Titsworth Tales: Stories From The Road (Episode 1 - The Ballad of Left Elk and RIght Elk)

 Joining Sir David Attenborough (RIP Boaty McBoatface) already in progress:  The cows are attended on this plain by the dominant bull elk.  For clarity as the story unfolds, we will call him Right Elk.  Right Elk is happy.  We can count at least 8 cows in his group.  A young elk enters the picture.  He is hopeful that at the very least Right Elk will share.  The young elk (whom we shall call Left Elk for clarity) is bugling his heart out.  Combined with the visual, it is a lonely, sad song.  Right Elk is not at all concerned with the new arrival, the pretender to the throne.  His concern levels are such that he is stood over to the right of our plain chewing on grass.

As well, the cows have taken no notice of Left Elk.  Life on the right side of the plain is the same as it ever has been.  Safe.  Secure.  Under the complete control of Right Elk.  Left Elk continues raising a ruckus... hopeful that he will woo some of the cows to his side of the plain.  He tries at the top of a hill.  He tries in a little valley at the foot of the hill.  He tries close to the bank of the stream that runs through the plain.  He decides that maybe he didn't say the right things from the crest of the hill, so he tries again.  Still no cows have taken notice.  Neither has Right Elk.  

A COVID Home Companion: The Maiden Voyage of The Titsworth (Part II , Day VII Arrival and Docking)

 When last we spoke, The Titsworth was moored at Wolf Lodge Campground outside of Couer d"Alene, Idaho.  Couer d'Alene essentially sits on the Idaho/Washington border so the final leg of the trip was essentially the width of Washington and around Lake Washington to home.  As we were leaving the campground and getting in to the swing of another travel day, we passed a swimming area on a river that was clearly visible from I-90.  This kind of sparked a desire to swim (which we had not even done once during the trip despite plans to have done so).  This would prove to be the largest challenge of the day.  

Having passed up the opportunity to stop and swim (looking back memory suggests that the "swimmin hole" was on Banks Lake, but I didn't specifically note it down, so it could be anything), we were well on our way with the co-pilot scanning ahead for potential destinations to access water at least a little bit.  Beyond that – to which we will return in a moment – it bears noting as this is a blog concerning the driving and use of an RV van that we should speak about the actual driving of the van instead of the quest for swimming. 

 For the first time in several days, there was an amount of challenge in the actual driving of the van during the morning time as we passed through several wind farm areas.  It turns out that they put those things in places for a reason.  Being an old hand at the breezes by now, I managed to minimize the substantial cross breezes for the most part with the combination of wind from semis and cross breeze in combination providing the biggest challenge.  

A COVID Home Companion: The Maiden Voyage of The Titsworth (Part II, Day VI - The Long Voyage Home)

 Hello, I know it has been a couple days since this really should have happened, but you see, it's been smoky here and I just couldn't see my ass doing it.  Literally.  At least that makes a good story.  The sad reality is that ultimately the reality of these last two days of the trip is much less interesting.  By design, we were splitting the drive into two days, but in all other ways driving it straight through.

When last you saw us, we were staying the night at Bakers Hole Campground following a last minute change due to overbooking.  Our story resumes here.  748 miles and two days from home.  The adventure started in the middle of the night on this particular leg.  As we were trying to stretch mileage, we were using less a/c and had rolled the windows down.  File this away.  As it was, we gassed up leaving West Yellowstone in preparation for the next morning [ed. note, previously I said that you could have seen us on a live stream through West Yellowstone, but in actuality the stream is from Jackson Hole.  Speaking of Jackson Hole, there is a stretch of land heading out of town that is supposed to be Elk Central.  We have been there 4 times and never seen elk one.  Not even this time when we watched the compelling Ballad of Left Elk and Right Elk.].  Seeing as how we were heading to our next campground in Couer d'Alene, ID (6 hours, 42 minutes and 4 gas stops), we were going to head out fairly early in the morning.  But first.

For the most part, we both had a restful night of sleep.  Perhaps this was in part due to the cryosleep situation that we managed to achieve in the van through the genius lack of rolling up the windows.  When I say cryosleep, I am only marginally exaggerating.  I even hiked around the campground looking for sun in order to thaw out a little.  This, being self inflicted, isn't even the most noteworthy part of our Bakers Hole experience.

A COVID Home Companion: The Maiden Voyage of The Titsworth (Part II, Day V - The Long Journey Home)

 While the entire trip was essentially "for" us, we had built in a day specifically for us to do things specifically for us.  This day was that day.  Leaving our Harvest Host, we headed up to the Grand Tetons for a short amount of time to be followed up by a visit through the west side of Yellowstone.  The total amount of driving was our shortest day in terms of distance between one campsite and another although the time invested was going to be significantly longer.  It had been years since I had been through the Tetons (did I mention at any point yet that the Tetons are my favorite?) so I was quite excited.  It's sort of funny, I think... I prefer the Tetons but appreciate Yellowstone while I think Laurie would tell you that she prefers Yellowstone but appreciates the Tetons, so the day was a win-win.

The Plan for the day was a 185-mile drive (short!) from Freedom, ID to Rainbow Point Campground.  Essentially.  In a somewhat amusing twist, I guess, it wasn't to be that easy, but we'll get to that soon enough.  Probably the most notable part of the drive itself is this: had you, not on the drive at all, known exactly when we would have been passing through West Yellowstone, you could have seen us on The Internet... YouTube specifically.  My isolation experience has introduced me to the wonderful world of live cameras on YouTube.  I have spent a great deal of time watching Great Lakes cargo ships, the Washington State Ferry Terminal at Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands, and a camera that inexplicably points in the general direction of the town square in West Yellowstone.  If you've been there before, the camera points roughly in the direction of the antler arch.  It also shows the left turn out of town towards the National Parks, which is where you could have seen us.  You know, if you knew when to look for us.

A COVID Home Companion: The Maiden Voyage of The Titsworth (Part II, Day IV - The Long Journey Home)

 With reservations still made for the KOA on the previous night and our next stop booked through Harvest Hosts for this night, we were pretty well locked in, and so (as I mentioned previously) we acquired some local beers for the night and prepared for our first leg in earnest driving The Titsworth towards home.  These two ideas are not necessarily related... it's just that they both happened.  I did link my untappd in yesterday's post and it didn't quite do what I envisioned.  If you happen to have an untappd account, you can see without much difficulty.  If you don't, you can make one... if you want.  Ultimately, we shared two beers from Rock Cut Brewing in Estes Park and then also had a bottle each from Estes Park Brewing which will be the one I share for entertainment's sake if you don't want to have an untappd account.  If you've been playing along, you know that we had gone on day 3 to the Stanley Hotel (The Shining, etc.), so of course we had to acquire the bottle that we shared - Estes Park Brewing's Redrum Ale.  In subsequent revisits, it is a big, malty red with a good and multi-layered hop character in it.  If you all want at some point, I could do a deeper dive on the beers of the journey, but they're really not the point, so we move on.

As we learned, we were doing a better and better job of getting ourselves in positions to get good rest.  In fact, for the most part, we never really did ever feel poorly rested during this journey.  At this point, we had added the air mattress which was meant for the cab over area on top of the fold out couch, which we would continue with as it yielded plenty good enough results.  We had dumped our black and gray tanks for the first time yesterday, so after we woke, we scrounged some breakfast, dumped our grey tank again and headed for our next destination: a ranch just past the Idaho border in the vicinity of Yellowstone which we had booked through Harvest Hosts.  This day, by design, was the longest of our planned drives as we were going to spend a little time in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone before we made a bee line for home (ish).  As we had an effective range of 100 miles (+/-), we had spent a good amount of time before going to bed planning our gas stops rather meticulously, so we were on the road with a very clear view of what the day would look like.  

Pulling out of the KOA and heading generally northward, we had some significant climbing to do, which would be some good learning time right away... straight into the frying pan as it were (like when the propane was actually working, not when it was not.  That particular frying pan would have been very easy to deal with.)  In addition to the climbs, learning how to counteract the wind and deal with a rear-wheel drive vehicle was more than enough to keep me entertained.

A COVID Home Companion: The Maiden Voyage of The Titsworth (Part II, Day III - The Long Journey Home)

 August 25, Day Two at the Estes Park KOA.

We got off track a little here because I had a project on the house that took a couple of days and also that my recollection of the day's events felt hazy in the first place so I needed to get my ducks in a row with Laurie to make sure I didn't have things twisted because, well... even though you wouldn't know, I would and well.... if I'm doing a travelogue type thing, the pressure of being accurate is internal but real. So anyway.  

In addition to the stove challenge (it's a recurring theme in the trip), at some point there had been some damage done (rodents, probably?) to one of the fuel lines.  Of course it was to the line to the larger of the two gas tanks on the van, rendering it useless as you couldn't pump gas into the tank at all.  So parts of the previous evening and this morning were spent trying out various auto parts and hardware stores seeking a part to fix the hose – even if it were a temporary fix – to give us a range for the drive home greater than 100 miles.  Ultimately, it did not come to fruition, but the time searching did get us close to the Stanley Hotel, so we did drive up to it and get some photos in front of the Shining Hotel.  

Although we had made the appropriate reservations for a return trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, the circumstances overall prohibited it, so the Stanley was the morning tourist stop.  Following that, we grabbed some food and headed back to the KOA to eat and check out the last-ditch effort to get a patch for the fuel line.  The former was successful, the latter not, and the fast forward was that instead of extending their stay in the hotel in Estes Park, Laurie's parents decided to head back home a day early, so we spent the time up to their departure at the campsite.