Lessons continue for 2016 travels

July/August 2016
Lessons Learned:
*At outdoor festivals when people bring their own chairs they always begin to make rows
*Misters at a festival are so nice.
*Cooper mining in Butte may be nearly gone, but it is certainly not forgotten.
*Butte is the birth and burial place of Evil Knievel…  Town was happy when he left (he was a trouble maker) but happy to take him back after he found fame.
*The Irish and their music/dance are well ingrained in Butte as they worked the mines in large numbers.
*Local beer is always fun, easy to find in the travels out west but having to buy in a growler puts pressure on to drink it quickly.
*The lack of wineries in our travels has put our on board stock at risk so local buys will have to be from the store
*Seeing a newborn calf being born in a pasture one pulls over to see the little one standing for the first time and trying to walk to Mom is a testament to mother’s milk
*Never lose your driving skill in heavy traffic as Salt Lake City will put any city on notice as one of the worst
*When making reservations for The Rectangle always check where the trees are…satellite does not like trees.
*Listening to your spouse talking to ATT agent for wifi issues is like listening to a very funny SNL skit complete with foreign accents.
*There are a lot of families that live in the RV parks and follow the job from one place to another especially pipeline workers, data center electricians, speciality mechanics…
*The first day of school is very exciting in an RV park when the school bus stops with a lot of elementary students ready to learn.
*Downtown SLC is super clean but there are a lot of homeless on the streets.
*A great farmer’s market will yield great peaches, corn and fresh baked bread.
*Temple Square in SLC has it all together when it comes to tourism and when you start to see a lot of brides it must be Saturday Temple wedding day. (we were told there were 70+ weddings that Saturday)
*A massage makes it all better…thank you Massage Envy. Now to find that pedi/mani place.

Lessons Learned National Parks

*You know you are in Idaho when there is a fly fishing headquarters in the Walmart.
*It is a problem when the virus that invaded David’s email will not go away and the Geek Squad and ATT get stumped. Finally someone at ATT figured out that all the times we changed our password it did not change…ATT had to change it on their end and finally got it to change.  Bye Bye Mailer Daemon. (Thought David was going to call the President of ATT at some point.)
*Movie popcorn tastes the same no matter where you are.
*There is a lot of land in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming…a survivalist could live off the grid here.
*Worth the money is an app ________ that gives a talking tour as you drive the National Parks. The one for the Tetons and Yellowstone was very informative and like having your own tour bus guide with you. It works if there is no internet service for your device and you have a lot of control over starting and stopping etc. Amazing what $20 will get you.
*Yellowstone traffic has to be well ranked as some of the heaviest on the planet and with road construction, well let us just say when you have a manual drive your left leg gets a real workout.
*The traffic in Yellowstone is worth the trouble to see Old Faithful lift the water in a beautiful pillar.  (it is 47 miles from the north entrance and took us over 2 hours)
*Turnouts in Yellowstone are many and they do help to “get the guy on your tail off your tail” when needed
*The hot springs is a good half mile walk and we were so looking forward to the warm waters. We walked the half mile plus on a crude path along with many others and got to the river. Now to get to the warm water is not a great distance in the water, but the rocks are very slippery, and our footing was not up to getting to that place. We will now know to bring better water shoes next time as bare foot was not working.  Age and balance showed itself as a lot of people just marched on into the river and over the rocky surface to the warm waters, but for some of us this just did not work out. OH MY there is a lot to be said for good knees and hips. There is always tomorrow or the next day?
*The longest line in Yellowstone was at the ice cream vendor in the lodge after Old Faithful gushed.
*Tours from China are very plentiful in National Parks.
*There was no line at the ice cream shop in Gardiner, town just before the North entrance.
*More later!!

On the Oregan Trail

The Wagon ride was great, a few pics

Lesson learned about helping, it can bring laughs

 Lessons Learned about helping:


*When you hear a knock on your door and the lady next to you has locked herself out of her RV, but there is a window open she thinks she can climb through, but her ladder is not tall enough so having our  tall ladder comes in very handy. Now she is a VERY large woman and David says to be ready I may need to get through the window…but she hosted herself up the ladder and like begins to squirm and squirm trying to host herself up without getting stuck (not sure she was not stuck at this point) and David knows he has to help her by pushing, but where does one put the hand to push? He sees the buttocks, looks at me and I am laughing, he then grabs both her feet in her flip flops and pushed with all his might…Plop, she falls in the window and a minute later gets up and opens her door, she looks a bit worse for wear, but she is in her RV and her dogs did not have to bite me or David (they were not friendly and she said if we went in the window most likely they would bite us) to get the door open. She then says, “I got in that window, my trainer will be so proud of me”. OK then a good laugh was had by all.

Lessons Learned in Wyoming, Idaho and places around…

*It is great to need a sweatshirt in the morning
*It is important to know where to look for readings of electrical voltage otherwise you create a problem you don’t have and the dealer tech trouble shoots with you for half an hour on the phone until he says look at the reading on the electrical panel again because everything seems OK, then duh, you realize you had been reading the wrong meter the whole time….there was no issue, but leaned a lot about all the fuses on the coach.
*When you pull out of getting propane you might need to check to make sure the door is closed tightly otherwise you will have the pilot car for the construction zone of the highway speeding up the side of the one lane traffic beside you waving their arms for you to pull over. Thanks to the nice man who stopped the one lane of traffic to get our door closed.
*Learned to play Pétanque with a nice couple Jim & Teresa. Teresa is from France and played since she was little. Amazon will deliver our game balls to our RV park this week.
*Trying to print Application for Absentee Ballot on a printer not used for a couple of years will test patience, but all is well as it printed even though no real idea as to what we did to get it to work, machines are like that sometimes and we will hopefully get our mailed in ballot to the address in New Mexico.
*There is not a more beautiful sight then the Grand Tetons. Just when you think you have seen enough you see them from a different angle and it catches your breath all over again.
*Li’l Red is not the greatest mountain climber…that jeep was on our mind
*Ice Cream even when served square cut in a cone at the Swan Valley, Idaho convenience and gas store is great especially freshly made ice cream. They served over 19,000 square dipped cones over the fourth of July weekend.
*Jackson Hole antler park never changes.
*I can walk away from a great looking pair of turquoise earrings
*In every RV park we have stayed when people know we are from Texas someone will ask us about Ted Cruz. One just does not want to get that conversation going as it is not a vacation topic. But the election is a topic of conversation out here.
*Lutheran churches are hard to find in this part of the world.
*Forest fire smoke travels a long ways and there is no mistaking that smell.
*Motorcyclists are having the best time on the mountain roads.
*Looking forward to Yellowstone Park…