geyser:

Since it was getting on toward noon and we expected to meet our daughter and family in West Yellowstone for lunch, we headed back toward West Yellowstone. On the West Entrance Road, we came up on stopped traffic. It soon became apparent why the traffic was stopped.

This was an unexpected surprise and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be this close up to live North American Bison. It turns out this was not close enough. After the first three passed, this happened:

This one was walking directly toward the front of the truck. It turned aside just enough to clear the mirror. I could have easily reached out and touched it as it passed. I thought better of it as those horns looked like they could do a good can opener job on the truck if I got it upset. Still though, it was quite an experience!

We left our younger daughter's house after spending several days visiting and helping with a number of projects which she had not been able to get to after her move. We plugged in the GPS for South Jordan, Utah, figuring we would be taken up through Las Vegas since that seemed like it would be the fastest way. Instead, we traveled up 17 to Flagstaff where we saw a sign for Meteor Crater. This was also a place I had wanted to visit, so we made the 30 mile trip east to get to the access road and then drove almost another 6 miles to get to the crater.

What can one say? It is a BIG hole in the ground. It was interesting to see that NASA used the area to train for the moon landings. It was quite windy, especially near the rim where it seemed the side of the crater was accelerating the wind.

After leaving the crater, we drove west on I40 toward Flagstaff and then turned off on US89N We drove through some beautiful landscape on our way north through Arizona. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, like the Painted Desert, is very colorful.

We continued on to Page, AZ where we stopped for the night. We had, unfortunately, run out of daylight before we got there so we did not get a good view of what was probably some pretty spectacular scenery heading into the Grand Canyon area.

Time to start writing about our first major 2018 trip.

This one was again out west to see our daughters and their families. Our trip lasted over a month and covered 6481.4 miles (not all of it towing, but most of it was). We also fulfilled a lifelong dream of seeing some major sights. This was also the major test of our new Hensley Cub hitch.

Our first leg was from North Carolina to Tempe, AZ. We went along I40 with a detour off there to visit a friend in Oklahoma. The trip was uneventful, in part because the Hensley hitch does indeed work better than the Equal-i-zer which I had been using. I would always feel the wiggle when a truck was passing us before. With the Hensley, a number of them sneak up on me as I don't get that wiggle. I still do get a push from some of the flat-front busses and RVs that passed us, but it is not a wiggle from the hitch pivoting. Overall, I rate the Hensley hitch very highly. The one instance that concerned me was when we hit what would have been a dust devil if it had been over dirt but was not visible. It did catch the truck and nudged it harder than any of the trucks that passed us. Perhaps because it was rotating, it introduced a different type of force. It was not enough to be dangerous, but it did remind me that I am still towing a sail. This happened a little later in the trip, but I was discussing the hitch here, so I mentioned it here. After that, I put the Hayes No-Sway back on as an additional safety measure. The one thing I think is different is that the Hensley hitch seems to cause a rougher ride in the R-Pod as we would find things on the floor that previously had stayed in place.

After we left Oklahoma, it was back onto I40 for the trip to Tempe. That is, until I saw the sign for Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. A quick check of the map and I saw that it would not take us too far out of our way. I was able to use the Access pass to go in to the park and we drove the length of the road, stopping to take pictures and stopping at the gift shops to pick up souvenirs. Among them are two batches of petrified wood to go into our rock tumbler to be polished. Hopefully, we will get some good pieces to the turned into jewelry when they are done. We did not get back onto 40 for the trip into Tempe, but instead were on a combination of back roads and roads through national forest lands. It turns out that after we went through, a fire broke out in the area we had been on not too many days before. We did not have any problems, but had we come later, we would have.

We had a good visit with our younger daughter and her two boys in Tempe, AZ. We spent several days there. They were busy with helping to get some jobs done that had been postponed but needed doing.

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