Catching up

Friday, July 23,2010

Since Tuesday, it has been totally CRAZY for us. First we drove from Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole, WY. The drive was fine, very scenic. We passed where the 2002 Olympics were held and saw some ski jumps and the Olympic village.

We drove the Grand Teton Mountains and the clouds were low. It was beautiful.

Once in WY we had a hard time finding our RV Park. We had to turn around 2 times. Which is not easy when you are 75 feet long. We have a GPS in the RV, a Garmin GPS stuck to the window and Tommy and I both have GPS with Google Maps on our phones. Tommy's phone was non working at the time so we had not used his. All the GPS's gave different directions. But finally we found where we had made reservations for the next 2 nights.

We pull in, and check in at the office. Things are good, we are there early in the day, and looking forward to cooking out and being lazy. We drove down to our spot and realized it was too narrow. We could not open our slides. (We have four of them.) So while Tommy waited with the RV I walked back to the office and explained that the spot they gave us - we could not fit into, but the spot next to that was perfect. The check in lady said the spot next to us was 'reserved'. Okay, well, then can you find us another spot? Sure, she says. Go look at spot # 45. Okay, I go back up to spot 26 (the one too small) and tell Tommy to come with me to see about fitting in 45. He walks to the back of the park with me and says, yes, we will fit. I go back in the office and say - okay 45 is good. With that there is another couple checking in with another associate and the women checking in says, 'you cant have spot 45, we just took it'. Shit! Now what? So I go get Tommy - again. Now I'm really frustrated. Tommy walks back in the office and says, look, we paid already, we need a spot. The second associate (the one with the women who took 45), says, Sorry Sir, but its first come, first serve. And Tommy responds with - well, we were here first! And you already charged us $85 a night for a spot. $85 a night does not sound expensive but add it times 30 days in a month, it becomes very expensive. The average RV park is anywhere between 35 and 60$.

Anyway, our lady that was checking us in, handed us a map and said here's a list of all the RV Parks around here, have a nice day! WHAT?!?! We already paid you! Goodbye, she says! We were fuming. It took Tommy 2 full days on the phone to find an open spot. There was nothing available. Anywhere. For any amount of money.

So now, we pull out and into an empty parking lot and scramble on the Internet to try and find something, anything. Its close to getting dark and we are homeless. Well, homeless with a home on wheels. I'm on the laptop, Tommy's on my phone and we get a knock on the door. Its the Sheriff. He explains to us that there is no overnight parking. We already knew that. We told him what happened and he was the nicest guy. He told us of a National forest over the mountains and into Utah. If that was full, he told us of another one beyond that. The mountain was big and had alot of switchbacks and we did not want to negotiate it being so long. So we disconnected the truck and I followed behind Tommy in the RV.

We found Targhee Nations Forest. They only have 11 sites and we were lucky enough to get # 11. The funniest thing about this was it only cost $5.00 a night. We dry camped and it was a good test because Tommy is going to have us deep into Yellowstone starting Sunday and we will be dry camping there too. The forest was really pretty and we ended up driving back over the mountain the next day into Jackson Hole. That is a great little town. I hope we go back through there on our way to Stergis. SD.

Oh, and for everyone who doesn't have facebook, Tommy dropped his phone in the river in the forest while he was chilling his Coors light, (because we had no electric and he had to have cold beer.)


We spent 2 nights in Jackson Hole and then drove to West Yellowstone.

Okay, enough for today... We went into Yellowstone today and I will blog in the morning. Thanks for reading.