US Travel Journal Part 1

July 23 2008

Well, David and I got off to a slow start, but we made it out of California on the first day on our road trip in our RV! :) We had to do a bunch of last minute packing this morning and a final run to the grocery store. We have so much food! Our fridge is packed full of yummy food. Should last us for a bit.
But, we are on the road...the start of our long road trip! We are planning on traveling around the US, exploring all that is good about the US: the sights and nature! Our plan is to head north first to try and beat the terrible heat of Southern California. Once the summer starts to cool into fall, then we'll hit up sights in the southern regions of the US.

For the first night, we decided to stay at a truck stop for the night. It's free! But, boy, is it hot out here in Nevada! We are stopped a little ways North of Vegas on a dirt lot sandwiched between trucks. Our generator is working great and A/C has finally cooled off the RV to a temperature we can sleep at. It's kind of weird: someone has been shooting off fireworks north of us. We are in the middle of no where. Not sure where they are coming from. Luckily, they have stopped now so they don't keep us up! Tomorrow, we are off to Northern Utah (maybe Southern Idaho). My camping and tour books that I picked up from AAA are coming in handy. I already have a bunch of great ideas for sightseeing in Idaho (including a trip to the Potato Museum!).

That's all for tonight. I'm heading to bed. Stay tuned for the continuation of my travel journal around the US. :)


July 24, 2008

Tonight will be a short entry. I'm pretty tired. We did a lot of driving today and it is very very hot outside. It's always a funny sight to see when I arrive at a campsite and manage to look at myself in the mirror after a long, hot drive and see a bright pink face staring back at me. Yes, it's hot. Hopefully, wherever we end up tomorrow, it is significantly cooler during the day. Of course, I'm freezing now cuz we have the A/C on full blast inside the RV. We found a place with Wi-Fi but I think I'll wait to post until I have more to excite you all with. :) Time to get under the covers! Good night.


July 25, 2008

Today we drove through Idaho up to Montana to just south of Helena. We did a lot of miles today. We stopped in Idaho Falls for lunch. It was on my list of things to see. When reading the description in the AAA book, it didn’t seem to be a very large falls, so I wasn’t expecting much. We found a hotel parking lot to park and made lunch. Conveniently, it was right next to a shaved ice place in a caboose! Good shaved ice!

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We walked around for a bit and took pics of the falls. It turns out that the falls are man-made and are part of a hydroelectric project. Boy was it hot there and the falls didn’t cool it down at all.

We decided to stay the night at a rest stop in Montana. It is a pretty area. We are surrounded by mountains. Hopefully tonight will be cooler since we are dry camping. We hope to reach Glacier NP tomorrow. We’re gonna make a pit-stop in Helena at the AAA office to pick up books and maps of Canada and pick up some groceries. Signing off for tonight…


July 26, 2008

Yay! We made it to Glacier NP! We weren’t sure if we could make it here before dark, but we drove into West Glacier at 6 pm. We booked a campground for tomorrow night here expecting to sleep somewhere else tonight. I could have made it for tonight instead. Oh well! But we managed to find a cute RV place in West Glacier called San-Suz-Ed. We have internet here! And I have cell signal. It still amazes me that RV parks have Wi-Fi these days. It’s pretty neat tho.

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We’re planning on heading into the park tomorrow. We want to hike so we need to find some trails. There’s a free shuttle service that goes around the park so we plan on making use of that. I’m glad the park provides that since we aren’t towing a car! Still not sure how we are gonna get around Yellowstone NP when we visit there. So, anyway, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Our RV park has a community campfire so we investigated that tonight. A bunch of old people. :P David had a fun conversation with an ex-photographer. Should have brought the marshmallows out to roast!! Oh well. Another night.
K, bed time for me. Goodnight!


July 27, 2008

Is it still summer? It didn’t feel like it this morning. I had to turn the heater on so I could take a shower! But then, once I went outside, I was hot! It must be all the shade that the beautiful trees up here in Montana provide.
We explored West Glacier and Apgar today. We located our campsite for tomorrow night. It’s a dry camp, but, in a pretty location right near Lake McDonald.

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We had lunch next to the lake and took some pics. So beautiful! Except that I managed to close David’s flip flops in the electric steps! Oops! They still work at least. :P The water is crystal clear and there was gorgeous cloud cover that really added to the look of the sharp mountain peaks in the distance. We can take a shuttle from Apgar campground all over the park for free!! We’ll make good use of that!

We are staying at Glacier Campground tonight. The lady put us way in the back next to the woods. We are at the top of a hill (almost small mountain) and are surrounded by thick tall trees. The campground has a rustic feel to it so I feel like I really am camping (except for the fact that we are in an RV have water and electricity!). Tonight, we roasted marshmallows and made smores. Our wood was a little wet so we only got a small fire going and created a lot of smoke. But, the treat was nice.

Tomorrow, we’re going on our first hike in Glacier NP. Should be fun! Night!


July 28, 2008

We had a nice relaxing sleep, got up and packed up camp. We had to vacate of our campsite by 11 am, so we refilled the fresh water tank (that’s the water we use in the RV) and dumped all the nasty tanks (grey and black water tanks). I was able to check my e-mail while David dumped cuz there was Wi-Fi in the clubhouse next to the dump station! Then we headed over to Apgar Campground. We looked in the A loop for a spot. All the spots were pretty tiny. While we tried one spot out, we had our second mishap on the trip. David caught the tailpipe on a tree stump. He bent it a little bit, but was able to bend it back and it’s still working. It’s all part of RV-ing! Next time, I’ll get out and help him park. (His RV is huge; I’m glad I’m not driving it!). Anyway, then we got stuck in the spot cuz it was really small and I’m not very good at directing big vehicles. So a nice guy in the campsite across from us came over and helped direct David out. Whew! We found a nice wide spot a couple of spots down and safely parked the RV. Our spot is right next to the shuttle stop and McDonald Lake.

We went out for a short hike this afternoon. We tried out the shuttle for the first time. Boy, does it take a long time to get from Apgar to Logan Pass. It took us an hour and 45 minutes!! There is road construction near the pass that is causing a lot of delays and the shuttle follow the posted speed limit laws. Once we got there (to Logan Pass), we found a neat trail that takes you along side the mountain, high up above the road which brought us up to Logan Pass.


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There were a ton of mountain goats! The view from up there was fabulous. Glacier NP is so pretty! We hiked for about 2 hours total before returning to the shuttle stop and found a huge line. It took us 2 hours to get back to the RV.
The shuttle service is a good idea in theory, but it doesn’t seem to work very well yet. They need more shuttles (for one thing). Also, they need to be more frequent and I think they need to rearrange their route stops a bit.

But, anyway, we finally got back to the RV, had dinner and played cards until it was
dark enough for David to take pics of the stars at the lake.

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It is so beautiful at night. The lake was so calm that it reflected the stars like a mirror. I’ve never seen that before so it was really neat. Simply amazing. You guys will have to check out those pics online too. At one point, we thought we heard movement in the woods (we are fearful of bears cuz they have them here). So, we quickly packed up and headed back to the RV. We fell asleep looking up at the stars from our bed. :)


July 29, 2008

We woke up bright and early (7 am) so we could try to beat traffic out to Logan Pass. We wanted to hike the Hidden Lake trail today (6 miles round trip). We got to the shuttle stop at 8 am and waited until 8:40 am for one to show up! We made it up to the pass at 10:15 am. Luckily, the lighting was still good for David’s pics. It was cold up there! There’s still snow on the ground. Part of the trail was covered in snow. That was fun tho! At least my shoes have good traction. Poor David was slipping everywhere, but he had his trekking poles to help him. At the lookout point, the view of the lake was breathtaking.

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Along the way, we encountered many more mountain goats and a few marmots. We hiked down this steep path to the lake (luckily there wasn’t snow here). The lake is crystal clear like many of the streams and lakes in the park. You could even see fish swimming in it. We had lunch here and I played with a butterfly while David skipped stones across the lake. Soon, we headed back to the shuttle. I was happy we got up to the lake so early cuz on the hike up, there was barely any people. On the way down, I felt like I was tripping over them. It got so crowded! And the shuttle was worse today. Tons more people! No line system whatsoever. We finally got on one shuttle that went a third of the way to the camp, got off and caught another shuttle bus back to camp. Yep, I’m pretty tired. It was a long day. I’m gonna head to bed early tonight and have fun with the shuttles again tomorrow. :P Goodnight.