5/24-6/1/17
Current location: Big Meadows Campground, Shenandoah National Park
After a morning taking in the view at Fall Creek Falls in the eastern side of Idaho we crossed into Wyoming just south of Jackson. Our rough plan was to get a run in, grab a beer and find somewhere near town to camp. We drove along the Snake River yet again today, creeping closer to its roots in Yellowstone. Here though the river was a deep rust color from sediment being washed downstream from likely some landslide a ways away. We got in a quick, flat run along the river just outside of Jackson itself with amazing views of the entire Teton Range.
Post run we stopped into a favorite of ours, which just so happens to share the name with our trusty friend of the past couple weeks, Snake River Brewing. We grabbed a beer and lunch before heading up for some views on the edges of Grand Teton NP.
Unfortunately we ran into yet another van issue with some coolant leaking when the system was fully pressurized and the thermostat on. We’d learn a bit more about this the following morning. Because of this issue we decided not to poke around the area too terribly long and start making our way back to Colorado without much fun time spent in the Tetons. We likely only had a half a day or so but we headed out frustrated Mr. Hobbes was once again affecting our schedule.
We decided not to go terribly far and let things simmer down for the rest of the day. We pointed ourselves towards a campground we had stayed at for our first night of camping on our 2006 western states road trip. Kozy campground along Highway 191 about 30 minutes or so south of Jackson. We had our pick of any site as the 15 site campground was empty and looks like it had only been opened for the season a few days earlier. We thought about staying at our site from 2006 but alas the site wasn’t really level for our upgraded accommodations we’ve made in 11 years. We choose to go all of 20 yards away and stayed along the Hoback River with access to a little hill to watch a truly gorgeous sunset light up the western sky.
The next morning we awoke early(ish) to get some miles under our belt, hoping the coolant issue wouldn’t arise on a cooler day. However, not long into the morning drive we smelled the familiar syrup smell and stopped at a campground parking lot to check it out. After a few minutes of cursing we finally identified the source which was a hose to the top of the radiator having a small amount of coolant leak out because it was very slowly working its way off the the pipe of the radiator. No problems! We busted out a screw driver and hose clamp and cranked away to tighten that seal. Voila! We continued on down Highway 191 in central/middle of nowhere Wyoming with no further issues. Thankfully, this issue was more of a mental issue in the trustworthiness of the van rather than a real and/or costly problem.
Screw you radiator hose!
We cruised the open roads with a nice tailwind, it is windy Wyoming after all. Eventually we ended up in Laramie with a couple options to camp close by and a couple options for a beer in town. We decided not to make the last couple hours into Colorado and stay the night in the area. We made a couple stops at breweries in the bustling metropolis of Laramie and enjoyed the feel of their downtown. Afterwards we watched some storms brew around the area but thankfully threaded the needle and ended up dry for the rest of the afternoon and night at a tiny fishing lake in the Mortensen National Wildlife Refuge about 20 minutes outside of Laramie.
The evening we watched fish jump from the couple acre lake while we sat in our free camp spot. All sorts of birds made their various calls and songs as we fell asleep.
The next morning we headed into Colorado and down into Golden. We got a run in at North Table for some exercise before stopping into still one of our favorite breweries. We chatted with a couple of the bartenders who do actually know us by name even though we’d been gone for a few months and eventually met up with friends for dinner. The rest of our Memorial Day weekend was spent seeing friends, sharing laughs and a beer and enjoying a few runs at our familiar stomping grounds. We said it when we were back in Colorado in February but it was absolutely great to catch up with old friends and swap stories.
As the workforce had to end their holiday weekend we too had to get to work reorganizing ourselves for the remainder of our trip. You see, we didn’t want to put the van through a few additional thousand miles in true summer heat when we knew the rest of our trip would have a very different feel to it.
After a couple other days in Colorado we were headed east to New Jersey for a wedding and eventually our traditional 4th of July celebration. In the couple of weeks in between we would putz around the mountains of the east coast but it would only be 15 days or so of camping that were likely to be at campgrounds. So the vanlife was not entirely necessary, potentially overkill and likely unnecessarily rough on good old Hobbes. This wasn’t a new decision as we had planned this for a few weeks now but it meant going through and swapping vanlife for tentlife. Plus Lara’s car, our new (actually, original) adventure chariot still had its winter snow tires on. So we spent a day rummaging through our storage unit to get tire, find the tent and sleeping pads and access things like dress clothes to use once work (!!!!) starts again at the end of our trip. Midweek we braved a hot and sunny day to essentially empty and repack half of our POD to get tires and other items. Everything was successful and we started to scale down the items we needed in our SubaruLife.
Holy hell this feels like a load of crap we don't need!
A final to-do was to check off a June ski to continue our streak of consecutive months of skiing.On June 1st we braved some questionable thunderstorm clouds to make a quick run at Loveland Pass.We skinned from the pass itself up to the ridge at about 12,500’ and dropped into the mellow bowl on the northeast side.The snow was heavy but decently trustworthy.We chatted with and eventually arranged a car shuttle with some other snowboarders as the winter traffic was long gone but the summer tourists hadn’t really showed up yet.Lara dropped me off about halfway up so I could get one extra run down the closed Loveland Valley ski area and we were off having completed a very basic but successful 82nd consecutive month of skiing.The next day we would follow an all too familiar path out of Colorado eastward towards the Great Plains, this time in a little green Subie instead of Hobbes the Van.
