Road Warriors

Big Bend NP-6

April 7, 2025

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Big Bend National Park

4/3/2025

I’m gonna wrap this up prematurely, as there is little to make funny jokes about any longer, and if I can’t do that I become unmotivated real fast. Plus, it’s just plain boring.

Given that we now had an extra day, we made our way to “see the water” — a common request of mine that has gotten us into a fair amount of trouble over the years. For example, when we were in New Orleans looking at a map and I saw how close we were to the ocean, I thought it would be great to go “see the water.” Which ended up as an entire day-long quest resulting driving hundreds of miles with the only thing to show for it was spontaneously dropping in seeing the Tabasco Plantation Museum, since we happened upon it. But did not result in me “seeing the water.” Who know? I guess they call what we saw the bayou? I would call it the bracken, but I’m bitchy like that.

Today, we did, indeed, “see the water.” The mighty Rio Grande River!

It was both a waste of time and a let down. It may well have also been a heart-breaker, though I can’t be sure. I knew The Rio Grande was a shadow of its former self, but I guess I expected it to at least be moving?? (By the way, Dave is watching that guy in the photo take a video of a turtle. He filmed the turtle for five solid minutes…)

Originally we planned to make the drive out via Old Maverick Road, which the Ranger described as an “easy, improved unpaved gravel road”, but after about 3 miles of serious washboard, we turned around and backtracked. We continued out of the park and drove about three hours before needing to stop for gas. It was there my heart was broken.

The solar panel. The THIRD solar panel. Was gone.

There is no silver lining. No moral of the story. In all my hand-wringing (and writing) about the damn refrigerator, it was the solar panel all along! To be fair, I did obsessively check it for the first few days, given our history with the damn things, but it should be noted that we, The Menke’s, appear to be one of only two people with our camper model that have ever lost a solar panel. And that other party couldn’t be sure it wasn’t stolen. We have the very unique status at Escapod to be known as the only people to have lost TWO solar panels, not to mention THREE…

It kicked us into quite the funk, if I’m honest. They are expensive, yes, but it’s more the feeling of ineptitude. As in, “What are we doing wrong??” Logically, we know that we aren’t doing anything wrong — there is no “trick” to the solar panel. Still, all the logic in the world couldn’t make us feel better. We were even too demoralized to call Escapod to order a new one — if we could even GET a new one, given they are manufactured in Canada… and don’t even get me started on the news feeds that we got as we came back in to cell service this morning…

We got all the way to Alamogordo, NM, spun through White Sands National Park to see the gypsum dunes — which frankly just look like a real cold scene out of Fargo — and hit a strange dinner spot. Our night was spent at a place similar to — but better than — Red Bluff Dam. Free camping right off the highway. I’ll tell you what was fantastic about it: the overnight temperature was 40! It was amazing!

Do you like the missing solar panel??

As promised, I’m wrapping it up. Since we are heading back north, and since we have epically bad weather luck when camping, we are headed straight into another winter storm near home. Anywhere we camp tonight would be pretty “iffy.” So we are just rolling over, calling it a day and going home, maybe stopping to fish along the way — though I’m not sure I will even be able to muster that. Maybe I’ll sit in the car and watch Dave to see if he has any action before suiting up and giving it a try.

Or maybe I’ll just crack open this bottle of Bulleit Rye that I just found in the snack bin… forgot I had put in there!

[ Cheers all! I missed writing! This has been fun! ]

Here’s a final shot of what we drove into shortly after I finished writing that last bit — right around the spot where we —I mean Dave! — planned to fish!

Also: we did call Escapod about the panel today and — once again — they were super helpful and want to get to the bottom of what is going on. What an amazing company they have turned out to be. So… stay tuned for maybe one more camping trip to Coalville Utah in our future!!

Big Bend NP-5

April 6, 2025

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Big Bend National Park

4/2/2025

The wind continued to howl most of the night, dying down shortly before dawn. Speaking of which: dawn. When do you suppose that first light of morning takes place? For me, pretty much no matter where we are this time of year, it’s 6-ish. You know, if you open your eyes at 6, you can tell it’s morning — or darn-near it. It’s very different than, say, 4 am. Here, 6 am is like 4 am. JET BLACK. It didn’t start to look like 6 am until 7 am. Is that because it is so close to the time zone line? Closer to Mountain time than Central? That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. But it’s also super weird.

Because the wind had died down and because of a thin veil of haze, it was quite pleasant! We lolled a bit and then headed up the road in the Bronco to do a hike into the canyon. All in, we had seen exactly two other occupied campsites out of the eight that we had passed. Interesting.

“Check-out time” for our site was noon, so we hiked back, packed up and drove out —deciding on the way to delay setting up the camper at the new site because the haze had burned off and the wind had picked up and — to be honest — we couldn’t face another afternoon in the furnace of camp. Instead, we headed to the Chisos Mountain area trailheads to escape the heat at a higher elevation. (Well, to be 100% transparent, we also wanted a little cell service…)

We did a short hike and, given we couldn’t really come up with any other stall tactics, headed to the new site — located on a much longer dirt road passing many more empty primitive sites. And here is why I said the whole process with the Ranger at check-in was “utter ridiculousness.” None of these empty sites were available to us — having been “reserved” on the — you guessed it — Recreation.gov site. At $10 a night and no penalty for no-shows, people reserve them for a week or more at a time and use them for maybe one or two nights on a weekend. It’s not cost prohibitive $70 for a whole week!) and abusers of the system have nothing to lose. Meanwhile all these sites site empty and rule-followers like us drive an hour past empty site after empty site for no reason. It’s a huge problem everywhere (Tetteguche and Split Rock in MN come to mind…) and extra frustrating on this day as we inched our way along the washed-out road toward the one available sub-optimal site that allowed a trailer on the desert floor. It was 100 degrees when we got there and — you guessed it again — windy as hell.

I won’t belabor my behavior. I was a giant baby. A huge, giant — extremely-buzzed — baby.

Dinner (Loaded Pho) and a shower — with washed hair — helped for a brief time. But when we crawled in to the camper, I kid you not, the interior showed it was 96 degrees. It was still ridiculously windy, but it was also still ridiculously hot. Dave fell asleep within seconds (as only Dave can do). I laid there for hours. The memory foam mattress was literally cooking my skin. I swear I could smell toxins emanating from beneath the sheets. I had my door open to receive the wind — assuming it would eventually cool off. But the wind was so strong it kept pulling the door from its magnetic attachment and banging against the fiberglass shell. Not good. So, I pulled it mostly shut but still cracked. But the vacuum that created caused it to blow open and then bang shut — over and over. So I fully closed it and felt the temperature crawl even higher. Finally, I got up, pulled out the screen for the large stargazer window (located above our heads), installed it and struggled to open the heavy window by myself against the wind and secure it on each side, crawling over Dave to do so (while Dave slumbered on…). This combination finally allowed me to fall asleep for a bit. It was around 2 am when the temperature finally broke and the wind let up a bit.

And, once again, morning was actually quite pleasant. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have positive feelings about that site after the day before, but dammit, I did. Somehow, between going to bed and getting up, it seemed more green in the golden light of morning.

In answer to Dave’s main question that he kept asking the Ranger (“Is it private?”), we tipped back our heads and laughed and laughed. There was LITERALLY NO ONE OUT HERE. To punctuate that point, we walked around naked for a bit, brushing our teeth and making coffee (and tea). We could have never put our clothes on and been completely fine. While it was NOT “private” (you could see for miles), “privacy” was of no concern.

Still, as the sun rose higher, the temp rose in kind. And in a mind-melding instance of mind-reading, Dave and I both knew — without ever discussing it — we were NOT spending another night here. We were getting the hell of of dodge.

Big Bend NP-4

April 5, 2025

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Big Bend National Park

4/1/2025

Breaking Bad.

Dave said that’s what the area looked like and he was EXACTLY RIGHT. Was Breaking Bad filmed in New Mexico? I feel like it had to be. I don’t have internet right now, so I can’t check but this place screams of a camper-making-meth scene.

Dave wasn’t even going to make coffee, but I made 5 five pre-measured tea bags of earl grey and dammit I was going to use them all, so I rolled my butt out of bed, faced the extremely distressing landscape, and got ‘er done. Caffeine always gets the juices flowing, so I also took advantage of the nearby port-a-potty.

And let me just say: I miss my bidet.

Remember the bidet from Banff at the tail end of our Alaska trip? WELL I BOUGHT ONE. And I am literally ADDICTED to the damn thing. I don’t recommend watching The American’s, but I DO recommend getting a bidet. You are welcome.

Driving back out to the road was a treat. I’m still just sort of speechless about this place. There aren’t many places I would be scared to be alone, but I would not have made it through the night on my own here at the Red Bluff Dam Park…

Happily, we had a stretch of connectivity, so we read up on the area and found a super interesting short summary of the Permian Basin. Here’s a link if you are interested: https://www.enverus.com/permian-basin/ .

TL;DR

…the area from southwest New Mexico to Pecos, TX is a newer drilling area that predominantly consists of fracking, which requires electricity, sand and water (versus those stand-alone one-arm bandits -or pumpjacks – that most of us equate with oil drilling. The fracking drills are dense, lit up like a prison, and surrounded by tanks of water and sand. It’s… not pretty. And every few miles there are row after row of temporary worker housing clusters along the highway and the truck traffic is chaotic and constant. It’s a hive of other-worldly activity.

After we drove through Pecos, the landscape changed to almost no fracking, with the traditional pumpjacks — which was WAY more serene. More what I had expected of the area. I also enjoyed it a lot more…

Shortly after Pecos, the landscape changed dramatically with more vegetation and spurts of green. Fort Stockton was a nice little town! We grabbed egg McMuffins and resumed the drive.

We stopped again in Marathon — last town before the turn off to Big Bend and — I assumed — my last chance at internet. I needed connectivity to download the BSF lecture, compile the video and then upload it to the BSF website — which I do for the class I’m in. No one else really knows how to do it and every week I’m somewhere on the road it’s a little nerve wracking. But it keeps working out. I’ve had some wild times this year! I like the challenge… though I’m not sure they like the drama…

Another hour and we were at Panther Creek Visitor Center. We stopped to check in, get our permits and see if we could nab another couple nights of camping.

We were told by the rangers that NORMALLY the line would be out the door, but spring break ended last week for Texas and now it was relatively quiet. The ranger pulled out a huge 3-ring notebook showing each primitive site — each looking EXACTLY the same and pretty desolate — and answered ALL of the MANY questions Dave had for her. “Is it private?” “Does it have a good view?” Etc. etc. After inserting my own priorities (“I don’t want to go extreme 4-wheeling to get there”), I wandered off to explore the books and found myself in the theater room showing a movie of the park.

Fascinating. Seriously. No sarcasm here. (I feel the need to point that out, given my penchant…).After standing there for 10 or 15 minutes and I suddenly jolted back to reality, thinking: “Dave is probably wondering where the hell I am!” I went back out to the desk.

…only to find Dave still asking questions about primitive sites. I’m seriously not exaggerating. And this woman… she was still smiling and answering them. Fascinating! I went back in and resumed the movie.

The net-net of the camping site summit between Dave and the Ranger was that he had gotten pretty far down the road with her, honing in on a site, when she learned we had a trailer attached to our car — which apparently changed everything and they had to basically start over. The irony here is that I am writing this days after it happened and I now know what you do not: it’s all just utter ridiculousness.

But that will wait.

For now, we had our permit in hand (and were told we needed to have it “on our person” should we be approached by border control), we downloaded some offline maps and set off for Pine Canyon #4. The road was primitive but not bad. The site was, in all respects, decent. That said, it was HOT and it was WINDY. We set UP the canopy and sat DOWN.

For the most part, except to get another beer, we didn’t move all that much until dinner time. I did plug in my AirPods and put them on noise canceling in order to drown out the wind.

I hate wind.

I mean… I REALLY hate the wind. I had a friend when we lived out in Watertown who equally hated the wind. I still think about her when it howls. She was my accountability partner. But I had no cell service and I couldn’t call her. So I reached for another beer.

Eventually we ate (green chicken curry) and went to bed. The camper was hot inside as I installed the screens and opened everything up. The wind had finally died down a bit and it became pleasant. And we drifted off to sleep…

…to be awoken two hours later by insane wind — banging doors, the camper shaking and the canopy making fearful noises. We decided to take the canopy down, and scrambled out in the dark as the dust blew in our eyes.

Totally naked, mind you.

Big Bend NP-3

April 4, 2025

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Big Bend National Park

Well… I’m sad to report we did NOT stay in Roswell with the ET’s. We were making too good of time and blasted right on through. Mostly I’m sad because that’s also where we left civilization. We should have stopped there for dinner but we weren’t hungry. Instead, we continued on to Artesia, NM and ate at what appeared to be the only open restaurant in town: La Fonda. We were in and out in a matter of 30 minutes, gobbling chips and salsa (decent), a carne asada burrito (decent — tho, since we expected it to be newborn-baby-sized like most burritos these days are, we split it. It was not newborn-baby-sized so neither of us was very full, which was FINE. Dave declared the margarita was NOT decent. Much to my dismay, he only drank half of it. Oh yeah— and he also got CARDED!

And we were back on the road.

Holy cats! The Permian Basin of southwest New Mexico and west Texas is no April Fool’s joke. I truly think it must have to be seen to be believed. Hour after hour of driving past nothing but natural gas wells, oil drilling, semi after semi hauling endless loads of ??, water tank stations, zigzags of electrical poles, refineries, massive clusters of microgrids (an oxymoron, i know…) — all as far as the eye can see. I’m embarrassed to admit I have never even heard of the Permian Basin (Dave was agog). Certainly I know about Texas oil country…Maybe “Permian Basin” is the Latin term for it…?

When I IMAGINED what oil country looked like, it was NOT like this. I guess I’ve only seen pockets of oil drilling using old One-Arm Bandits. The situation we are driving through now is totally unlike those bucolic little oil pets. I would describe it as the dystopian version. I’d maybe even say it’s the SIXTH Circle of Hell. Or maybe I’d even shift the Eagle post office to the sixth circle and move this area the seventh… And that’s saying something.

I know I’m being extra hard on Texas right now, but I am honestly a bit shell-shocked. I realize “someone’s gotta do it” and that my whining is comparable to an omnivore complaining about hunters and thinking it’s ghastly — I do heat my house and I do drive a car, so… I am a hypocrite. I hate being a hypocrite, so I will work on my attitude.

In other exciting news, we also played our annual “Let’s see if we can make it to the gas station game!” Always a crowd pleaser.

We did. (Make it to the gas station. Twice. This was the first picture. The second time it was even worse.)

And the fridge continues to work, so that’s good.

So, back to the trip an my job as navigator…

… well, let me just segue to one tiny detail from earlier in the day. Dave asked me to drive so he could do some reading before making a call. OF COURSE I WAS FINE WITH THIS (in case any of you dare to assume otherwise). However, DAVE thinks that when HE’S in the passenger seat, it’s all just rainbows and unicorns. “Time off”, so to speak. As such, he eschewed his navigation responsibilities — while I on was on the phone with my MOTHER, no less! Which caused a brief flaring of tempers when the route did something unpredictable and he was annoyed by my annoyance — and where it was established that Dave “hates it” when I “scream” and I “hate it” when he makes “dismissive gestures” and “false claims”.

That out of the way, I resumed my call with my mother and he resumed reading. In earlier Road Warrior Days, as my kids can attest, this would have resulted in a 2 day standoff (on my part, to be clear). So, yeah, I’m a big girl now. A solid teenager, emotionally…

Back to my navigator duties — which i take very seriously, in case you didn’t notice. MY job, after dinner, was to find a place to sleep. No, this isn’t a campground situation. This is a free, not-far-off-the-highway, no-chance-of-getting-in-trouble, preferably-quiet situation. Which is a lot harder to achieve than you might imagine. Especially in the Permian Basin.

Red Bluff Dam Park.

1.5 hours beyond Artesia. Inside Texas boundary — putting us in the Central Time Zone, so 10:30pm — 4 miles from the highway… on a reservoir… free camping…

PERFECT!

I mean it was… and it really really wasn’t. It was pitch black out so we wouldn’t really get the full effect until morning. And neither will you.

Big Bend National Park-2

April 2, 2025

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Big Bend National Park

3/31/2025

After sitting in bed doing Wordle and reading the paper long enough to make a point about the 7:45 am departure time, I got up and was happy to see the fridge was still working. I finished loading the food up and slamming my tea (that’s a WHOLE OTHER story…). We managed to leave by 8:15 am, but farted around with stops at the post office (to see if someone might have turned in our keys. Nope.) and the tea store to pick up some of my depleted matcha. I guess at some point I’ll have to explain the tea thing, but not now…

Prep for this trip was pretty lackadaisical. As in: I have no idea if we have what we mean to have. Time will tell. And it’s not like we are going to ALASKA for two months, so really: how bad can it be?

The worst part of the whole trip is our destination: Texas. Without going into dangerous political territory, I think it’s safe to say that Texans were never popular even before the current climate. They are an easy creative writing target. The only people comfortable with Texas are Texans. Not to mention, they can’t drive around a round-about to save their lives. I have friends from Texas. I have shared these sentiments with them to see what they have to say for themselves and they respond with something like, “Ya. You betcha” or some such nonsense like that.

So yeah, we are going to Texas. Big Bend National Park to be exact. Our first worry was if it would be open — you know, given the current political climate. But our newest worry is the news article that appeared on our phones as we drove out of the driveway this morning: “Trump Sends Hundreds of Troops to Texas National Park”

Yep. The same park we are headed to.

We picked Big Bend because Dave read somewhere that it was both one of the largest national parks while also holding the designation as being the least visited park in the US. I’m not sure when he read that, but it had to be from like 10 years ago, because now it is Grand Central Station. We aren’t national parks people to begin with, preferring to poop in the wild, ya know…, but this one is literally FILLED TO THE GILLS with Texans. It’s busy as all get out and nearly impossible to get a campsite. However… invitingly, it also has some kind of primitive road designated camp sites — much like dispersed camping — even though every single web page states that they DON’T have dispersed camping, as does every single telephone hold message. If you call, they literally lead with: “Big Bend does not have dispersed camping…” It’s a head scratcher because they then direct you to Recreation.gov to reserve your “Primitive Backroad Campsite” — which is, indeed dispersed camping. Except you have to RESERVE IT.

Speaking of which, has anyone here ever reserved campsites on Recreation.gov? If so, you are a smarter fool than I. It seems to be a website developed solely to confound. Oh yes, there is LOT’S of information. Maps. Descriptions of campsites. Links to a mysterious reservation site, which loops you back to where you started… on Recreation.gov.

This is precisely why we preferred dispersed camping. (I was lying when I said it’s because we like to poop in the wild.)

But since showing-up-dispersed-camping isn’t ALLOWED, we had to figure it out. It took about an hour to finally discern the green button buried in a sidebar of distraction that said “Itinerary Planning”(I am not kidding). And that, my friends, is the secret to reserving a spot on Recreation.gov. Itinerary Planning. Does this make sense to you? It does not make sense to me.

Out of four large established campgrounds with hundreds of reservable sites and 20 reservable primitive sites, we were able to secure ONE NIGHT at a primitive site during the two weeks we had available to make the trip. So, to be clear, we are driving 13 hours south to TEXAS for ONE NIGHT with the HOPE that we can then nab another couple nights at a site that is only reservable IN PERSON. If that seems like a gamble, it is. But, eh, whatever. We drive. It’s what we do.

So that is what we are doing now. Our route is much like driving to our former land in Pagosa Springs. In fact, we were there exactly a year ago collecting a bumper crop of deer sheds. We veered from that route before the pass to Wolf Creek and entered New Mexico — a state we have not spent hardly any time. Aside from the oasis of Santa Fe, I find it to be mostly made up of unpronounceable towns and streets. It’s also pretty windy and desolate. In a (mostly) beautiful way. (Though there are a shocking number of mostly abandoned towns and houses that I think people are living in??).

Anyway. In case you can’t tell, I’m trying to be NICER…

I have no idea where we are planning to spend the night, but it’s looking like we are headed straight for Roswell, New Mexico — home of the 1947 UFO crash and countless ET abductions.

Wish us well!

Big Bend National Park 1

April 1, 2025

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Big Bend National Park

(A-Not-Quite Road Warriors-Worthy Escapade.)

3/30/25

Things are not looking so great as we embark on our first camping trip post Road Warriors Alaska Edition. The first omen was that we lost our PO Box mail key, which was kept in the Bronco. It was on a silver carabiner with some other keys — at least 3 others — that neither Dave nor I can remember what were for. They each had a meticulously installed color-coded silicone cap and were labeled. Clearly, they were of great import to me at the time when I did all that work… But for the love of all that is holy, I cannot remember what they unlock. Except, of course, for the PO Box key. Obviously, we discovered the missing keys when we stopped at the post office in Eagle — which I have surely written about before, but in case that memory has faded, let me just say that it is the Seventh Circle of Hell. We refer to going to the post office in many ways in these parts, but the most often used phrase in our home is: “I’m going to Russia. If I don’t return, send help.”

So yeah, no, we haven’t found the keys and I can’t tell you how nervous I am about the day when I need one of the mystery keys and I suddenly remember… “Oh yeah….”

At least I DO have another mail key. And I WAS relieved to confirm we had all the camper keys, so… I guess stay tuned on that.

The next morning (the morning before we were to leave) Dave came into the house saying “Remind me: is there any trick to turning the fridge on?”

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. The FRIDGE? Isn’t TURNING ON?

Again, forgive me if I assume people reading this already know about the flipping refrigerator debacles of yore. 11,000 miles of pure Hell: Will it be on? Will it be off? If it’s off, will I be ABLE to get it turned on again? All of that drama culminating in our final leg of the Alaska trip at the camper manufacturer who fixed EVERYTHING in one day of amazing customer service. The faulty female plug now a sturdy, secure work of absolute ART that we have complete confidence in.

Except for NOW, after parking it last September at the conclusion of the final Alaska leg when it was in perfect working order, it won’t turn on.

Muscle memory assisted me as I unbuckled it from the tray, retrieved the portable light and crawled back into the barely accessible cubby-hole of Hell and began my troubleshooting steps. Before I took the most dreaded step of totally disconnecting the work that Escapod had done on the plug last fall, it occurred to me that I could easily test the outlet with another 12v device. Duh! I grabbed the inverter I use in the car and plugged it in. IT WORKED. I then hefted the 2000 pound refrigerator over to the 12v outlet in the back of the Bronco. Nothing. I then found the 120v wall socket cord that came with the fridge — and let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that I was, in fact, able to even FIND that cord — and plugged it into the wall receptacle. Nothing.

So now, after living for the whole Alaska trip with what I thought was a faulty receptacle, you, Fate Of The Universe, are telling me I have a faulty CORD????

I will not belabor this process any more than I already have. I “fixed” it. I have no idea how. I truly don’t. I took the fuse out, looked at it and put it back in. Plugged it back into the wall and it worked. Then I plugged it into the Bronco’s 12v. It didn’t work. I took the plug fuse out, flipped it around and tried it again. It worked. I took it back to the camper and plugged it in. It didn’t work. Dave came out to check on my progress — greatly appreciated because I was currently deep inside the refrigerator cubby-hole of Hell — I flipped the fuse around again. I plugged it back into and held it while Dave tried to turn in on. And… it worked.

And it’s still working. But I have zero confidence in it. If it stops working again, I have no idea what I’ll do to fix it other than to try some sort of seance.

Shortly after this literal miracle, but before I had done any personal packing or food packing, Dave saw fit to head out for some fishing.

(I’ll just leave that sentence as is. No further clever writing necessary.)

I will say that I considered sitting down to the puzzle I was working on, cuz… I GUESS IT’S LEISURE TIME NOW? But the martyr in me doesn’t roll over quite so easily. So, yeah, I martyred to the very, very best of my abilities and everything was ready to roll before Dave returned a couple hours later — including a next-level turkey/sweet potato/brown rice/cabbage bowl that I declared to be DELICIOUS.

Further, we grimaced through two episodes of The American’s in our effort to complete the six-season series of — maybe the Fifth Circle of Hell? Why do we keep watching? Because we like to wind down with a show after dinner and haven’t landed on anything else yet. So we picked it back up at the beginning of season five where we had left off maybe a year ago and — DAMIT — we think we can DO IT! We can finish this effer off! (it’s actually pretty terrible. I don’t recommend it. If *I* were the writer, I’d do something other than the same recipe episode after episode. I’d have them become DOUBLE AGENTS and defect to the US when they realize the USSR sucks. Just saying.)

The plan is to leave at 7:45 sharp. Can you guess who made the plan? (I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t me.).

We’ll see if I decide to comply…

Alaska 51. Road Warriors August 29

September 3, 2024

This entry is part 1 of 46 in the series Alaska Road Warriors

The CONCLUSION!

We woke up in our home-away-from-home (aka the RV Park behind the gas station) and packed up for hopefully the last time, headed to Escapod about 2 miles away.

We dropped the camper and headed to… anyone?

Park flippin’ City. For breakfast. Though, unlike the last time in Park City for breakfast, this time, we picked a pretty tasty spot. We had real lattes, fun food and lingered for as long as seemed acceptable.

I bought Utah fishing licenses (mostly so that Dave wouldn’t force me to hike in this HEAT. It’s, like, 79 degrees…) and we headed to a little creek we’d seen from the highway that seemed easy enough.

It wasn’t.

By now, anyone reading this must think that we truly suck at fly fishing. All I can tell you (as I keep telling myself) is that, for whatever reason, we struggle to catch fish in the dead of summer. I have a fishing journal to prove it. My theory is that all the fly shops just lie when they say, “The ______ (fill in the blank) river is fishing well!” At least with our most recent two rivers (Rock Creek from the day before and Weber Creek today) the fly shops we called were actually honest. “It’s August fly fishing. You can try a hopper, but… your only real chance is a tiny nymph. Like a size 22 or 24.” Ninety five percent of you won’t know just how small that is, but I’m here to tell you: it’s about the size of a match head. It’s what we have to fish with all winter with freezing cold fingers, trying to tie the damn things on. It’s the absolute last thing I want to fish with in summer.

It’s dry or die for me, baby. And it’s also why I tend to catch way less fish.

We just ambled our way upriver, trying everything, except for, in my case, tiny nymphs. I finally called it a day and sat down on some comfy rocks. Dave popped out of the tall grass on the bank shortly after and asked if I was ready to go. I said, “Yeah, but you should hit this water first. It looks really good. I fished it but maybe you’ll catch something with your STUPID TINY NYMPH.

AND HE DID!

So then, of course, I had to tromp back up there, tie on a stupid, tiny nymph, and try it. I had a bite but it didn’t stay on. Dave took a few more casts and hooked a MONSTER. It came up to the surface enough that we saw it, but then it dove, wrapped around a submerged tree and broke off. They don’t get that big being stupid. They just like stupid tiny nymphs. BAH!

We had gotten a call about an hour earlier saying the camper would be done by 3 pm — miraculous! So we headed back to the car to make our way back to Escapod.

We were blown away by all the stuff Escapod did for us in such a short time. We’ve put a lot of miles on that little Storm Trooper and they’ve been really fair about warranty coverage for stuff that they probably didn’t have to be. We were really happy and grateful.

Cheers! (Squatty doesn’t look too happy to be left out)

After getting everything set, we stopped for gas and literally the best slushy I’ve ever had. It hit the SPOT. And we were on our way HOME! Six and a half hours would put us there at 10:30 pm and into my sweet, sweet bed.

It seemed like a long drive, being the last one, I think. The BUGS were insanely bad. We had to stop again not long after getting gas just to wash the windshield again so we could see.

The windshield got mucked up again really fast. On a really curvy, dark road while I was reading something aloud to Dave, he threw his arm in front of me and said “Hang on.” I looked up and saw a huge bull elk in the road as Dave locked up the brakes. I watched in what seemed like slow motion as we passed him. His head was easily as tall as the roof of the Bronco. I feel like he looked me in the eye as we went by, while he, miraculously, stopped walking and stood still. We missed him by inches.

It all happened in the blink of an eye. As soon as we came to a stop, we got out to make sure everything was OK. The air reeked of burned rubber but the car and camper seemed fine. Hopefully the new tires, alignment and suspension didn’t get messed up.

We were stunned and grateful. Hitting that elk would have been… I don’t even know. It’s honestly inconceivable. 11,500 miles and we have the most serious incident two hours from home. But we were spared a tragic outcome.

Just so, so grateful.

We fell into bed when we got home.

And worked like dogs for the next two days unpacking and cleaning and all that jazz. It was a great trip and it’s great to be home.