The south end of the beach at Hua Hin, Thailand.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Hua Hin, Thailand.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Maldives on March 23rd.

Saturday, June 6, 2020

Camped with a view?

We were on the road by 6:30am on Friday morning. We're not having any problem getting up early now that we're approaching the longest day of the year. Even now, the sun doesn't set until after 9:00pm, and it is light again by 5:30am!

And, it looked like another nice day although once again they were calling for the winds to pick up after lunch.

Our first picture of the day was taken at 6:33am!


Doing the 3.5 mile (5.5 km) drive from our campsite back to the highway took 20 minutes.

Mountain scenery.





Sorry. But I did warn you that there would be a lot of mountain pics over the next couple of weeks!

We made our way into Jackson, Wyoming and found the library. Jackson and Jackson Hole are very touristy expensive ski areas, and the scenery is amazing. But the tourist stuff we can do without, so as soon as we were done with the free WiFi, we headed on out of there!

Business as usual in Jackson.

The antler arch.

Busy place.

And like I said, it was business as usual, with the exception that the visitors center was still closed. Shops were all open, and we didn't see anybody wearing a mask. It almost seemed odd. 

Grand Teton National Park.

This was taken from a highway overlook viewpoint.

Gorgeous!

Sherman is enjoying the view too!

We could have paid $33 USD per night to dry camp in the National Park campground, but we didn't see the point when there are free Forest Service campsites just down the road. 

The road was a bit rough getting in, but Sherman has done worse.

Camped at GPS 43.76370, -110.557234
We ended up turning around to face the other way.

A little bit of a mountain view through our windshield.

Not a bad spot, with lots of forest service road hiking to be done. Some even better campsites were further in, and if we had been staying longer we would have done the long slow drive up on the rough road.

Out for a hike.



Up one section of road, there were several campsites with a great view. However, they were all bunched together, and we were told by the camp host that it's a free for all. Even though there are only supposed to be 4 sites, he often sees as many as 8 or 10 rigs packed together up there. The problem of course is that only 2 or 3 get the really great view... the others get to look at the side of another RV... so I really don't see the point! Especially with all those generators running. Not for us, that's for sure.

These rigs are all packed into what is supposed to be 4 sites.

Two or three of them have this great view.



We ended up doing about 5.5 miles (8.5 kms) and then headed back to the motorhome for some reading and backgammon.

Slept all right, but there sure was a lot of traffic up and down that forest road!

Today (Saturday) we are going to do a fairly long drive through Yellowstone National Park and make our way into Montana. The bad weather starts late this afternoon and looks like it is going to last until Tuesday. We will find somewhere with cellular access to hunker down.

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And in Canada...




8 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Yep, it is pretty spectacular here! I think you would love spending time in the Yukon, it is absolutely fantastic, similar to the scenery you see around the Grand Tetons but hardly any people and boondocking galore. :-)

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  2. Grand Teton is so gorgeous! We stayed at one of the campgrounds there (Gros Ventre) for a week, I think. It was less expensive with my husband's senior pass (half price!), quiet, and there were only specific hours when generators were allowed. One of our main reasons for spending so much time there was that the cycling was great. All over the park there are paved bike paths and bike lanes. There's also a paved bike path through Jackson Hole. We took our laundry to a laundromat from the campground to Jackson Hole on our bikes! Fun times. And we had a beautiful view of the mountains from our campsite. Great memories. Sure do hope to go back one day. There wasn't nearly as much snow on the mountains as for you, as we were there in July.

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    1. The kinda place I like to spend the time to relax and really smell those roses.
      This area, and the ice fields parkway in BC/Al along with north/East of Whistler are some of the most jaw dropping mtn views I've seen in North America. Not a bad place to spend a month and do some fishin&eatin!

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    2. Yep, that area is drop dead gorgeous, our only issue with the area is the lack of boondocking as the campgrounds for us cost way too much and the amount of people. There are just way too many for our liking, and this isn't even a normal year for this time of year, there would be so many more if it weren't for COVID-19.

      I was drooling over the beautiful bike paths though, we would love to have been on them. We tried to find a boondocking site nearby that was listed but when we got there they have since erected "No Camping" signs. :-( We did still do well with the site we found but it was too far away to be able to make use of the bike paths, and it was busier than we would have liked but it worked and if the weather was going to have been nicer over the next couple of days we would have stayed longer but it is going to get pretty nasty in that area so we moved on the next day.

      MRdsee468, have you ever been up to the Yukon and spent any time in the territory itself. So far we think that has the some of best scenery that we have seen in both Canada and the US and there aren't many people around and the boondocking is out of this world. :-)

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    3. Yes, we were lucky with hubby's America the Beautiful pass, which made the campground fees reasonable. AND we were even luckier to get a spot on the very outside loop, looking directly at the Tetons. Although we had neighbors on one side and across from us, it really wasn't bad as none were too close or intrusive. There were other campgrounds and loops where we would have felt claustrophobic, but the camping gods were smiling on us when we got there and nabbed a perfect site mid-week. :-)

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    4. I have, I took a 3 1/2(only headed back due to winter setting in) month trip towing a off road capable tent trailer with my F150 2WD truck from Orange County Cal to Alaska. I took the Cassier Hwy up north(Hyder and the Salmon Glacier) were very awesome. Did the Dalton, Dempster, Alaska Hwy, through the Yukon it was sad to see hundreds of miles of dead/dying forests due to the bark beetle's. Did Haines, Steward, Dawson City(saw the Can-Can show and gambled). Ended up being over 16,000 miles with almost 4,000 on dirt roads. I've been blessed to have done extensive backpacking in the Sierras etc, Motorcycling around N. America, been all over Utah into the nooks and crannies. One lucky dude compared to the truly disadvantaged folks all over the world. In my youth I was all zoom here, zoom there. But as I've gotten older I've slowed down(for the better)and take the time to smell the roses as they say. Listen to the sounds of the wind through the trees, and the birds and critters around. If I out last my current parental responsibility's I'd like to get back on the road and tow a small trailer, 20ft or less, with my current 2wd(but locking rear differential) Tacoma truck. I'll bring a couple of bikes for me and the misses. I've done everything from backpacking, motorcycle camping, motorhome, Truck Trailer. Personally I prefer the truck/small trailer route as I like the flexibility of being able to unhook and explore the more remote areas @25mpg over the 9-10 the MH got. I'm afraid my knees have been worn out from all the Bpacking and dirt bike racing so the days of 10mile hikes and peak bagging are in the rear view mirror. But I sure do like to see/read about you young "whipper snapper's" journeys. Brings back those fond memories! Plus not to mention, a lot of useful information too!

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    5. Agreed Emily, having the Senior's pass making camping 1/2 price would be a big help, although even for us once you add on approximately 40%, it still makes it expensive. Plus, we find that the generator noise drives us nuts, even when they have set time limits, whereas when we are boondocking off by ourselves we purposely do everything we can to get as far away from people so that we don't have to listen to the generators. It is definitely a toss up, because when you are camping in the park you have the trails so much closer to you, although we have found some good trails or dirt roads that have given us some beautiful views too.

      Mrdsee468, you certainly have seen a lot of both of our beautiful countries, and have managed to get off the beaten path a lot. I hope someday that you will be able to hit the road once again. We really loved the Yukon because the scenery was spectacular and there weren't the crowds of people that you get in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks or the in Alaska for that matter. We would love to go back up north again and see more of what we missed including more of the Northwest Territory which we only saw from the Yukon border to Tuktoyaktuk while on the Dempster Highway.

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