Money Well Wasted

2011 DRV Mobile Suites 36 RSSB3 with vanity slide

Happy Veterans Day! Thank you to all who have or are now serving!

The above pic is our home of 16+ years on its way to a new family where it will be cherished and well cared for. This pic also marks the end of this stage of our great adventure. A new adventure awaits and at the moment, it's completely up in the air.

We'd been full time RVers for 16 years, 4 months. November 6th marked 15 years and 10 months with this trailer. Of the 16+ years on the road, we'd volunteered for either a national park or fish & wildlife facility for 10 summers. It's a life style we already miss and may try to do again in the future. It's also a lifestyle we highly recommend to anyone contemplating it.

The trailer sold while we were in High Point, NC. We moved out into a VRBO for the weekend and then traveled south to Florida to visit family. Our intention is to settle in central North Carolina. We plan to be back in that area by Thanksgiving. We'll rent for awhile and may decided to just rent instead of purchasing another home. 

We do plan on making road trips in the future. We are addicted to travel. We may or may not get another rig. We'll hang onto our tow vehicle until we know or at least believe we have a handle on what we want to do. (The truck already has a buyer, and they are patiently waiting for "their truck"!)

So why did we stop now? Our health was beginning to negatively impact what we could do while volunteering. Our thought process was always that we were there to serve. Tell us what you need, and we'll do our best to assist. We were there to assist the facilities we volunteered at - the facilities never existed to serve us. When the district had to start adjusting what we did which impacted other volunteers and rangers, we knew it was time to at least take a break. 

Also, Paul and Kaye Cross (Indiana Interstate Enterprises) had retired. We tried a spring service with the people who bought Paul and Kaye's place and had a bad experience. We took the trailer to Lippert's Howe, IN service center to fix the issues and while they did resolve the problems enough to allow us to continue to our volunteer positions in Grand Teton NP this past summer, the trailer was not truly repaired and still needed lots of work. (FYI, the new trailer owners know all this, are extremely handy, detailed oriented, have improvements they want to make. It doesn't hurt that her father owns a DRV. They will spend the whole winter going over that trailer inch by inch, front to back, top to bottom. I'm sure they will find things Donna & I didn't know about.)

We're fortunate to have been full time RVers for so long. We've been honored to be volunteers. We learned a lot. We'd do it again in a heart beat if we could. So ends this blog.

A change in seasons and a reunion

New River Gorge Bridge

We've made it back to Fredericksburg, VA for a couple of weeks before moving on to North Carolina. This is our semiannual visit for doc & dentist appointments. 

The last several times that we've made the trip from Jackson Hole to Virginia via a planned national park (New River Gorge or Shenandoah) visit, our trailer has always had a nervous breakdown of some sort that canceled the visit. This year it tried, but we had the parts and there was a guy nearby that knew how to repair it. We found the damage as we pulled into St Charles, MO (draggin' a broken brake line) where we had planned a day off of traveling, so no delay in travel plans. We made it to New River Gorge for a few nights and got a couple of hikes in.

After a rainy Columbus Day weekend in Natural Bridge, VA, we pulled the trailer on to Fredericksburg, VA. We left the trailer there and traveled by rental car to Nashville for our 50th Vandy NROTC reunion. We had a great time there, really enjoyed seeing everyone, and enjoyed everyone's recollections & stories. Donna and I are back here in Fredericksburg, VA with a full schedule for the next two weeks. 

We'll try to see as many people as we can while we're here. If not, we won't be that far away in North Carolina and can easily make a trip back.

That's it for us. Thanks for dropping by and checking in on us. Until next time, David

September Update

 

Photo of black bear by Caleb Weatherbee

September past half over, and we're wrapping up our season here in Grand Teton NP. We're fine. This is our last weekend to work coming up. One day of wrap-up next Tuesday, and we're on our way east. At least that's the plan.

The photo above is of one of the five or so black bears that have hung out at the Laurance S Rockefeller Preserve this season. While the picture (no zoom) seems to be too close, many of us (including me) have been much closer. (It's not comfortable and definitely unintended.) This picture taken while this section of the Lake Creek Trail (I nicknamed this section "Main Street") is closed. There's numerous berries in this part of the trail and not much line-of-sight which leads the preserve to close this section when the bears are there feeding to avoid bear/human conflict. We go through it twice a day to see what "action" has happened that day (visual sighting or fresh bear scat). As the photo shows, sometimes you're just a little too close.

So this is what's happened since out last update. We should be in Fredericksburg by Oct 12th and High Point, NC by November 2nd. As I mentioned earlier, that's the plan.

Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us. Probably post more often as we start traveling, again. Later, David

(Angry) August

Mt Teewinot from Moose Ponds Loop, Jenny Lake District, Grand Teton NP

August quickly slipping away. The park's been particularly busy and being on the southside with major road, parking lot and trailhead renovations & closures has put some extra strain on the preserve. Doesn't help that a 5-year old TikTok video is telling everyone to go to a particular spot on Phelps Lake to enjoy the water. Now add the park - with the most innocent of intentions - telling everyone via social media that the trailhead & parking lot for that spot is closed for the season and to use the preserve's parking lot to get to that spot on Phelps Lake. Add in flaggers, guide cars and a 25-45 minute wait time at each flagger and the mixture boils quickly. And it's not just our district.

When we're on patrol, volunteers get a park radio where you can talk to anyone in the park (law enforcement, dispatch, other districts for example). Just listening to the radio is just, if not more, exciting that any reality TV show. You get to hear things from a temporary road closure where they block off the road and wait at each end to ticket anyone who had parked illegally on that section of the road, to someone who is too entitled to wait at a wildlife jam and drives on the wrong side of the road and has a vehicle accident. Now mix in the usual speeders, wildlife jams, wildlife/visitor conflicts, accidents, parking violations, DUIs, conflicts between visitors, food storage violations, camping out-of-bounds, and the rare law enforcement assistance needed to euthanize a horse with a broken leg and we get a national park (one of many) that's strained at both ends.

Sometimes you arrive each day wondering where the chaos is going to occur that day and glad (hopeful?) that it's unlikely that it's where you're assigned. Expect it all to get worse next year. 

This past weekend seemed to be a change is the type of visitor. Now our typical visitor at the preserve is older. Early evening parking at Jenny Lake is more available (though still busy). Expect the park to be packed for Labor Day weekend. Colter Bay Marina (highest elevation marina on Jackson Lake) closed a few weeks ago due to low water in Jackson Lake. (Significant amount of water in Jackson Lake is intended for agriculture usage in Idaho. Idaho needs that water and is using it. This results in low water levels for Jackson Lake. Colter Bay drains out first.) This frees up a lot of parking at Colter Bay and Donna & I always recommend people go there when their "Plan A" isn't available.

So August almost over. We're about a month away from our departure time. We're fine. We plan to travel to New River George when we leave here. Plan to be in Fredericksburg, VA by mid-October. As always, that's the plan. Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us! David

July Update

We're fine and in our "dog days of summer" here in Jackson Hole. We're not hitting any temp records, but we're hot and approaching those old heat records. Unlike previous seasons where the Tetons were hidden by wildfire smoke, we can still see the mountains as we drive by them. We do have some wildfire smoke making its way into the area from Utah, though. Consequently, we have a morning & afternoon haze that can interfere with photography. 

While we do get a dignitary or two from time-to-time where we volunteer, this local takes the top prize for interfering with normal activity. It's presence causes an "all hands on deck" response just to ensure visitors keep a safe distance while getting that "once in a life time" picture while not upsetting the moose. We believe it came down from around Phelps Lake and made a stop at our parking lot while traveling down to the Snake River.

Other than planning a day trip to Idaho Falls to get some things we can't get here in Jackson, it's a normal summer for us. Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us. Until next month, David

June Update

Mt Moran as seen from Colter Bay picnic area, Grand Teton NP

We made it! We arrived May 28th in Grand Teton, tried to collect ourselves over the weekend, and hit the ground Monday June 1st working the parking lot & roving the trails at the Laurance S Rockefeller Preserve.

The Moose-Wilson Road (WY 390) is under construction and closed as of this date as Grand Teton spruces itself up & makes major improvements for its 100th birthday in 2029. Affecting us is the new trailhead and larger & more organized parking lot for Death Canyon. This makes the Preserve the closest parking lot for Death Canyon. As the Preserve is a Conservation Easement within Grand Teton, it's a small parking lot (50 parking spaces and becomes the park's initial visitor information point for those entering the park from Wilson, WY). As there's no overnight parking in the Preserve, it becomes frustrating to those wishing to stay overnight in the backcountry in the Death Canyon area. As Donna says, renovations are painful!

Otherwise, we're fine, somewhat settled in and becoming more acclimated as each day passes. Exciting for us this year is that we now have two couples that we've volunteered with in the past also volunteering in Jackson Hole. Both couples are volunteering at the Elk Refuge this summer. We do have a few common days off, so we'll be able to visit during the season. 

That gets you up to date with us. thanks for dropping by and checking up on us. Until next time, David

 

May Update

We're fine - running about two weeks behind schedule. Today we're in Kearney, NE and planning to get to Grand Teton on the 28th. We've had a good trip out of Howe, IN so far. Only one day of some rain and today was our first really windy, headwind day. We're also gaining elevation each day, so fuel mileage is on the low side.

We were able to get get most of our slide issues fixed. As is usually the case, when the trailer went into the Lippert shop in Howe, IN (old DRV Service Center), the shop couldn't duplicate the issue. We'd brought the trailer there with the bedroom slide empty (under bed storage empty). We pull all our stuff we typically carry under the bed back in that storage area and the slide worked OK. We started testing it out and while doing so, the kitchen slide failed. Started fooling with both slides and everything just stopped. Push any button you want, nothing moved. No slide, no leveling legs, nothing.

We metaphorically threw our hands in the air in frustration and left the shop. Walked some of Sturgis to get the frustration out and thought about the batteries. In the past we'd had a battery short itself out and created the same situation. Went back to the shop to tell them and when we got there, they had it all working. Turns out that we had the leveling legs fully extended (rare for us as we learned not to do that) plus all the slides out. We'd run too low on hydraulic fluid for things to work. We left for the day while the shop got all the air out of the hydraulic lines and repaired the kitchen slide. We got it back the next day. There's still work to do on the bedroom slide that we'll get taken care of when we get to North Carolina in the fall. Otherwise, all seems OK.

In other sad news, I've lost two mentors since we last posted. Kurt Shovestal was one of several people who trained me in what was called Earned Value Management when I retired. Kurt's calm leadership really aided me in learning how to present the information we gained and deal with various program offices and contractors when presenting that information. Two weeks later we learned Judy Bahnmiller past away. Greg & Judy taught us how to be fulltime RVers. When we were in the Gulf Shores area, Judy was always arranging lunches with fellow RVers and setting up game night. We think the world of Greg & Judy. She will be missed.

So from here the plan, what there is of it, is to travel to Sidney, NE (Cabela's) tomorrow. Go to Laramie, WY the next day. After that it's an overnight in Lander, WY. Move to Grand Teton the following day. We plan to be in Grand Teton until September 23rd.

That's it for us. Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us. Until next time, David