Jun 30 2008
RV Adventure, Day 18: Missoula MT to Yellowstone National Park
Again, nice and sunny. Our luck has been excellent from a weather front.
After breakfast the kids took the opportunity to enjoy the parks pool once again. With a fairly lax schedule today (only a few hundred Kilometers to Yellowstone) we felt no need to rush, eventually rolling out of the campground at around 11:30. We stopped at the local Costco location for a few supplies and then hit the road.
The first few hours were interstate driving, fairly straightforward, however once we exited the highway for the last hour or so into the park, the scenery got much more interesting very quickly. It was very reminiscent of the stretch from Calgary into Banff - you can see the mountains in the distance getting closer and closer, and before long you are upon them.
The stretch from the entrance of the park to West Yellowstone (where our campsite was reserved long ago) seemed level to the naked eye, but referencing my foot on the throttle and the GPS, it was evident that we were actually in a long sustained climb.
I had noticed that the truck was noticeably louder when I started it up this morning, and added to that there was a seeming lack of power. Checking the boost gauge showed that it was only making a few PSI of boost, and looking in the passenger side mirror I could see black smoke under hard acceleration indicating that the engine wasn’t burning it’s fuel completely. Added to that the characteristic “Tick tick tick” noise emanating from under the hood under acceleration, and I knew that I had an exhaust manifold leak. Sure enough over the last few miles into West Yellowstone it got worse. This isn’t good - a diesel not making proper boost is not only going to be seriously lacking in horsepower, but it can be harmful since a great deal of unburned fuel simply generates heat instead of power. As much as the prospect of such seemed terrible, I was probably going to have to get this fixed in Yellowstone.
Putting the problems in the back of my head we logged the last few miles and arrived at West Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park. Check-in was effortless and we were on our way to our site a short while later.
The first thing I observed is that it’s clear we were outclassed by probably in excess of 80% of the RV’s in this park. Everywhere you look there are million dollar private coaches and $200,000 high end travel trailers. There was a spattering of middle-of-the-road RV’ers like us, but I was astounded by how few. This is a fairly high-class (and much more expensive) RV park compared to some others in the area, but I’ve began to notice from park to park that many of the casual campers are no longer coming out, probably because of the price of fuel. For the million-dollar coach owners I’m sure the price of filling the tank is inconsequential, but for middle class families or those on a tight budget it’s been my observation that RV’ing seems to be much lower on the priority list.
We backed into our campsite and were greeted by the mosquitos who immediately targeted us as easy pickings. First priority before all others was to douse ourselves in bug spray, and then setup camp.
As we expected in Yellowstone, the weather goes from one extreme to another - we were sweltering in the AM, got comfortably cool (and then hot again) on the way into the area, and by sundown we were shutting the windows and reaching for the furnace controls.
It was too late to bother actually going into Yellowstone park today, so we opted to simply enjoy dinner, enjoy the RV park, and then retire for the evening.