THE Trip, Salt Lake City to West Yellowstone Montana

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

After a month and a day in Salt Lake City we have to move on, we either have to get off the lot we have occupied for this month by moving to another lot in the park or move on down the hard road.  It rained all night, HARD, it was still raining when I woke. Man slept in, I fussed with some stashing and packing until he got up. We debated back and forth several times, should we stay, should we leave, what to do? Finally the decision was made, hit the road, the decision was helped along with the fact that the pouring rain slowed down to a drizzle. So, we packed up, hooked up and off we went. It did rain a bit during the day's drive, hard a few times, large rain drops that "plopped" even at 55 MPH.

We headed out of Salt Lake via 80 and 15.   I-15 north is the road of the day, followed it all the way to Idaho Falls, Idaho where we stayed for one evening.  Miles driven, 223.

Below:  Welcome to Idaho, still spritzing a bit.

It is June 20th and there are spring flowers on the hill sides:

Not the red beauty we have inhaled for weeks and weeks in southern Utah, now we have GREEN, stunning shades of green (oh, and a bit of white clouds and snow on those mountains way off in the distance.)

The next morning we hook back up, the site we were in was too unlevel, and we had to unhook the night before.  We drove 110 miles from Idaho Falls to West Yellowstone, route 20 out of Idaho Falls.

The lilacs below were in the campground in Idaho Falls, they had quite a few planted.  In full bloom, they were such a delight.

More roadside flowers.  There was no place to pull over to determine what these were, believe they may have been growing in or at least standing in water, appeared to be a bulb like flower, but, alas, I will never know for sure.  What I do know, is they were beautiful.

Hard to take, right??  Nope, breathtaking, but not hard to take!  I was enjoying.  Lots!  If you look closely, right about the middle of the photo below, there is a white bird, guessing it was an egret.

Montana, we have arrived!

We had managed to snag 3 nights at our campground, and before we registered Man converted those to a week!  WAHHOOOOOO.  We shoehorned Tana into the campsite, parking Big Butt in a really tiny campsite across the road with the blessing of the campground owner.  Snug as a few bugs and all that stuff.  It was cool in West Yellowstone, there was still snow in Big Butt's parking spot.  OK, not a lot of snow, but, there it was!  It was gone by the next afternoon.

And, here is a prized photo, our Tana, errr, Montana, parked in Montana.  Sorry, I get silly like that at times.

Since our drive had only been 110 miles and we had arrived fairly early in the day, and since we only had 7 nights to pack in as much sightseeing as we could at Yellowstone National Park, we took off for the park as soon as we settled in.  We had a good 6 hours before dark, and we were going to go check things out and get a feel for the area.

Off to the park we went - - - 

.

THE Trip, Living OFF the Grid, Ten Things Man And I Learned

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

During our 13 days OFF the grid, living on BLM land with no hookups (boondocking) here are a few things we learned.

1.)  Any time the generator is running, you charge batteries, camera batteries, phone batteries, computer batteries, any battery you have.

2.)  Do not run computer on battery mode and walk away to chat with friends.  Yep, it will flat line!  LOL  It only happened once!

3.)  Man and I can take 7 showers and do dishes and flush the toilet for 7 days and use only 40 gallons of water.  We used a lot of paper plates.  Eating out also helped!

4.)  We discovered it only takes 1/4 to 1/3rd gallon of water (during moderate temperatures, this is not going to ring true at 20 or 30 degrees) to get hot water from the hot water heater (in the back of Tana) to the shower (just about in the front of Tana).  We were pleasantly surprised by this, as we thought it would take several times that.  When you are living with 60 gallons of water on board, every single drip counts, so, we used this 1/4 to 1/3rd gallon to flush the toilet.

5.)  We adapted well.  Well, WE thought we adapted well to life off the grid.  That said, off the grid at temps below 35, were not attempted, that is a entirely different subject matter.  See number 6 below.

Photo of the part of the MOC
Circling of the Montanas in Quartzsite Arizona 2011
Photo taken and copyrighted by Jo-Anna Kikel.

6.)  If we want to do more of this type of RVing, we may need to upgrade the battery in Tana.  Our 3 year old 12 volt (combo Marine/deep cycle) battery did pretty good, with 2 charging jolts.  Two times Man had to pull out the external battery charger and really pump up that one 12 volt battery.  This was not a surprise, nor excessive, in our minds.  We did not run that 12 volt down to the point of no return.  We ran the frig, the furnace set at 64 and one small LED light at night, all of which required battery power.  In the mild weather we did just fine, thank you!  If it gets colder the furnace runs more, the battery runs down more and faster, so, boondocking in mild weather is our preference.

7.)  64 is as LOW as that furnace is getting set, that is the max/bottom of my low temp comfort zone. (OK, maybe 62, but that's it folks, bottom line!)

8.)  In Arizona, if the gasoline has ethanol in it, it must say so on the pumps.  Man was delighted to find a station in town that sold gasoline with NO ethanol in it for the generator.  Sometimes small things make ya sooooo happy!

9.)  Car washes clean doggie mats quite well for a small amount of change.  If you have to ask, you don't wanna know!

10.)  Sunsets are kick butt wonderful on the desert.  I can take over 100 photos of ONE sunset on the desert.  I'll share just one.

Thanks to all the wonderful MOCer's that shared this experience with us and encouraged us.  It really was something!




* After being back on the grid for about 24 hours Man added one more thing to our list: TOTAL appreciation of full power and service hookups!

**Larger copies of the photo of the gang can be found here.  There is also LEFT side and a RIGHT side of the photo.  PHOTO TAKEN AND COPYRIGHTED by Jo-Anna Kikel, thanks Jo-Anna for allowing me to use it here on Reflections.

.

Read All About It! Montana Circle Makes the Desert Messenger

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

From this blog to the Desert Messenger, the Circling of the Montana's photo is showing up all over the place!

How fun is this????

Hot off the presses.




.

THE Trip, Craft Day at the Circle, Quartzsite, Arizona

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

(OK, actually, it was 2 days, one day for shopping, one day for the "manufacture" .)

The gals out here make these fabulous lanyards, the east coast gang have been wanting our own for some time.  We use the lanyards to hold our name tags at each rally we attend.  Very important stuff here, lanyards and name tags!  (If you don't think so, try remembering the "real" names of 100 of your newest bestest friends when you are used to identifying them from their user names on the MOC online forum.  Ya, see why these are so important??  LOL)

So, we went shopping:

Then, we gathered to "manufacture":

The next two are the ones I made for Man and Moi:

In the design phase of manufacture.

Finished!

Thanks to Sue and all her wonderful helpers.  I had a great time, laughs, $pent $ome $$, and have two great lanyards to always remember the Circling of the Montanas 2011 craft day.

THE Trip, How to Make a 420 Foot Circle of Montanas

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

The western faction of the Montana Owners Club (an informal online forum dedicated to owners or wanna be owners of Montanas, Mountaineers, and Big Sky 5th wheel RVs) have been having the "Circling of the Montanas" in Quartzsite Arizona for 6 years.  It started out with a handful, give or take, of units and has grown each and every year.  This year there were so many interested that we could not all fit into the circle.  As far as I know, we are the only group out here in Q BLM land that do our circle like this.  I have seen several other circles, wagon train style, front to back, front to back.  Our circle is more like the spokes on a wheel.

Here is the simplified version of how they manage this unique gathering/parking.

They drive a stake in the middle of the circle, attach a very very long rope.  When a unit arrives, they take the rope, stretch it from the middle of the circle to the outside of the circle.  They line up the rope with where the middle of your unit should be.  That is the middle as in side to side.  It has been pre-determined where all the units should be, measured and measured again.  From a few scratches in the desert surface the parking crew know where the middle (side to side) and the back of your unit should be, and they direct you so that is exactly where you end up.  There are no do-overs required, they get you lined up perfect the very first time.

Above, friends Nita and Al lining up, they are about mid circle at this point, see the yellow rope, straddle, drive forward, easy peasy.

Yep, got it centered, inch er in.

Perfect, back end of the rig is lined up on the inside of the circle.  Every rig perfectly lined up first time!

CLAP CLAP CLAP to the parking crew!  Well done!

And, here is what a full circle of Montanas looks like.  Believe there are 47 units, 1 is a Raptor toy hauler, 4 are motor homes and the rest of us are Montanas, Montaineers and Big Skys.  When this photo was taken there was room for 1 or 2 more units.  There are 2 entrance/exits left open, one at top right, and one at the middle left.  Find that middle left entrance, count 10 counterclockwise and there is Tana and Big Butt.  We are almost in the center of the photo at the bottom. (I made this photo larger than I normally do, so try clicking on it for larger view. The same photo is also at the very bottom of this blog, nice 'n large!)

Below center rig:  Tana, Big Butt and a girl chat at the "Q".  To the left are friends Nita and Al with his solar paneled roof, to the right are friends Mina and Bob with their flag pole!  Yes, I was one of the gals chatting away.

And, that dear friends is how you make a 420 foot circle of Montanas (and 1 Raptor and 4 Motorhomes).

*In future posts I will have some other photos of the Circling of the Montanas at Quartzsite, come on back and visit soon.

.

THE Trip, Ya Gotta See This - The Quartzsite Montana Circle

Copyright 2011, CABS for Reflections From the Fence

As my regular readers know, Man and I are trying a "new to us experiment", camping in BLM desert land near Quartzsite Arizona with a BUNCH of our MOC friends.

I have not finished posting our travel journal of Tombstone Arizona and other ativities in the days before our arrival here in Quartzsite, but, I just could not wait to share these photos with you. 

So, you need to surf over to one of my Picasa photo albums, here, to have  lookie see.  

Carl, from the MOC, posted this information on our forum about these photos:  "An ultra-light pilot was kind enough to fly over, take the picture (he also took another 18 or so that will be loaded into Picassa), print a copy, and deliver a CD of the images to us. All of this was without us even being aware he was doing it. This is the second year in a row he has done this for us. We really do appreciate his support and would thank him more publicly but we don't know who he is."

Now, back to tour reports in a chronological type order.