Oct 10, 2012 - Mcbagles On The Road - Epilogue

Well we are home.. Scarlett the motorhome is parked securely in her spot and we are back in our cozy condo in Benicia which after 55 days in a 36 foot motorhome seems quite spacious! Here is the final - Mcbagles on the Road by the numbers: We were on the road for 55 days, stayed in 16 RV Parks in 8 states. We traveled 3,288 miles in the RV for a total of 71.5 hours. We drove 4,090 miles in the car however the total miles on the tires was 7,378. We went to 5 national parks, 3 national monuments, 1 national memorial and 2 state parks. We saw...

Oct 3, 2012 - Back in "Cali"

Sorry we haven't blogged for a day or two, but we're getting close to the end of our adventure and we're packing as much stuff in as we can. We left Lakeview, OR on Sunday and drove south on 395 to Susanville, CA. It's nice to be back in California. Janet and Vickie drove up on Sunday to meet us here. Unfortunately, a large bird dive-bombed their car on hwy 36 and cracked the windshield on Janet's CRV. Janet thought it was a teradactyl, but a ranger thinks it was probably a large hawk. Either way, her windshield will have to be replaced. We...

Sep 29, 2012 - Oregon Trail

(Well, we're not really on the Oregon Trail, I just thought it sounded good for a title.) We spent Wednesday and Thursday in Burns, OR where the wildlife was quite a bit scaled down compared to what we have seen earlier on our trip. (We did see one Pronghorn on the way from Boise.) The park there has tons of quail, a few chickens and several horses down the road. We awoke Thursday and Friday mornings to a rooster who couldn't seem to wait for sun up to sound the alarm. He just kept going and going, as if someone kept hitting his snooze...

Sep 26, 2012 - Boise (with a "C")

We left Pocatello on Monday (9/24) and drove to Boise, ID. The drive was uneventful except that the rain finally caught up with us. Remember the exploding can incident? Well, despite the exploding can, I had the Saturn so clean before we left Pocatello, even I was surprised how good it looked. There was no road gunk or grease anywhere (except for the top which I couldn't clean because I was too short and too tired to pull out the ladder again.) Anyway, the rain came down and the mud came up and by the time we got to Boise, Susan looked at...

Sep 23, 2012 - Resting in Pocatello, ID

Sorry, there will be no pics in this installment of "McBagles on the Road" as we are now in Pocatello, ID and there isn't really anything very interesting to take pictures of. The drive here from West Yellowstone was fairly easy once we got gas and hooked up the car. We have discovered that our motorhome does not wake up well when the mercury dips below freezing. The last 2 places we stayed (Cody, WY and West Yellowstone, MT) have had very chilly mornings and the motorhome "creaks" so loudly as we start down the road that people stop and...

Sep 21, 2012 - Yellowstone

Our last 2 days in Yellowstone National Park have been wonderful. Yesterday our plan was to head into the park early, find the spot we scoped out the day before, set up our chairs in the meadow, and hope that some form of wildlife would walk by. (We were still hoping to see an elk.) As we were driving, a huge bison was ambling up the middle of the road as we approached, stopping traffic in both directions. He was very close to our car, and as we got closer, he turned and gave Susan the stink-eye, so we moved along fast! Unfortunately, we...

Sep 19, 2012 - Moose! We've seen Moose!

Got up early Monday morning and drove through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks on our way to Jackson. We made reservations last July to take an 8 hr Wildlife Safari through the Tetons on Tuesday. Because we would need to be at the pick-up site at 8 am, we decided to leave the day before so we wouldn't have to get up at 3 AM Tuesday morning to make the 4 hr drive. (The max speed limit in the park is only 45 mph.) In fact, we saw a series of signs on the way through Teton that read: We saw wildlife From afar Til we hit them With our...

Sep 16, 2012 - Cody to West Yellowstone

We left Cody, Wyoming this morning and are now in West Yellowstone, Montana. We got a bit of a late start as the guy who told me he would be around today to sell me some propane was nowhere to be found when we got there. (How rude!) So, we gassed up and started on our way west. The drive was only 130 miles, but most of it was through Yellowstone Park where the top speed limit is 45 mph. And, of course, it's Sunday and that means more people in the park. We have read all the handouts they gave us about the park and especially about wildlife...

Sep 15, 2012 - Cody--the Wild West

We are now in Cody WY, the town named after William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. And pretty much everything in this town revolves around him! (Surprise!) It's a pretty town of approx 9500 people at an elevation in excess of 5000 ft. We arrived on Wednesday and after an easy 2 hr drive through some pretty country, we were more than happy to set up and relax a bit. The Ponderosa is a nice RV park located right on the road that leads to Yellowstone National Park. The first day we were here, the weather turned quite a bit cooler and now we are...

Sep 11, 2012 - Technical Difficulties...S*** Happens!

Well, we are now in Billings, Montana. The trip was fairly uneventful except that Montana greeted us with a rock to the windshield that definitely left a mark! It came from a car passing on the left of us and hit the top right side of the driver's windshield. It made such a weird mark when it hit that I actually thought it nailed a bug as it hit, but it didn't. It also didn't help that I was rolling downhill in excess of 70 miles per hour. (Remember I told you I hate downhill grades?) Anyway, when we arrived at the Village Trailer Park, we...

Sep 9, 2012 - Where the Buffalo Roam, WY

Well, it's not in Buffalo, anyway. Janet and Vickie left on Thursday, so we are back to just the two of us. We arrived here in Buffalo, WY yesterday (9/8) and found a very nice RV park waiting for us. We actually have trees for a change! But not much chance of seeing any wildlife here in camp...too many humans. But it's nice to be in the shade for a day or two. Today we drove 130 miles back toward where we started yesterday to see Devils Tower National Monument in northeast Wyoming. It would have made more sense to detour that direction...

Sep 5, 2012 - Sturgis, SD

Settled in at the Rush-No-More RV Park in Sturgis yesterday. An easy drive from Custer, only 68 miles. It's a pretty nice campground with a few more amenities than the last one. Some of the sites even have hot tubs and all of the sites have cement patios, furniture and gas BBQs. Tonight we have seen 10 really fat turkeys waddling around and 8 deer. Very cool! Yesterday we took a drive out through Sturgis into Deadwood. For some reason, this area has a lot of motorcyclists and all their names seem to be Harley Davidson! While we were out, we...