Trails End: A Wrapup of the Great Wyoming RV Adventure of 2020

 

I'm not the kind of guy to jump the gun, but in the case of The Great Wyoming RV Adventure of 2020, I'm wrapping things up a day early. Currently, it's the morning of Day 3 of the 3.5-day return trip home. The truth is, I should have saved this slice of prose to write tomorrow. However, who knows what tomorrow will bring? I certainly won't have time after I arrive back in Greenville to pen a final summary.


My intention was to do a much more thorough job chronicling this boondoggle with video and blogging. The best-laid plans....


My enthusiasm for videoing was stunted by the realization that Eatons' Ranch is a technological black hole. Nearly nothing gets in or out. It's as though the property is encased in a dome resistant to cell phone, Internet or TV communication. Although some may welcome the loss of touch with the outside world as they rough it in the wilderness, it's never been a big selling point with me. No matter where or when I am, as a freelance writer, I must always do at least a modicum of work. That's tough when isolated in a no Wi-Fly zone.

Some of the boys at an after-ride happy hour at the Magnificent Bastard.

This was my 11th Eatons' outing and its familiarity hindered my enthusiasm for noting every little aspect of daily routine there. Compounding my lackluster attitude, I didn't ride this year. Nope. I've looked my mortality in the eye and I blinked. After 10 years of trail rides there, I didn't feel the odds were in my favor. When you ride with any regularity, the question isn't will you get turfed, but when will you get turfed? I have had friends tossed from their saddles there – some with alarming results.


There were only another 20 or so guests at the ranch while we were there. Yet, a lady managed to get bounced off her steed, resulting in a multifracture-shoulder injury. No thank-you. Uncle Russ is precious cargo not to be dropped, thrown, bounced or heaved. Ten fingers, ten toes, right?


Food at the ranch is always a roll of the dice. My first couple of years going there (Beginning in 2003, I think.), a married couple wrangled the kitchen. He cooked and she baked. For our money, it was a marriage made in heaven. The meals were exceptional, accented by homemade rolls, bread and breakfast pastries. The third year was a bit of a disappointment. The couple had moved on to open a restaurant in Surprise, Arizona. The food was fair, at best. Then came the Dark Years.


We always go to Eatons' in September beginning the weekend or so after Labor Day. We arrived that year to learn the ranch had fired its dining room chef two weeks before. Manning the kitchen fell to the lady who tended the garden. If you have even once operated a microwave oven, your skill level is equal to hers. Often having described the food scene there as that of a cruise ship, we were horrified by the gruel being dished out three times a day. On the next visit, the food was marginally better. This year we were greeted with some seriously good grub prepared by a twenty-something guy. There wasn't a miss among the 11 meals we consumed this visit.


Our days were punctuated with after-dinner sessions on the porch. With 10 bottles of bourbon and single malt scotches, as well as a variety of craft beers and a tequila, at our disposal, our evening bull sessions were well lubricated. I turned the main room of our cabin into a video studio and a few of us shot two bourbon and a craft-beer videos over the course of our stay.


Our trip home got underway after breakfast on Saturday. One of the brothers had to ferry us and our gear to the RV, which was parked in a field roughly half a mile from our cabins. As we spooled up the RV's many systems, Hal discovered the power driver's seat, which was positioned as near to the steering wheel as possible, wasn't operating. Hal stands at 6 ft 6 in.


In the early planning stages of this trip, we thought Ports and I would spell Hal behind the wheel. This was before Hal had driven the Magnificent Bastard for the first time. Once that happened, we all realized he would be the only driver. I could have managed to drive this beast with the seat in the full forward position, but I'm nearly a foot shorter than Hal. So, here we were, parked in an open field with a 15-minute walk to the ranch office and no phone service. We couldn't search for solutions on the Internet because we had no service.


Hal opted to squeeze behind the wheel and drive us off the ranch. Because I was streaming video when we arrived a few days earlier, we knew there was Internet mere feet outside the ranch entrance. So, with his knees nearly touching his chin, Hal coaxed the Magnificent Bastard down the 3-mile driveway to roughly 50 yards beyond the gate. Bingo! We had a connection. Hal put in calls to everyone he had contact with at the RV dealership, as well as the driving instructor he spent two days with and the technicians at a 1-800 number he had. He left messages all around.


We then discovered the power passenger seat was also dead. After checking the circuit breakers, Hal began checking the wiring under the passenger seat and found a connection that wasn't secure. Both front seats rotate to face the rear of the RV. We had rotated them around upon our arrival at the ranch and then back to their driving positions when preparing to leave. Apparently, that had disturbed the wiring. Making that adjustment made both seats operational, but we had lost nearly 45 minutes.


Rolling into our overnight RV-park accommodations in North Platte, Nebraska at 9:30 that night, we were tired, frustrated and cranky. Here's a tip about RV parks: They aren't designed for after-dark arrivals. No lights, site locations with no rhyme nor reason, unintuitive hookups and so forth don't make 9:30 setups optimum. When we finally found our appointed site, the surface was a thick layer of gravel. The RV's automatic leveler doesn't cotton to gravel. Twenty minutes, several attempts to level and two repositionings of the RV later, we were able to level it and extend the slideouts.


Oh, but there's more. Where the RV finally came to rest was farther away from the electrical hookup than our power cord was long. Hal has read every piece of literature on the infinite situations one might face when RVing. He accumulated several lists of the must-have things for every RV and purchased them all. “We do have an extension cord somewhere, boys,” he exclaimed. “I just have to find it.”


A quick search through two or three of the storage bins under the RV was rewarded with a 25-foot 50-amp extension cord still in its unopened box. It says “50 amp” right on the box and on a tag attached to the cord. It is, however, not a 50-amp cord configured for extending the reach between the RV's power cord and the hookup. It has some sort of bastardized fitting on the female end that is neither 50 amp, 30 amp or any other amp we have been able to identify. It's a mystery amp. There we were leveled, but sitting six feet short of the power source. Now it's after 10 p.m. and we can't run the generator out of respect for our neighbors.


What transpired next is just one of those episodes of serendipity leaving you both grateful and scratching your head. As we stood there considering our next action, the door to the RV next door to us opened and out stepped an older guy in his bathrobe with a dog on a leash. “You guys all right?” he asked. Hal explained our situation. “What you need is an extension cord,” he responded. Hal noted we had an extension cord, but it had the wrong female connection. “I have one,” he offered, “but I'm leaving tomorrow.” We told him we were as well. Thirty seconds later he handed us a 10-foot extension cord and we were in business. Not exactly loaves and fishes, but a miracle in our eyes, nonetheless.


Fierce and relentless, the 15- to 20-mph crosswind through most of Nebraska challenged Hal for hours. A Class A RV presents a similar target for the wind as a mizzen sail on a boat. It is one large, light slab that a strong wind pushes all over the road. Conspiring with the wind was the legion of 18-wheelers whizzing by at 70 miles per hour. That was our Sunday.


This three-man squad, though, has transformed into a well-oiled pit crew. Whether it's refueling where one of us, armed with a walkie-talkie hops out and provides real-time directions when positioning at the pump, to the actual act of fueling where one of us goes inside to purchase snacks as another pumps the fuel and the third finds an extended length squeegee and washes the windshield, or its setting up at an RV park, things unfold much more smoothly than they did a few days ago. We rolled into our campground in Columbia, Missouri at 7:30 on Sunday evening, by 7:50, we were plopped down in the RV munching on popcorn and watching TV. Setting up, once parked, took no more than 10 minutes to level, as well as hooking up power and water. A high-five-worthy accomplishment.


Saturday and Sunday were 500-plus miles days. Today, however, is mapped out at fewer than 400 miles. Tuesday will be a 200-mile as we make the final leg into Knoxville. Time to relax.

Wyoming or Bust: Day 3.5 or So

The brothers at happy hour 30 minutes after our Eatons' arrival. From the left: Scott Spayd, Rick Fowler, Bruce Kirkpatrick, finally a handsome guy, Hal Mclean, Randy Porter and Pat Hillard.

 

I'm not the kind of guy who splits hairs over an hour or two, but, in reality, Day 3.5 of our journey from Knoxville to Eatons' Ranch in Wolf, Wyoming was more like Day 3.8 or 3.85. How's that for splitting hairs? When I mapped this trip out, the final driving day was to be four to five hours long. I expected to roll into the ranch around 1 p.m. A variety of factors foiled the successful completion of that schedule.

As with every morning, we got a later start than I had anticipated. Even with eating breakfast in the RV, rather than stopping at a restaurant, we didn't get on the road until about 9:30. We decided the day before that we would take a side trip to Mt. Rushmore, involving roughly 60 additional miles of driving. Moreover, we lost another 45 min or so getting as close to the spectacle as possible once parked.

Here's the secret to fast-and-easy parking at Mt. Rushmore: Pull up in a 38-foot, Class-A RV. Upon entering, after our old-timers' 50-percent discounted entry fee, we were directed to the bus parking right at the walking entrance to the monument. Once out of the RV, we had a 20-step slog to the entrance. Sweet! We spent a little time milling around, snapping photos of the quartet of stoned presidents. And, then it was time to boogie. In other words, we didn't channel our Clark Griswald visiting the Grand Canyon, but we didn't hang around for an undo amount of time, either.

Achieving RV maneuvers, like positioning at a gas pump and backing up, requires one person outside eyeballing the situation and reporting the RV's exact relationship to unmoving objects via a walkie talkie, as one person in the passenger seat conveys that information to Hal. We had to kick this operation into gear backing out of our Mt Rushmore parking space. There was plenty of room, but there was also mucho traffic of the vehicle and pedestrian varieties. I was outside and after successfully completing the backup, I noticed the 30-something guy from the rig next to ours standing behind his RV with a cup of coffee studying the process. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “Walkie talkies. I never thought of that. I'll have to add it to my list.” Apparently, we weren't the only RV pilgrims loose in South Dakota.

 

Never get tired of seeing this.

We lost our bearings getting out of the park and back on to I-90. This involved an extra half hour to reorient ourselves and get back on the road. Tick Tock.

I forget whether it was Day 3 or Day 3.5, but at some point, we had to pull over and perform a bit of battlefield surgery on the Magnificient Bastard. A metallic flapping sound suddenly arose. As we rolled down the highway, the two nondrivers wandered all around the RV's interior searching for the culprit. We saw a bit of vibration in the galley ceiling fan cover and attributed the racket to that. We were in the process of Paper-Rock-Scissors to see who would climb on top of the rig with duct tape to seal the cover when I suddenly realized the issue was somewhere outside the rig. Glancing in the passenger-side outboard mirror, I could see an outside cover flapping away. Looking at it through the convex, wide-angle mirror, I believed it to be a storage-bay cover.

After finding a safe place to pull off the road, we dismounted to check the covers. They all seemed secure. Shrugging our shoulders, the other two guys were climbing back into the coach when I noticed a screw missing on the panel covering access to the refrigerator. Sure enough, that was the issue. Applying a strip of duct tape solved the problem and we were back on the road.

Because my Sometimerz does kick in sporadically, I mistakenly related the Mt Rushmore adventure as part of Day 3. In reality, it was part of Day 3.5. If you missed it, you can catch yourself up by reading the previous Clanging Bell.

No longer fighting the 15-20-mile crosswind we dealt with during our trek across South Dakota, our drive through Wyoming was quite pleasant and uneventful. The hours and slightly rolling landscape passed quickly enough. 

 

This is only half of the bourbons, single-malt scotches and whiskys on hand. Yes, a bit of high-end siping is on tap.

We rolled into Eatons' Ranch around 4:45 p.m. Hal found an out-of-the-way spot to park the RV. Sadly, it was a quarter of a mile from our cabin. Using one of the other guy's vehicles, we transported our luggage and my video gear to the cabin. The next morning we had to move the RV even farther away, which was okay because it was a larger, flatter area where we could extend the levelers and deploy the slideouts.On the other hand, it was a real pain to access as we discovered must-have items left behind.

Here endeth the summary report for Day 3.5.

Wyoming or Bust Boondoggle: Days 2 & 3

 

I'm not the kind of guy who always works and plays well with others. I've spent the past 30-or-more years on my own only needing to consult with myself about impending decisions, and only worrying about myself when it comes to setting a time to eat, shower and shit – plus nearly anything else that crops up in my life. If that makes me a curmudgeon, so be it.

So, here I am slogging along in a 38-ft RV with two fraternity brothers (both, by the way, roommates in our college days) on a trip from Knoxville, Tennessee to Eatons' Ranch in Wolf, Wyoming. We are currently in day 0.5 of this 3.5-day mission. How am I holding up? Let me just say, I couldn't pass the psych evaluation to serve on a submarine. My mood has evolved from “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” on morning one three days ago to “Somebody Give Me a #*$@$ Drink” today.

I'm an early riser and have been the first out of bed each morning (about 5:30 or 6, regardless of the time zone) of this boondoggle. If I were alone, I would have been on the road an hour later. This morning, three hours evaporated between my rising and pulling out of the RV site at the KOA in Rapid City, South Dakota. Tick-Tock.

Because of this rig's mammoth size, there is a lot of storage; yet, there really isn't enough. We spend a fair percentage of our day moving things from here to there to there and then back to here, as we proceed through our day. Because there are three of us playing object roulette, there is also a lot of “Hey, where did you put this thing or that?”

I tell you all of this simply to convey my state of mind at this point.

 

Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Up close and personal.

Having established that I'm a bit cranky, we did make it all the way through day three without consulting the often-viewed “walk-around video.” That's a huge leap forward. At the end of the day, there was much cheering and high fiving. Hooking up at last night's KOA park looked like an Indy pit crew. Good thing because it was close to 9 o'clock at night when we rolled into our slip. This was thanks to a much-appreciated side jaunt into the Badlands National Park; during which, we turned up a dirt road to take a closer gander of some bison we saw next to the road. Getting within about six feet of one of these magnificent animals was our reward for making that error in judgment. We had given no thought to how we were going to turn around.

This washboard road eventually would dump us out on another secondary road that went all the way into Rapid city, roughly 40 miles away. OK, but not optimum. Fortunately, we came upon a Viewpoint with an entrance and an exit. We turned around and headed back to our preprogrammed route.

The most exciting activity on Day 2 was dumping the waste tanks. This is not intuitive. There are hoses to connect, reconnect and disconnect. There are valves to throw, a sewage line to hook up and much swearing to be achieved. We were about an hour later getting underway that morning than scheduled. We ate at the same truck stop for breakfast as we had for dinner the previous evening. Yes, it was that good. Among the food we snarfed down were two cinnamon rolls: one regular and one with icing. Oh, Momma, they were good. So good, in fact, I ordered an iced one to take with me for breakfast on Day 3.

Day 2 was a haul from Mt. Vernon, Illinois to Nebraska City, Nebraska. It was, for all intents and purposes, uneventful. We skipped dumping the waste tanks on the morning of Day 3, and got off to a somewhat timely start. Not timely enough, however, to accommodate our side trip into the Badlands.

 

What the heck? Actual condiments on the table. What is this 1955?

Northern Iowa and South Dakota were a breath of fresh air. Traffic all but disappeared and the quality of the paved surfaces improved dramatically. The Butterfield Trail was better maintained than the freeways in Illinois. I'm still searching for one of my fillings. Although the paved surfaces were primo, Hal had to fight a 20-mile-per-hour crosswind most of the afternoon. We arrived in Rapid City around 7:30 pm. We stopped at a Flying J (Hals preferred fuel stop) fuel station and topped off the tank. We then moseyed into the restaurant for dinner. To our amazement, there were actually salt-and-pepper shakers, as well as condiments, on the table. God Bless South Dakota. We ate some better-than-average truck-stop grub and set off in search of the KOA Campground where we had a site reserved.

The drive from the Flying J to KOA was Hal's maiden after-dark-driving experience in the Magnificent Bastard. He did fine. We rolled into the KOA around 9:00, after closing time. There was an envelope with my name on it in a rack on the outside office wall. After a bit of searching in the dark, we found our slip. After all of our success setting things up and taking them down on Sunday night and Monday morning, we stumbled attempting to hook up to the city water at KOA. There were leaks galore that we simply couldn't overcome. Our solution was to let it leak, finish cleaning up for bed, then turning off the water supply for the night.

No one wanted to hang out last night. We were beat. It was lights out before 10 to prepare for Day 3.5.

The Great Wyoming RV Expedition: Day One

 

Everyone looks good at the starting line. Well, nearly everyone. From left: me, Ports and Hal.

I'm not the kind of guy who shies away from an adventure. In fact, in the case of an RV trip from Knoxville to Wolf, Wyoming, I actually instigated it. You may think to yourself, what's the big deal? It's just like driving a big truck, right? Ummm, no.

Here's the thing, we are in uncharted waters. I helped my fraternity brother Hal pickup this 38-ft monster two weeks ago. Up until that point, he hadn't done anything, but research it, walk through it and ask the salesman a few questions. If you are among the RV unwashed as I was a scant 36 hours ago. I did have the benefit of going through the technician walkthrough before Hal actually closed on the deal, but, by in large, I am an RV virgin, a novice, a fledgling, a plebe – you get the picture.

Hal and Ports, my other fraternity brother on this boondoggle, aren't much ahead of me. So, every process is a learning experience. Every issue a Chinese fire drill. As Hal and I followed around the technician as he explained each system on closing day, I videoed the entire walk through. The following week, I edited down more than two hours of video to a more manageable 75 minutes. I have had to drag out my laptop and open up that video file at least five times in the past day and a half to determine how to switch electric sources, get the cabin AC running, drain and flush the waste tanks, and so forth.

Hal spent two days between picking up the RV and leaving on this trip at RV-driving school near Nashville. He has done an amazing job of piloting this battleship down the highway. I, meanwhile, have done a little writing for a client, read, relaxed and napped. I restrained myself from having a beer or a pull from the bottle of James E Pepper 1776 bourbon I brought on this trip until we docked at the Archway RV Park around 4:30 on Saturday. Yes, I'm a saint and an inspiration to my fellow travelers.

So far, we've spent a lot of time doing this.

Besides the fact Illinois has the worst paved surfaces this side of Texas Hill Country, the one thing I've learned is that everything you need to do in operating this vehicle, which I have christened the “Magnificient Bastard,” requires a procedure. Flip this, turn off that, and turn yourself about. It's nuts. As we get deeper into the experience, our hope is the veil will be lifted and things will become ever easier. Hope, however, as my daddy always told me, is for missionaries. So, we'll see.

Today we have miles (470 to be exact) to ge before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep. Destination: Victorian RV Park in Otoe, Nebraska.