2021 Summer Trip Part 5 - Travels With The Grandkids

The final segment of our summer trip was spent with 5 of our grandkids: Denae, Beau, Akston, Reayen, and Elynn.  Our son Topher volunteered to fly out with the kids from San Antonio, TX to Salt Lake City, UT where we planned to meet up.   So we needed to get to Salt Lake City.  When we left Apgar Campground in Glacier NP on August 7th we headed to Helena, MT where we stayed at the Sam's Club for the night.  The next day we drove to Idaho Falls, ID and once again stayed at Sam's Club.  On our way out of Idaho Falls the next morning we stopped at the South Tourist Park located along the Snake River.  This is a very lovely park with camping facilities and a wonderful bike path that follows the river into Idaho Falls.  We got out the bikes and took the trail all the way to the Idaho Falls LDS Temple.

Scene along the Idaho Falls Greenbelt Bike Trail

LDS Temple behind the falls 

We continued our journey to Salt Lake City to meet up with the grandkids.  We decided to rendezvous at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant in Layton, UT which is just north of SLC.  Topher flew in with the kids, rented a car at the airport and drove up to meet us (very brave thing to do...one adult flying with 5 kids).  On their way to meet us they stopped to buy a birthday cake....it was my birthday...August 9.  After the birthday celebration, we all bedded down in the RV for the night and next morning we all headed north to Bear Lake.  We stopped at a beach on the lake for a while and drove into Garden City, UT to eat at Zipz where we had burgers and raspberry shakes.  Then we drove on to Allred Flats Campground in Wyoming where we spent the night.  

Topher getting ready to fly with
Denae, Elynn, Beau, Akston, & Reayen

Sleeping in the RV

Traveling in the RV

A stop at Zollinger Park in Providence, UT

On the beach at Bear Lake

On August 11th we got up early and took a hike up Little White Creek which flows through the Allred Flat Campground.  It's flows through a beautiful little valley with numerous beaver dams and the grandkids found wild raspberries.  When we got back to camp Topher and Beau had to leave to get back to SLC to fly home.  We continued with the other 4 grandkids heading for Tetons NP.  We had a reservation at Signal Mountain Campground for that night.  This campground is small and our motorhome is at the upper limit of what it can accommodate.  We were not able to put out our slides or use the generator in the campground so we were in very tight quarters for the night.  Signal Mountain Campground is on the shores of Jackson Lake so we hiked down to enjoy the beach.  However, the beach was quite inaccessible.  We decided that Colter Bay is a much better campground for our needs.

On August 12 we broke camp and drove into Yellowstone National Park.  We visited some geyser basins, stopped to swim in the Firehole River, and saw Old Faithful geyser erupt.  The grandkids liked the geyser, but their favorite thing by far was getting a souvenir at the Old Faithful gift shop.  That night we stayed in the Grand Village Campground on Yellowstone Lake.

Lewis River driving into Yellowstone

Arriving at Yellowstone
Denae, Reayen, Akston, Elynn, Liz, Lee

Visiting a geyser basin

Wading in the Firehole River

Akston crossing the Firehole River

 

Walking through a geyser basin

Akston skipping rocks on Yellowstone Lake

Souvenirs that the grandkids bought
at the Old Faithful gift shop

The next day we were packed up and ready to leave when once again the transmission problem we had at the farm showed up.  This time, when we tried to leave the campsite, the RV transmission wouldn't engage.  Once again I checked the fluid level and once again it was very low.  I still had some transmission fluid left from before so I added it and we were able to drive to the gas station at Grant Village.  There we bought some more fluid.  We obviously had a transmission leak but at this point I was hoping to be able to get home by just adding more fluid as required.  With that done we headed out of Yellowstone Park to Ashton, ID where we spent the night at the Clarks house. 

Backyard of the Clarks house

Talking in the kitchen

Kids playing on the back deck

Family portrait

The afternoon of our arrival at the Clarks, they took us on a river float down the Henry's Fork River.  Along the river is a water slide that has been made on a steep slope near the river.  We stopped at the slide to let the grandkids try it out and they loved it.  On the way back to their home in Ashton, Frank stopped by a field of potatoes and had the kids dig out a potato to let them see what potatoes look like coming out of the ground.

On August 14th we left Ashton and headed to Liz childhood home and farm in Spring Dale, ID  Her youngest brother Thales now owns and runs the farm.  The grandkids got to have some real farm experiences including picking corn and feeding the cattle.  Their favorite farm animals by far were the cats.

Grandkids picking corn

Riding out to the next job

Grandkids feeding the cattle

Dinner time!
Thales standing by Elizabeth

On August 16th we packed up and left for the Salt Lake City airport where the grandkids had a flight back home.  As we got near the airport, I took the wrong exit and ended up in an industrial park.  As we drove through the park to get back on the right road, we suddenly heard a strange sound coming from the rear of the RV.  I immediately thought it must be the transmission again.  We were quite close to the airport and needed to get the grandkids to their flight on time, so we decided to continue driving and worry about the sound once we got the grandkids on their way.  Since the grandkids were flying unaccompanied, Liz needed to be with them during the whole check-in procedure until the plane actually took off.  So I dropped Liz off with the grandkids and found a place to park until Liz was ready for pickup.  One possibility for the noise in the rear was a flat tire, so I checked the tires and they all seemed to be OK.  Now I started thinking this noise might be related to the transmission problem and I was becoming worried that we might not make it home so I began to call around to find out about repairs.  I discovered that there is only one place in the entire state of Utah that does transmission repairs on Class A RVs and that place had a 3 month backlog.

So after I picked up Liz, we decided we would just have to continue driving and hope for the best.  That night we made it to Provo, UT and stayed at the Sam's Club.  There we found an Autozone and stocked up on transmission fluid for the rest of the trip home.  The next morning, we drove to Price, UT and continued to hear the noise from the back.  We stopped to gas up at Smith's Food King and as Liz went into the grocery store to shop she suggested that I check the tires again just in case.  This time I got out my hammer like I had seen truck drivers do and pounded on the rear tires (these tires are so rigid that when one of the duals is flat you can't tell).  Sure enough, the right inside dual was flat.   The outside dual was holding up the weight so I didn't notice the difference in driving.  

Now we had to find a place that could repair/replace Class A RV tires.  Amazingly I found the perfect place right there in Price.....Les Schwab Tire Center.  They handle the tire needs for all the heavy coal mining equipment in the area and they had no trouble handling a Class A RV.  They got right to work and discovered a puncture that could be patched.  Within an hour we were back on the road with no more noise coming from the rear.

We stopped by the Englebrights (Anna Maria & Jim) in Moab to drop of some fresh picked corn from the farm and then drove to the Farmington, NM Sam's Club that night.  We stayed at the Sam's Club in Albuquerque on August 18th.  The next morning we drove south to the Quarai Mission, an early Catholic mission that is part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.  The mission was built to teach and convert the local Indians to Christianity.  The setting is beautiful and definitely worth the visit.

Dropping off corn in Moab
Anna Maria & Jim

Quarai Mission
Chapel ruins

Living quarters for the priests & monks

Chapel courtyard

Beautiful flowers around the property

That night we stayed at the Roswell, NM Sam's Club.  The next day we drove to Haskell, TX and stayed in their RV park.  We arrived home on August 21st.  We had a wonderful trip but it was great to be home!

We still had a surprise and some unfinished business awaiting us.  At home when we walked into the master bedroom, there was water dripping from the ceiling onto the carpet below.  Running upstairs we discovered that the water was coming from an upstairs toilet that was overflowing it's tank because the refill mechanism wasn't shutting completely off.  I had shut off all the toilet fill valves at the wall when we left on the trip but this particular wall shut off valve wasn't working either.  Water was trickling out over the tile floor of the bathroom and seeping into the carpet of the bedrooms on either side of the bathroom.  From there it was leaking through the master bedroom ceiling.

After I replaced the toilet fixtures so we could shut it off, we rolled back the carpets so everything could dry out.  Fortunately, the sheetrock was all OK so once we dried everything out I refinished and repainted the affected sheetrock and it all looks as good as new.

The other unfinished business was the RV transmission.  I was concerned we were looking at a major repair but I got under the RV and discovered that the fluid leak was not in the transmission itself but in one of the cooling lines.  Looking online I found some youTube videos that explained how to fix them so after getting the proper equipment I was able to do the repairs myself.  So far everything seems to be good.

So our amazing summer trip came to a happy end but it took awhile after we got home for things to return to normal.

2021 Summer Trip Part 4 - Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park was the destination for the next segment of our summer trip.  We left Paris, ID on August 1 and headed to Pocatelllo, ID where we caught I-15 north to Montana.  We stayed at a rest stop on I-15 near Missoula, MT that night and headed for Apgar Campground in Glacier NP early the next morning.  We were forced to go the long way around Flathead Lake due to forest fires and got stuck in traffic for about an hour on the west side of the lake where the highway was closed due to some downed power lines.  The Apgar Campground is first come first served and with very heavy demand for campsites you need to arrive at the campground and get in line before they open at 8 AM if you want to get a campsite.  Because of our delays we didn't arrive until about 8:30 and all available campsites were taken.  However, a few campers who were leaving later in the day had sites that still had not been claimed so we laid claim to one of them and waited in the parking lot until they checked out at noon.  

Staking our claim to a campsite
in Apgar Campground

Apgar Campground is near the south shore of Lake McDonald, a beautiful glacial lake with amazing mountain peaks at the north end.  The view of the mountains across the lake is breathtaking....if you can see it.  Unfortunately, this year the skies were so smoke-filled because of forest fires that the scenic views everywhere in Glacier Park were underwhelming.  It was disappointing but we made the best of the situation.  

This is what the scenic view from Lake McDonald
is supposed to look like

This was the actual scenic view from Lake McDonald
due to the smoke from forest fires.

For this trip we were joined by Liz's sister Barbara and her husband Frank.  However, they weren't planning to arrive until the evening of August 3rd so we had the day to ourselves.  We rode the bikes around the campground and the southern lake shore and down to the town of West Glacier.  We also managed to get the scooter started (pure luck) so we took a scooter ride up the east shore to Fish Creek Campground.  That night Barbara and Frank arrived.  The next day we drove the "Going to the Sun" Road which is a famous scenic drive through the mountains of Glacier NP.  It is a steep, winding road that passes lakes, waterfalls and high mountain overlooks.  It was beautiful, but sadly the smoke from forest fires significantly affected the mountain views.

Liz, Lee, Frank, and Barbara at
Baring Falls

Looking down Saint Mary Lake

Driving on the
Going to the Sun Road

View of the mountains through the
smoke filled sky

Saint Mary Falls

Falls by the side of the road

Sun Point Nature Trail

On August 5th we took a trip out of the park to visit Kalispell and White Fish Lake which is a public lake with very nice beaches and lots of water sports.

Beach at White Fish Lake

The next day we drove up the east shore of Lake McDonald to the Trail of the Cedars Nature Trail.  This was a beautiful hike through an ancient cedar forest.  On the way back to the campground we stopped to check out the Lake McDonald Lodge which was built in 1913 on the edge of the lake with great views.

On a bridge over McDonald Creek

Liz wading in the creek

Beautiful cascade along the
Trail of the Cedars

Avalanche Creek along Trail of the Cedars

Lake McDonald Lodge

Frank hanging out at our campsite in
Apgar Campground

On August 7 we broke camp.  The Clarks headed for home in Ashton, ID and we headed to Helena, MT on our way to Salt Lake City to start the next leg of our journey.  It was great to see Glacier NP again and this was my first time traveling the Going to the Sun Road in many years.  We were disappointed that the smoke from the forest fires had such an impact on our experience but we still had plenty of great times together.  We'll just have to come back again.

2021 Summer Trip Part 3 - Zollinger Sibling Reunion

 After d's family left for Riverside, CA, Liz and I continued to stay on the Zollinger farm for a few more days.  On July 28 we decided to take a scooter ride to the City of Rocks, an area with scenic rock formations that we had never been to.  Along the way we took a side trip up Howell Canyon which passes by Pomerelle (ski resort), goes by Lake Cleveland and ends up at the top of Mt Harrison.  At 9265 ft there are some pretty good views of the valley.

Lake Cleveland

We drove on to the City of Rocks, stopping first at a little museum at the entrance which has some good background information.  Liz grew up in this area so we bumped into several people she knew or that knew her family both at our lunch stop and at the museum.  The City of Rocks had many towering rock formations reminiscent of Lake Powell - they were beautiful.

Church along the way

Lunch stop

Road into City of Rocks

Liz in her scooter outfit

One of the rock formations

Beautiful rock wall

Most COR visitors take the well graded dirt road in from Almo, ID and turn around at the end to return the same way.  However, there is a dirt road that goes out the other side of COR and ends at Oakley, ID.  At the museum they warned us that the road to Oakley was in poor condition with lots of washboard sections and they recommended not to take it.  But we thought that on the scooter we would be able to navigate the road and we wanted to see Oakley and the towns on that side of the mountain....so that's the way we went.  It was every bit as bad as they said and when we got to Oakley we had been thoroughly bounced and vibrated so we stopped to rest.  When we were ready to go again, the scooter would not start...wouldn't even turn over.  Since there is no other way to start the scooter, we were stuck.  Several kind gentlemen stopped to offer help and we tried to jump start to no avail.  We were just getting ready to call Thales at the farm and have him bring out a trailer to take us home when I tried the starter one last time......and it started!  We quickly hopped on the scooter and drove all the way back to the farm without stopping.  When we got there, I turned off the scooter and it wouldn't start again.  Over the next two weeks we tried a number of fixes including checking the fuses and replacing the battery but nothing worked.  However, every once in a great while, quite randomly, it would start when I turned the key.  It operated this way for the rest of our summer trip so it became very unreliable transportation.  Whenever I got it started, we would jump on and ride around making sure not to turn it off until we were back at camp.  When we got home to Texas I took it into the dealer for service and it turned out that the fly wheel and stator needed to be replaced (a very expensive fix...the stator serves as both the alternator and the starter motor).  Fortunately, Honda stepped up and paid for most of the repairs because the scooter was less than 2 years old.  We really did miss having the scooter available for exploring on the rest of the trip.

On July 29 we packed up our things and got ready to leave the farm headed for Logan, UT.  Liz was ready to back the RV out of its parking spot in the back yard behind the farmhouse but it wouldn't budge.  She put it into gear and it would just jerk but not go.....transmission trouble.  I check the transmission fluid level and it was very low.  I happened to have a quart of fluid with me in the RV so I added it and that seemed to solve the problem.  Of course, there is always a deeper reason for a failure like this but we'll find out about that later.  In the meantime, we headed to Logan and stayed at the Walmart that night.  

The next day we drove back to Paris, ID for the Zollinger reunion.  We parked the RV in front of Grandma Price's house and got a ride with Barbara (Liz sister) to Jacob's (Liz brother) cabin where the reunion would be held.  We stayed in the cabin for 2 nights and the first night we went to a play at the Pickleville Playhouse Theater.  The next day after a healthy breakfast we went to Paris, ID in search of Grandpa Price's dry-goods store.  We found that it is now a museum for the city of Paris and is run by a cousin of the Zollingers.  We ate dinner at a restaurant in Garden City, UT and went back to the cabin that evening for a lively game night.

Grandpa Price

Grandpa Price's original dry-goods store
in Paris, ID

Grandpa Price's Store
now a Museum
(Jim, Anna Maria, Elizabeth, Lee, Thales,
Bonnie, Barbara, Kimberly, Jacob)

On August 1 we got a ride with Bryan Ellsworth (Dorothy's husband who joined us at the reunion) from the cabin back to the RV in Paris and we were ready to begin the next part of our summer adventure.  It was great to be with Liz brothers and sisters for a few days.  

2021 Summer Trip Part 2 - Travels with d & Zhouyi

 On July 18th we left Lake Powell and drove to Green River Campground in Dinosaur NP near Vernal, UT where we had reservations for 2 nights.  We traveled together with d's family and the McLaughlins.  We all stayed in the RV the first night. The next day we drove to the Dinosaur visitor center where archeologists have partially excavated a wall of dinosaur bones so the exposed bones stick out of the wall.  Our grandson Euan loves dinosaurs so he had a great time.  That afternoon the McLaughlins left for Salt Lake City to catch their airplane for home.  d's family continued with us and we stayed one more night in Green River Campground and traveled the next day to Paris Springs Campground near Paris, ID where we had booked 2 nights.  On July 21 we hiked up to Paris Springs which is near the campground and explored the Bear Lake area.  That night we ate at Zipz in Garden City, UT.  We love eating at Zipz, the food is great and it is decorated with old water skis and outboard motors.

Liz with d's family at Paris Springs

The next day we drove up Hwy 89 toward Tetons NP and stayed the night at Wolf Creek Campground near Alpine, WY.  On July 23 we drove to Colter Bay Campground in Tetons NP where we had reservations for 2 nights.  The day we arrived we walked down to Jackson Lake from the campground and admired the view of the Tetons while the kids played.  The next day we drove north and did the loop around Yellowstone Park....always a treat.  Liz & I did the trip on the scooter because there wasn't enough room for all of us in d's car.  We stopped at the Lower Falls overlook and ate lunch at Canyon cafeteria.  Then we drove around to Old Faithful and caught an eruption. 

Euan & Meila on the beach at Jackson Lake

d's family at the Lewis Falls overlook in
Yellowstone NP

Grandpa & Euan at the 
Lower Falls Overlook

Lower falls of the Yellowstone River

On July 25 we left the Yellowstone and the Tetons and drove the RV to the Zollinger family farm in Spring Dale, ID.  There Meila and Euan got a flavor of farm life and got to see many animals like cows and chickens.  Their favorite animals however were the cats.  The next day d's family had to leave for home in Riverside, CA.  We were sorry that d had to get back to work but we were grateful for the time we had to spend traveling together.