Day 01 – Erie CO to Casper WY
Whew. What a day. We got up earlier than planned and loaded up faster than normal. We were on the road by 11:30, half an hour earlier than our goal.
The beginning of our drive was nice. Just normal. And then about an hour north of Cheyenne, right when it was time for me to take over, we hit The GD Wind®. Plus, it was really hot and an ascent into Casper. So, the AC couldn’t keep up. We turned on the generator and tried to turn on the living room AC, but it just wouldn’t run. Great. Just what we need when our trip has a bunch of boondocking planned. (We don’t think we’ll need the generator while boondocking, but we don’t like to be with out it just in case.)
When we got to the campground, he found the problem…and that turned out to be an easy fix. We’ll be sure to tease our maintenance and repair team how they “left us stranded with no generator”. But in all seriousness, they are a wonderful shop, and we adore them. They will be glad to learn what happened and how he corrected it.
After a couple of hours of decompressing, cooling off, and making/having dinner, we met up with our friends. They just finished boondocking by a lake for a few days and came to our first campground with a slew of Miller moths and a struggling AC unit. We went with them to Home Depot to buy a portable AC.
Day 02 – Casper WY to Harlowton MT
Day two should be the longest day of the whole trip: 8 hours. Cooler weather made a big difference. Wow, is it pretty through here. There are Crazy Mountains and gorgeous rolling hills. We’ve never been to Ireland, but if you want that look in your travels on this side of the pond, this might be the closest thing the US has. Beware the The GD Wind®, though.
It was quite nice to go through the Crow Reservation again. This time, we took the other major highway through the land.
| Got a little story for ya… | Backing up in time a little: we didn’t mean to, but we messed up. We left some food stuff in the rig for too long. It was only there for a few days, and it was in hard plastic containers, but those things didn’t matter. On the day we were leaving for our shakedown trip, we noticed that our pantry was covered in flour. Odd “construction” dust in an RV is normal, but this was inside a cabinet. And then we saw the horrible reason. Something “mousie” had chewed through the hard plastic and into our flour. After we were done being grossed out, we cleaned it up as best we could and got on the road. As soon as we got to our campsite, we cleaned thoroughly, went to a hardware store to get some traps, and tried to greet some of our friends and set up the dinner we were hosting that night. The whole time we were there, we saw no signs of “mousie.” I figured he bailed on a highway. I mean, if my home and garden started moving 70mph down a highway, I’d probably try to escape. A few days after the shakedown trip, we found him in a trap. I felt terrible about his demise, but he started it. We left traps out because “where there is one” and a few days later, caught “bestie”. Several more days went by, and we saw no more evidence. |
We took a very quick lunch, made another quick stop to gas up, and pushed through to the next town, Harlowton, WY, where we stayed in a big rest stop. It was quite a bit colder, so we chatted a little outside and then retreated to our own evenings. By 10pm, we were all four just done with the day.
But were we? Three of us were not.
At 3am, he was awakened by a crinkling noise. He found the sound, trapped the “damn mouse” in the big Costco box of chips it had violated, got dressed, and chunked the whole thing by a dumpster.
At 3:30am, I also awoke to what sounded like someone crushing a water bottle. In my sleepy stupor, I told him to stop doing that. He said, “It’s another mouse. Can you hear it?” “Why are you squeezing a water bottle for a mouse?” (This was sleepy confusion; we don’t even buy planet-killing disposable water bottles.) The sound was another mouse flopping about in the trap. He got re-dressed and took it to the dumpster. We don’t know if this was “damn mouse” who escaped the chip box while he got dressed or if this was a fourth mouse, “shithead.” It doesn’t really matter.
At 5am, I awoke to the sound of yet another trap flapping. Our sleepy brains thought it had been about 10 minutes. This time, only a tail was caught in the trap. This time, “little fucker” was fully in the hole they’ve been using and trying to free itself. We tag teamed the situation with a light, a towel, gloves, and even pliers. He pinched hi up on its tail/butt and dragged it out of the hole and into the trip. He once again got dressed and took the vermin to the dumpster. This time, he also strategized. He grabbed some of the unopened chips from the previous box. We set a bigger trap of chips inside a 12pk soda box with a trap at the entrance. And, since “little fucker” almost freed himself, we put two (and our last) traps by the hole.
We hadn’t seen any mice or evidence for days, so I speculated that once it got colder, they got more desperate.
Eventually both of us went back to sleep.
Day 03 – Harlowton MT to Browning MT
Because this was another long day of driving, we decided to leave at 10am. We had a rough night with “damn mouse”/”shithead” and “little fucker” so we were regretting that suggestion. But we blitzed through our morning and pulled away at 10am exactly.
We drove through a lot of wind and rain alongside the colder temperatures. Our route was also odd and convoluted.
At one of our stops, we found out that the sounds of the very busy rest area kept one of our friends from sleeping well. At lunch, we could only find a livestock auction lot. After all the rain, pulling out of the dirt and gravel was an interesting challenge, especially for our friends’ fifth wheel.
We plowed through the hills and navigated the wonky route to the campground. Half of us participated in the longest RV Campground checkin ever…complete with a reading of all of the rules. The manager/whatever even said, “…lucky that traveling together meant he could read the rules one time.” Or, and how about this novel concept, you assume your guests can read??! He got the review he deserved.
With that last hurdle hopped, we could finally begin our vacation! By this time, I was glad we decided on a 10am departure.
Before we left Denver, I had cooked a sausage- and stuffing-stuffed, bacon-wrapped pork loin (and 10 pounds of mashed potatoes). Yes, it’s work. Yes, it’s every bit as good as it sounds. Our friends made a squash/mushroom side and some brown gravy. We all had our wind-down drinks, too. The four of us chowed on our feast and chatted about the first couple of days. It was nice to be able to hang out with the people we chose to vacation with. They told us their “WTF was that?” story. They already knew the story of “mousie” so we told them all about “bestie”, “damn mouse”/”shithead”, and “little fucker”.
The light is weird up here. It was still very bright at 9:30pm.