Trip Report - I'm goin' to Jackson (WY)

[erste]

Day 6:
Finally got to drive the van this day.

We went to the city center to eat and in the alley ways there were some really nice wheatpastes. zooming in on the photo, looks like the project is called Stickum Up. Wish I'd checked more of these out and done the walk...

Quigley (chocolate lab) met an english bulldog puppy that was cute:

After eating we headed out to the wildlife art museum. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was really good. There's an exhibition now of a bird photographer "Day to Night: In the field with Stephen Wilkes" and it was outstanding. I was so blown away that apparently I didn't get any pics of it.

Lifesize bison painting was very cool.

And some day soon I'd like to try to build a folding chair like this and have one in the van.

We drove somewhere, it might have been Jenny Lake, but Quigley hopped in the river before we headed to the lake (where he wasn't allowed).

Then we headed out somewhere else and pulled over to look at the bison and pronghorn. Looking at this photo that probably seems pretty boring because they're so far away, but watching them through binoculars was awesome. Reminded me that I need a good pair of binoculars of my own.

Stopped by Cunningham Cabin

Then we stopped at Schwabacher Landing, and that was really beautiful and we saw a beaver dam and their house and at least two beavers! So cool.

When we got back to the guest house I was feeling pretty confident after a successful day of driving without any issues, so I looked into the reverse light situation. Did some research and the reverse switch did have a washer. I backed it out halfway and still no change. Finally pulled it and checked continuity across the terminals and wouldn't you know, it broke in the on position. So nothing to do except pull the bulbs and fix it when I get home.

Sun went down and we took some more photos.

[erste]

Day 7:
This was my favorite day of the trip while in Jackson. It was getting kind of boring going into the park and I'd felt like we'd done most of what there was to do, aside from any real outdoor activities like hiking, fishing, rafting, etc.

First we went to the visitor center. My mom and brother went before I arrived, so it was my first time there. I bought some postcards and a sticker.

Then we went to the preserve (again). This time there was parking in the lot so we could check it out. Unfortunately, Quigley wasn't allowed so he went back to the van.

We went on a short hike and then when my mom got tired, evan and I hiked a bit further and found a nice river. Went back to get mom so she could see the river.

The plan for the day was to drive south to Alpine and the Palisades Reservoir on the Wyoming / Idaho border. I wanted to check this route out because it's one way to avoid the pass, and I thought we'd be able to find a spot where Quigley could hop in the water without too much of a current.
There were a lot of Osprey nests on top of the transmission lines and my mom, being a birder, wanted to get some photos. Found a spot for Quigley to swim, near Big Elk Campground on the reservoir.

We stopped at a grocery store in Alpine and when we were heading back to the freeway, there was a sign for Greys River, or something else. There are miles and miles and miles of washboard roads just north of Alpine and it was fun. Lots of spots to camp, right on the river. I'd have stayed there for a few days if I was by myself. We drove in quite a ways and then everyone else was ready to head back so we did that.

Back in town, I ate nachos and Quigley ate ice cream.

Then we didn't know what to do so we drove through the elk preserve and up the hills and ended up near Curtis Canyon with a great view. There's a campground up there that'd be worth checking out.

[vegpedlr]

Wow.
_________________
1985 Tintop 4 sp GW 2.3 “Connie”
2006 Mk V GTI 2.0 FSI “Penelope”

[dhaavers]

LOVE the report & pics...thanks for taking the time to post it up!



- Dave
_________________
86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS>

[joetiger]

I could look at the Tetons forever.

I had a friend in college who'd moved to Jackson but then had to unexpectedly return to slightly less lovely Shreveport. His apartment was covered with Tetons photos/posters on every wall, and I thought he'd lost his damned mind...Until I saw the Tetons myself. Then it made sense.

Thanks again for sharing!
_________________
Joe T.

'86 NAHT Vanagon GL Syncro/ supercharged ABA 2.0 "Pigpen"
'91 Wolfsburg Carat "Barchetta"
'02 Baja-ish Beetle "Bubbles"

"get metaphysical with it. if it's simply a means to get to and from places, it will let you down. if it becomes your zen, it can't fail you." -dabaron

"Still, it's good to be afield."--VWagabond

Justice for Megan: https://linktr.ee/justiceformegantrussell

[?Waldo?]

[joetiger]

[Love My Westy]

Nice trip report! I can't wait to get up there.

I spent 4 summers working as a seasonal Ranger back in the '70s. I look back on those days as some of the best in my life.

I'll be headed back up there within the next week, hopefully to stay for a month in the general area.

[erste]

Day 8:
Last full day in Jackson, and looking back, we didn't do a whole lot.

Had to do the "drive" on google maps to figure out what this first place was called. It was the Jackson Hole Greater Yellowstone Visitor Center and we went to see the raptor show-and-tell. The Teton Raptor Center brought 3 or 4 raptors. The bird in this photo is an American Kestrel, the smallest of the raptors, and an amazing animal. Might be my new favorite bird.

Cool old truck with what looks like leather chaps or something on the fenders.

This is the most tourist thing that I saw in Jackson that made me laugh every time

Drove out to the Episcopal church which has a great view.

Then we headed over to the old ferry / river crossing. It wasn't operating. The bilge pump was wired up with those household twist connectors and looked really sketchy.
Quigley hopped in the water again, and there was finally some weather in the distance.

The Maud Noble cabin is right next to the ferry.

Inside there was a photo of the first automobile to make it across Teton Pass. I didn't get a photo, but found it online. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/grte2/hrs12.htm

I don't remember if it rained that day or not, but if it did, it didn't last.

We'd been staying at a guest house that my mom booked for 4 weeks. There were mosquitos, which surprised me because we didn't seem to be that close to the water. First night sleeping in the van I woke up to this crackling sound, and I nearly fully freaked out because it sounded electrical and was coming from up front where the aux. battery is. I looked outside and saw that it was raining, and that explained the sound. The strange thing was that the rain would come in waves. I've never experienced a rainstorm like that, but okay. It quiets down after fifteen or twenty minutes. Then it happens again in the morning. Same storm.

Turns out it was their damn sprinklers! They were watering that yard at least 3 times a day, at 2am, 6am, and 10:15am. The standing water in their lawn, I think, explains the mosquitos...

On the following nights the sound of the sprinklers was really soothing, but that 10:15am cycle was annoying. Got me and the inside of the van wet a handful of times.

With all the driving through the park and down south we did about 400+ miles and averaged about 30 mpg on half an tank and 33 on another half tank.

For dinner we got a drink and burgers from our host's local watering hole, The Bird. Definitely worth checking out. Low key and had a nice patio and good vibes.

[dhaavers]

Yeah...that sprinkler thing got us once, camped free for a night at the city park in Del Norte, CO...



...ya get what ya pay for, right?

- Dave
_________________
86 White Wolfsburg Westy Weekender
"The WonderVan"
<EDITED TO PROTECT INNOCENT PIXELS>

[erste]

Day 9:

The van was running well since the fix, so I thought we might take a long route back to san francisco. That way the van gets to pass through two new states, and I get to see some new country. SF to WY is right at 1000 miles. New route through Washington was about 1500. My brother's flight out we finally booked for Monday, so leaving on Wednesday morning gave us plenty of time.

We'd wanted to go to Yellowstone, but the traffic probably would have been too much on a Friday or Saturday. Heading up on Wednesday afternoon wasn't bad at all. I think there was one spot where the road was one lane, so north and south traffic had to take turns, but otherwise it was fine.

Saw a smiley bus:

I was really hungry, so we stopped at Old Faithful to grab food, and then it was nearly time for it to spout off, so we waited around. Five minutes after its scheduled time, we left. It didn't do much that hour. Really it was a waste of time that would have been better spent at some of the geysers we passed on the way out. Not talking shit on old faithful, just saying there are other geysers nearby with way fewer people sitting around.

There's a museum in West Yellowstone that has some interesting things. This 'land-plane' on skis was "prone to tipping over".

The isolation of this area during the winter wasn't something I'd really thought about before. This big old, Wisconsin made plow was beyond cool.

We stopped at the post office so I could drop a postcard in the mail. It was a postcard of the Tetons, and I stuck a vw bus sticker on it. Put a stamp on and wrote a message to the guy who rebuilt my transmission, just saying thanks.

That night I woke up and realized I never wrote the address on it.

It was late afternoon and there were a few campgrounds around Hebgen Lake, just west of W. Yellowstone. We stopped at Rainbow Point campground, which had 3 loops full of RVs and one loop with fewer RVs. It was nearly full and we were thinking about checking out some of the other campgrounds, but the camp host said he only had 3 sites left and that it would probably fill up. We got to the gate and two more RVs pulled in, so we made a quick u-turn and pulled into one of the open sites we'd found.

And it was full of mosquitos. So many mosquitos. The fire helped, but not that much.

Not really much you could do at the water spigot even though it looked perfect for all of the above.

[erste]

Day 10:

From the campground outside West Yellowstone we headed north on 287. Driving out around that lake was really beautiful. One of the towns we drove through, I think it was on 287, had a lot of old train cars and that was neat.

I had a work call at noon and planned to take that in Butte. We pulled in just in time, then the call was cancelled. Cool. We were at the walmart and did some shopping. I rarely use bug spray, but my brother picked some up so that's in the van now. I did get two big citronella candles and was eying those portable mosquito repellers real hard. Evan got a cot because the air mattress I had for him has a very slow leak. A cot suits the ARB room a lot better anyway. Last night of the trip though that cot folded up weird and poked a hole in the canvas, so now I need to return it.

After Missoula we pulled onto route 12. I was about ready to look for a place to stay for the night. I had another call the next morning and needed to stay not too far from cell coverage. There were a lot of really nice campgrounds on route 12, but zero service. There was nothing until Syringa or Kooskia, over 2 hours.

I wanted to be lazy and pull over early, but this forced us to keep going. Which was good. On a long drive, some days you just have to put in the miles.

If you zoom in on a map of route 12 you'll see it's just turn after turn after turn on a windy two lane road that follows the Lochsa river. It was nice, 35-55mph corners, nothing too tight, but it just kept going like that for 130 miles. I started getting deja vu and some of the larger rocks on the side of the road started looking like bears.

And then just when I'm going crazy, there's this glistening thing in the road, looked like a shiny UFO. w.t.f.?

No big deal, just an old bus pulling a sweet old boat from the 30s-40s. This was by far the coolest rig I saw on the trip.

We followed that bus to a little filling station and then checked the apps (Ultimate CG and iOverland) for sites. Everything along the river was dispersed, basically a state park area with a boat ramp. We could have parked and camped at any of them, but kept driving.

There was a corps of engineers site listed, at the top of a dam, so we headed there. I didn't have my hopes up that there would be any camping because the description wasn't real clear. Climbed up those steep roads, and what do you know? Plenty of RV parking and two spots on grass with fire rings and picnic tables.

As far as I know camping on COE land is free, and for sure this site was. Dworshak Dam View Campground, Ahsahka ID.

Front bumper starting to look haggard as ever. Somewhere on the drive back I ordered a new black HD bumper from CIP1 to replace it.

[campism]

Army Corps of Engineers sites in the east seem to be developed and the ones I've used charge for the use of facilities. They've all been nicely set up but one or two have been right in the shadow of sizable dams, if that sort of thing bothers you. They even have a book, a copy of which we keep in the Westy.

_________________
'87 Westy in Wolfram Grey Metallic, tragically crushed by a falling hickory tree in my own driveway and now gone, leaving me Vanagonless and with no plans to replace it, alas.

[erste]

Day 11:

We woke up pretty early and loaded up. Drove to check out the visitor center and there was an 8am tour of the dam. Visitor center was still closed. The tour looked cool because they got to walk out to the middle of the dam. Dworshak dam is the third tallest in the US.

I drove for about an hour and we ate breakfast in Lewiston. The paper mill makes that town smell a bit funky. Not bad really, but not very pleasant.

Beautiful though and this water was like glass.

Killed a lot of bugs on this trip. I have no idea what this purple splat was, but it's the only one I saw. When we pulled over the yellow jackets or hornets would eat the dead bugs on the front of the van.

Kept heading west on route 12 and went to the library in Walla Walla so I could do some work. From there we headed south toward 395.

We pulled over for fuel and realized we were in Oregon when we saw the pump attendant.

Drove through Pendleton and stopped at the mill(?). My brother picked up a nice blanket.

The drive through Ukiah Dale was beautiful. I'd like to spend more time around there. We took a forest road, not too far, and ended up liking Tollbridge Campground (44.997539, -118.935124) enough that we stayed there. Site 5 backed up to the river. There were 6 sites, and only one other person staying there.

We'd thought about driving further west and heading south around Bend, but I'm glad we went this way. I got to see parts of Oregon and California that I hadn't seen before.

[erste]

Day 12:
The ARB room is nice to have and we got pretty good at setting it up in only about 5 minutes. It's just a pain to shove back into the bag. It helps to have two people.

The drive south on 395 was nice, with very few cars on the road. At one point we went half an hour and didn't see another car.

It was hazy on parts of the drive, which I'm assuming was from forest fires but it never smelled like smoke.

Lake Abert was awesome. Many different types of birds on the beach. Kind of a surreal spot.

In Lakeview these two signs cracked us up. The first guy is all "Howdy, stranger! Welcome to Lakeview"

Second guy halfway through town is all gun drawn "You got til the count of 10 to git out!"

Crossed the border back into California. Made it through the fruit/veg check without any issues. First time I drove into california and passed through one of those checkpoints I definitely hid the weed. It was hilarious when I found out they were just looking for oranges.

We made pretty good time on this leg of the drive since the roads were straight and we could go 60-70. 350 miles is about what's comfortable for me on a good day's drive. Psychologically I think it also helps not having a fixed destination. Just knowing you can stop anytime seems to make it easier to keep driving.

We pulled off to check out Lower and Upper Rush Creek Campgrounds. Both were okay and had sites that backed up to the creek.

Normally I wouldn't camp right next to someone in an empty campground, but the site next to this ford was the only one we could really set up the awning+room.

There was a forest road (I think) and iOverland listed this as BLM land although we never found any places to pull over and camp. We did drive up this road a ways, but without a map and few places to turn around, I backed down and we headed back to make camp.

This turned out to be one of the craziest camping experiences, and I'm glad we didn't find a place to stay up that road.

After night fall, I heard some strange noises up above. There were bats! Cool.

Around 9-10pm a vehicle is hauling into camp. It's a sheriff's truck with a light bar. Speeds up the gravel road we'd been on earlier. CHP SUV pulls up next. No sirens or lights, but they were in a hurry. A couple minutes later the sheriff truck is back and they're talking.

I walked over in the most non-threatening way possible, flashlight turned on and pointed to the ground. "Hey, just saw you guys pull in..." - "Have you seen a camaro come through here??" - "No, it's been completely quiet until you guys..." - "Ok, thanks"

Trooper was calm, but the adrenaline was definitely flowing. He headed out a few minutes later. The sheriff truck went back up the dirt road and was gone for at least 20 minutes before he finally pulled back through. I'm not sure where that dirt road went, but it must have gone pretty far.

At that point they were at least 3 miles off the main road, so that camaro definitely got away. Next morning my brother and I were joking about it. "What color was it?" "V6 or V8?" "Was it a F-Body?" "Are you sure it wasn't a firebird? Because a lot of people get them mixed up."

[erste]

Day 13:
I'm not superstitious but this was day 13, and the last day of the trip.

We headed south west on 299 toward Redding. The fuel gauge is less accurate when it's low, and at Redding, I knew it was time to stop. Rather than heading over to hwy 5, I pulled off and drove through some part of town. Took longer than I expected, but we found a gas station with diesel.

I almost let this ruin my day. Diesel pump was the only one that wouldn't take a card, so you had to go inside. Ok. Go inside and tell the cashier I want to fill it up. She needs to know the exact amount. They don't do the thing where you can pay extra and they'll refund you. "Okay, give me 12 gallons." -"You know there's a $5 credit card fee." "Fine. Debit."

Get out to the pump and it only pumps 11.89 gallons or something. Go back inside. She's like "Yeah, there's a 50 cent debit fee. We don't have to tell anyone because it's on the signs." Just add the debit fee to the 12 gallons then!

Last fill up of the trip and it ruined my mpg calculations. (Averaged somewhere around 28mpg for the whole trip).

I'm all 'fuck redding' at this point and we hop on 5. It's HOT, like 10 degrees hotter on hwy 5. Saw this Toyota Hiace from Mexico:

I map some side roads. We end up getting turned around and the GPS is all screwy. Keep driving and the roads are now unpaved. Lots of farms and abandoned trailers and that area hasn't seen rain in a long time.

We were having a better day than this young guy in a big dodge truck who overturned a camper somehow. Damn.

Finally got oriented after 15 minutes and then I had fun bombing around on the gravel roads that never had speed limit signs or driveways.

We finally gave up and hopped back on 5 after the stop lights became too frequent. It was 95+ through Willows and pretty hot. Finally jumped over to 20 and then we started to climb. My brother wanted to see Napa, and I thought we might stop and grab a beer and some food in Petaluma at Lagunitas, so we made this detour instead of taking the boring route through Sac / Fairfield that I've done so many times.

This is the highest I saw the transmission temp gauge climb. We pulled over at a turnout and enjoyed the view.

I'm not sure what roads we took, but it got really windy and slow and downhill when we entered Napa county.

Aaaaaand. We're back. In traffic.

Halfway across town the exhaust started sounding more sputtery than normal. I figured a mount broke. Too close to home to pull over and look.

Then a mile from home there was a grinding sound from the rear drums. And a clunk. Brakes still work, so we kept going. Pulled around the block and found a parking spot.

Had a look at the exhaust, and wouldn't you know, the muffler was split open.

Next day I jacked it up and pulled the right rear drum, and yep, the adjuster was bouncing around in there.

Great ending to what's been one of my favorite road trips so far. Spent some good time with my family, saw some wildlife and landscapes, explored new parts of the country, and had just enough issues with the van to keep it interesting, but nothing too detrimental until a mile from home.

This may be a little strange to say, but lately I've been thinking about my own mortality. Not for any reason although I feel like buying this vanagon was probably my mid life crisis if there is such a thing. I realized on this road trip that those thoughts were pushed way, way down, right to the back of my mind. So many new experiences in new places that there's no time for thoughts like that. It makes me want to plan the next long trip, sooner rather than later. The trip to Baja. Or up to Vancouver. Or back to the east coast where I bought this van and drove it back. It just felt great to be on the road.

[termuehlen]

Great report.

395 past Lake Albert and Goose Lake is so surreal. It seems barren but look closely and it is a major migratory bird route with so much to see. I have camped along there and the birding is wonderful.

I always get back from a long road trip surprisingly energized and rejuvenated. Ready to plan the next one. I can't explain it either, but it does tend to suspend everyday life a bit.
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1988 Westfalia automatic Subaru OBD1
1986 syncro tintop wbx

[erste]

[joetiger]

[Love My Westy]