The Battle of Bighorn (Mountains)

Worst day of the trip.  Basically, by the end of the day, all I could think was “Has this trip beaten me? Should I turn around?”.  But, this is combined with the desire to NOT turn around. The thought of coming home with my tail between my legs is the worst thought in the world.  So how can I stay on the road and be successful?

The day just got worse and worse and it was quite funny.  By the end of the day, though, I was feeling pretty defeated.  It started with the whole “sewage spraying everywhere joke. At one point my son left and told me to do it myself (jokingly, but he did leave).  He, of course, came back, but I was pretty horrified when he left in the first place.  We took our RV to the wonderful RV shop there was in Yellowstone.  They hadn’t fixed our leak (they thought they had, but it was still there) and so they fixed it first thing and didn’t charge me since they were supposed to have fixed it before, and the guy was super nice and gave me some other hints for the road.

The kids went to get their Junior Ranger badges and I had to park and wait (there was no RV parking, sometimes it can be super embarrassing to be in a HUGE rig).

We finally left and then had to get gas.

Then we had to stop and make sure the tires were filled properly (the first place didn’t have air).

While we were there (I had just turned the RV around and was still in the vehicle), my throat started burning and my daughter said “Mom, I think I did something wrong” and then we realized that she had (out of curiosity) sprayed the MACE hanging by the front door in the RV.  We had to air out the vehicle and recover.

We drove further and then had to “stop for groceries”.  There was a Shopko right next to a bank.  So we bought what we could at Shopko, but they didn’t have much…and then realized that the bank was actually the grocery store and Shopko was only the pharmacy.

The checker at the grocery store said we “had to go to the Bighorn Mountains”.  I said thanks and went on, and lo and behold our GPS took us through the Bighorn Mountains.  They were beautiful…. but they were very windy mountain roads.  Sometimes I couldn’t get over 20 mph. I just kept thinking, “I hope I don’t fall backwards.”

We eventually (like 6pm and it was only 200 miles) made it to the RV park and came into the very narrow entrance…oh wait it wasn’t an entrance (although it didn’t say exit).  The lady there said that no one had ever gone through that way before.  We had to unhook right then and there (there was no other way out) and back up both the jeep and the RV and come through the correct entrance.  The second we got parked, there was a sudden storm (very windy and rainy and scary).  Once it calmed down, we realized we were in the wrong spot and had to pull out and go into the right spot.

We hadn’t had a good source of water for a few days (we had cut off our water supply because of the leak) and now instead of hooking up to water, we just filled our water tank so we wouldn’t have to hookup since it was just for the night.  So since we now had all this water, we were doing dishes and such.  Then the water ran out and we realized the pump wasn’t working anymore.  Not sure why.

At this point the kids were fighting, I had just found out that my renter had officially pulled out, and the pump wasn’t working.  Had this trip beaten me? I had purposely parked at this particular place because it was close to I25 if I needed to go home, but more than anything I don’t want to go home.

In the end, I have enough friends helping me so I think I can figure this all out from the road, but I don’t want to go back right now.  Not after it took so much work to leave.  We’ll see.

Blessings:

1. The RV person fixed everything for free the second time around (although possibly inadvertently killed our pump?)
2. The Bighorn Mountains WERE very pretty (but no pictures for you because I couldn’t stop out of fear of rolling down the mountain)
3. We would have had to unhook at the RV park anyway, so unhooking wasn’t that big of a deal – plus we’ve become experts at it.
4. The rain storm stopped the second we pulled into our space (well, the wrong space, but still).  It could have started when we were unhooking or flustered!
5. When the pump broke – or whatever it did, we just hooked up.  We had already learned how to do this without running water – a neighbor had given me some large water jugs, too.  I still haven’t fixed this, although I will sometime soon, but it’s not as horrible as it seemed at that moment.
6. I do have GREAT, wonderful, super, awesome friends who have helped me work out the renter situation and all sorts of other stuff while I’m gone (yes, in just 2 weeks I’ve actually needed a lot of help)
7. I didn’t give up

Harmony’s Corner

Leaving Yellowstone was kind of a joy but then once we actually left Yellowstone completely for like an hour I started to miss it. Then we saw some bison (like we always do.) Then we finally made it to a grocery store, (because we had like five things in our refrigerator) and bought stuff like chips, cookies, notebooks, etc… we needed stuff like peanut butter, eggs, wheat bread, that were in the refrigerated section. So we went to another grocery store that was by the store we just went to another store that was right by that grocery store we went to so we got stuff like garlic bread, powerade, ice cream, Cheez-Itz, etc… then we went back into the RV and we ate bacon Cheez-Itz they may sound disgusting but they are absolutely my favorite flavor. then we stayed at a campground called Lazy R RV Park.

There was a HUGE storm there and infrequently Zoe (since she loves going out in storms) went out there and started dancing in it like crazy. (I actually pretended that I locked her out and she was actually more happy.) They had WiFi which I am like always happy about and it was really terrible WiFi there so thats basically the whole day well of course I had to go to bed.  Soooooo yeah

Don’t forget to check out Zoe’s blog at travelbyeheart.webs.com