A Tullyroan Travelogue

Day 8: High and dry

May 8, 2012 by malkie

There was always going to be a day which began like this.

The fact that we rolled into the High and Dry RV Park late last night (having just moved from Mountain Time to Central Time and lost an hour) should have been a clue. The High and Dry RV Park lived up to it’s name. It was deserted with nothing but two empty caravans, a beat up car and a boarded up office. Too tired to drive on or to cook, we parked up and strolled the 100 yards or so to Arbys for a bite to eat.

We were keen to get on the road early aware of the many miles we still had to cover in less than 6 days. The states of South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois stood between us and our final time zone and we had to pick the pace up considerably. Unfortunately the effects of the previous night around the camp fire were still lingering and we all slept in.

We woke to realise that the batteries had run flat overnight leaving us without hot water for showers. Never mind, we could boil some water on the gas for a cup of coffee and once we were on the road the engine would heat the water for showers – no problem.

The next task was to pull into the local gas station to fill the tank with diesel. This always takes about 15 minutes (big tank but it doesn’t last that long at 8mpg) which leaves time for coming up with our plan of attack for the day. Today it was simple – do as many miles as we can.

Lucy ran into the store to pay with her credit card and seemed to take a rather long time. Ryan went in after her to find that her card had been rejected and the store manager was phoning RBS to confirm that Lucy was the owner of the card. Some phone tennis took place between Scotland and South Dakota and eventually the card was rejected. Thankfully Ryan saved the day and paid with his credit card.

Back in the van Ryan was turning the key in the ignition trying to get the old bird to start…with no success. He noticed that the fitting was loose, the key was turning too far and reached underneath the dashboard to screw it in more tightly…still no success. What was going on this morning? This had never happened before. Ryan looked at me and I looked at him. One of us (and I can’t for the life of me remember which one – it might even have been Lucy who was on hold to RBS) said something along the lines of “you don’t think we’ve gone and put petrol in her do you?”

My heart sank. I looked out the window and once again realised (as I’d clocked back in Montana) that the pump handle for diesel was green and the handle for petrol was black. How likely was it that we’d used petrol? After all, filling your car is one of those things you do on automatic pilot. Quickly I checked the receipts and was relieved to discover that we had indeed used diesel. Phew…but what then could be wrong? Ryan dived under the dashboard to see if there was anything obvious. As he’d tightened the fitting earlier he realised that a connection had been broken. He soon fixed it and the RV purred once more.

Once Lucy had finished phoning the Royal Bank (I think it took about 11 calls – don’t want to see my phone bill) and sorting that out I whispered to her “God knows what we would have done without Ryan” and she gave me one of those looks as if to say “I don’t even want to think about it”.

It was now 11.15 and we had a lot of driving to do. Ryan was on the first shift and coffee beside him set off only to hear a new beeping sound coming from his left hand side. It seemed to be something to do with the lube pump which was pumping transmission oil into our towed car to keep her running smoothly behind us. The noise was disconcerting especially given how the morning had gone so far and, while we were crossing the Missourri river and I was trying to take a photo out the window, Ryan thought it prudent to pull off and see what the problem was.

He turned off the interstate and into the town of Chamberlain. As he was about to pull over the sound suddenly stopped. Maybe it was just cold and needed some warming up. So Ryan kept driving. Turning left to try and go round the block and get back on the I-90 east we inadvertently ended up crossing the Missouri River again over a different bridge going in the wrong direction. There was nowhere to turn the rig and before we knew it we were back at High and Dry RV Park. It was now 11.30.

Let’s just draw a line under all of this and start again – the day starts here – the big drive across the midwest. On the ramp back onto the I-90 the beeping sound started again. D’oh! We pulled into the next rest area and Ryan did his thing (once again) checking the transmission oil in the ding dong and giving her a run around (I think she did just need warmed up). And finally, having only gone 3 miles and crossed the Missouri river 3 times we began “our big driving day” at 12:05.

Here are some photographs which tell the story of the rest of the day…it’s a simple story really – driving, more driving and doing everyday tasks like washing and cooking…whilst driving!

1. Crossing the Missouri river the wrong way

2. Ryan to the rescue…again

3. Ryan relaxing after the first shower while on the move

4. Malkie at the wheel trying out Lucy’s (or is that Gemma’s?) shades

5. Ryan preparing dinner on the move

6. A game of Settlers at the end of the day with popcorn and beer (unfortunately we forgot a key part of the game, the resource cards, but we managed to improvise with post-its)

Lets hope tomorrow goes a bit more smoothly!

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Lord Calvert

May 8, 2012 by ryan

Road trips such as this one are a voyage of discovery. Some of the things that Malcolm has learned on this trip are that part of his family tree must have moved to Canada, had subsequently been enobled and then latterly discovered the ancient art of preparing the Uisce Beatha, the water of life, or whisky.

The fact that you can buy the family malt in a gas station in South Dakota for 7 bucks only goes to show the business acumen involved.

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Day 7: Through Mountain and Plain

May 7, 2012 by ryan

Waking up, I felt a repetitive banging noise going on inside my head. Where was that coming from? Was it due to the rare cask-strength Scotch that Malkie had produced round the campfire the previous evening, for slow contemplative sipping. Hardly. More likely the half bottle of Bushmills that Uncle Stephen unwisely left in the RV and which also appeared. But thinking back to the night before there was one other eau de vie – a complete soaking which Malkie and I received when a thunderstorm rolled in and we refused to budge from the fire until it was well established.

Having scrambled to put everything away, we retired to dampen the bedsheets and listen to the thunder. The rain raged all night, and was still drumming the roof of the coach when I awoke. At one point a bolt struck extermely close by with a blinding flash and a crack to strike terror into the heart. We don’t get thunder and lightening like this at home.

Browsing forlornly at the weather websites over breakfast we noted how we had not included any time in the plan for weather disruption. This could put a spanner in the works…

After a while the skies brightened and we decided to risk it and drive off. We are exploring the Black Hills of South Dakota today, which is not natural territory for a big rig. But the beauty of having the dinghy on behind (the white car we’ve been towing) is that we can drive to somewhere convenient, unhook the dinghy and go exploring.

The Black Hills are a beautiful forested mountain range, separate from the Rockies, so-called by the Native Lakota tribe because from a distance, the hills are dark with trees. You may think you haven’t heard of them, but I’ll bet you recognise this local attraction:

There is another mountain sculpture in the Black Hills, this one unfinished. The Crazy Horse Memorial is a non-state project to carve a sculpture of Crazy Horse, a Lakota warrior and leader, on land considered sacred to the Lakota. It has been underway since 1935, and is nowhere near complete. This is due to the scale of the design, which when finished, will dwarf Mt. Rushmore both in size and complexity.

With a mental note to come back here in twenty years (and spend a week in the hills, not a day), we reunited with the mothership and drove on into the Great Plains of South Dakota. From here we need to make some good time in order to be in Virginia by Day 12. However, we have seen a lot and the weather has cleared, so it’s time to leave the tourist trail and the convenience of RV parks behind, and venture out into the American Midwest.

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Day 6: The welcome of the wild west

May 7, 2012 by lucy

Having hammered down the Montana interstate (until recently, no speed limit) to cross the border into Wyoming last night, we thought a few hours’ respite had been earned, so we took a slow morning observing and fancying ourselves part of the lazy rhythms of the quintessential western town of Ranchester. Whilst Ryan happily tinkered with water pumps and generators (of which I know nothing), Malkie and I busied ourselves with other necessary tasks and relaxation, including the hosting of our first family visitor to the rig in all its quirky splendour via Skype – the Steens. Meanwhile, Ryan availed of a few insider tips from our RV park neighbour Gerry, including the possibility of meeting storms around Kansas, and the rigorous speed control in Pennsylvania.

1. Ryan getting acquainted with the RV control-room

After brunching in the morning sun on eggs and bacon, and hit the wide open Wyoming road in high spirits. The first 70-mile stretch of road was a stark yet beautiful example of the Great Plains, without so much as a gas station or village to break the journey. Wyoming is the least populated and 2nd least densely populated state in the US, and when you drive the length of it, you can see why; vast swathes of arid ground as far as the eye can see, yet strangely we remain at around 4500 ft elevation.

2. Outdoor brunching

3. The open road, Wyoming

As it has been a whole day since Ryan last bought some sort of gadget, we stopped off at Sundance (of Butch Cassidy fame) to locate an electrical multimeter (no, I don’t know what that is), which the boys duly did find in Hank’s Hardware store, where one can munch on free popcorn and guzzle free coffee whilst Hank gives you the run down of his multimeter selection. Ryan was clearly quite delighted by this, but their visit to the liquor store topped it off, with a row of cowboy hatted, mustachioed locals glaring as they purchased a bottle of white wine. Its probably been a few years since anyone bought white wine in there.

Meanwhile I was left to mind the rig, but shortly into my brief snooze Mr police officer, fresh from his busy morning chewing tobacco, came to inform me we were illegally parked. One can’t stretch across the diagonal parking spaces it seems, even in a back-country town with approximately 350 other free diagonal spaces. In fact, RVs and trucks must park, bizarrely, in the middle section of the main road. When the boys rounded the corner I found them laughing and taking pictures of my seemingly imaginative parking.

4. Taking my turn at the wheel

5. My parking

The RV is now becoming very much an endearing and companionable friend to us, as we gradually discover more of the on-board highlights, including kerb lights, outdoor speakers, and a fire pit. Sadly I haven’t yet found the hoover. The world of RVing seems congenial and relaxed, with each park we arrive in giving us a warm welcome and a spin on their golf buggy to choose our site, which always puts a smile on Ryan’s face. We have found ourselves developing a certain smugness towards other RVers, with their shiny new rigs, which we are convinced lack all of the character and charm of this one, with its vintage persuasion and need to be nurtured.

Ryan is just setting a match to the fire pit and I am anticipating another contented evening of good food, company and reflection, to the tune of crickets and the distant hum of the highway.

6. Wyoming sunset

7. At the fireside, all is well.

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Day 5: Off the tourist trail

May 4, 2012 by malkie

Every holiday I seem to go on I face the same dilemma.

The tourist hotspots draw you towards them like a magnet. They are highlighted on the map, there are endless roadside signs encouraging you to take the exit in 40 miles, then 10 miles, then 5 miles and somehow the names of these places are lodged in my subconscious from all the media that has flowed out of America and into my brain over the last 31 years.

Yellowstone Park is one such place, an area of incredible natural beauty and yet there was something about being there that didn’t quite sit right. The RV park we were staying in had so many rules I was nervous that I was going to break one simply by walking to the bathroom in my pyjamas. The streets were filled with souvenir shops and although we didn’t see a black bear or a grizzly bear (despite being told to be careful not to run over them at every bend in the road) we had no trouble spotting a much more common breed…Homo Touristicus.

So despite the fact that we were camping on the doorstep of Yellowstone with the possibility of spending the rest of the day in the park the three of us decided to move on. There was a longing for a more grounded experience of the real Northwest America. We continued to journey east through Montana leaving the Rocky Mountains behind and entering The Great Plains.

We stopped in Laurel for some supplies and a bite of lunch in the back of the van – cheese, ham, bread, salad, some left over pork ribs from last night and root beer (for me) – and after another hour on the I-90 we reached the sight of the Battle of Little Bighorn. We pulled in to visit and learn something about the turbulence of the country at the time. The battlefield was speckled with white crosses, the locations at which men had died. The two main protagonists were General Custer leading the 7th Cavalry Regiment (which I was interested to discover included 128 Irish immigrants out of a total of around 850 men) and Sitting Bull, the spiritual leader of the Lakota people who had recently been successful in uniting the Lakota and Cheyenne. Custer died in the battle (hence the term ‘Custer’s Last Stand’) and the American soldiers were overrun as one of the Cheyenne described it ‘like water circling round a stone’. This battle was won by the native Americans but they would unequivocally go on to lose the war.

It is hard to imagine what it must of been like to have inhabited a land for thousands of years to then have invaded by a foreign race. I found myself strangely torn as I stood at the graves of the many American soldiers who had died on June 25th 1876. On one hand the grave injustice at what the colonies did to the native people and yet these soldiers were simple people, many of them immigrants laying their lives down for their country.

One more hour on the road and moving further off the tourist trail brought us to the sleepy town of Ranchester and we were welcomed into Lazy RV Park by Shirley. We parked on the corner of a block surrounded by local residents.

As we sit eating our dinner at the picnic table we see a welder working on his caravan then resting to enjoy the warm evening air. There is a teenager haring past us on a quad bike with a lawn mower in tow going so fast the mower is almost floating off the ground and a puppy belonging to the couple next to us escapes and runs into the RV to say hello.

This is the America we’ve been looking for. Give me Ranchester over Yellowstone any day.

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Day 4: Yellowstone

May 4, 2012 by ryan

We all wake early to a bright, clear and very cold morning. Last night we made it to Deer Lodge, MT. The RV park had a notice to find our own space and to drop the $30 in a letter box. Of course we did, we’re RVers now, and we abide.

The reason it’s so cold is that at 4500ft the air is dry and thin and moisture simply drops out of the air as snow. Like this (you’ll need to look closely):

As is our routine, breakfast is fresh fruit salad, granola and whole nuts, mixed with natural yoghurt. He’s how it looks:

After breakfast, we work as a team to break down the rig ready for travel.

After that, we settle down to a morning’s drive. Driving the rig in this part of the country is easy, everything is so spread out and there is so little traffic that it’s a joy to swing the coach round the turns and nudge the accelerator until we’re coasting along at 75. Yes, that’s the speed limit here, so no letters please. Today we’re up in the Rockies, and headed for Yellowstone.

I guess there’s two ways of looking at Yellowstone National Park. It’s a place of stunning natural beauty, with forests, rivers, mountains and plains, all full of wildlife like elk, bison, birds and bear. Alternatively, it’s a semi-active volcano with many signs of unsettled activity which is long overdue a large event, possibly on the scale of an explosion. So a great place to visit on your holidays. Some of the landscapes are positively alien:

This is caused by volcanic hot springs and sulphuric gases which dissolve and then deposit the limestone rock into bizarre stair-like formations. It’s accompanied with the pervasive pong of sulphur, like rotten eggs, and sheets of vapour which rise and drift. To the God fearing pioneers which came across this place for the first time, it must have seemed like hell itself.

For us, you can get a nice picture:

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Dry cleaning

May 2, 2012 by ryan

Our rig on this trip really has everything you could ask for in a home: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and living room. And with all mod cons: oven, shower, air con and satellite TV. Another thing we have is a washing machine dryer…

So last night we decided to do a wash overnight, because you wouldn’t want to do it on the road, it mightn’t work right. Having loaded up we hit the hay to dream of foreign lands.

At 5:30 I awoke to the noise of the machine happily washing away, over six hours after starting. Slowly through my sleepy consciousness I realised this was out of normal operating parameters, and the dial must be stuck. So I jumped up and moved the dial onto rinse. Back into bed quickly, it was cold last night up at 4500 feet and I was glad to drift off again which means the jet lag must be leaving me.

Another hour later and Maisy awoke me with a cautionary tone that the waste water tank was nearly full. “That’s a new one”, I thought. She’s usually goes on about the battery being flat, when it’s clearly fine. Then I heard a very ominous gurgle from the sink.

It’s interesting how it can usually take many minutes to wake up and yawn the sleep out of you, yet sometimes you can be awake in an instant. I jumped up and saw the washing machine was still filling with water, while simultaneously emptying. It had gone through 100 gallons and since the waste water drains into an onboard tank, it was about to flood the place. Another twist of the dial, and it stopped that, and started to spin.

So, should I now go outside and hook up the waste pipe and drain the tank? It’s 6:30 am, still dark and snowing very slightly in the dry cold air, and I’m in my PJs. My bed is just there and is still warm…

Well, Maisy said the tank was only “nearly” full, and she’s always right about these things. You’d have done the same too.

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Day 3: Peaks and triumphs

May 2, 2012 by lucy

I am writing this from the comfort of my notably soft and luxurious bed, whilst Ryan, Malkie and Maisy guide us though the north-west corner of Montana up front. Although perhaps not the safest travelling arrangement, it is in fact legal to cruise at your functional leisure without a seatbelt in a motorhome within America, provided no seatbelt is available. And no, we haven’t picked up a travelling minstrel already; Maisy is our in-house talking computer, who dishes out predicaments and dilemmas like Smarties througout the day. In the early days, the sound of her dulcet tones would send us rushing around the van searching for the rogue open compartment or leaky pipe, or, the latest tiding of doom: ‘low vehicle battery charge’. Soon enough, we realised that either Maisy is just in very negative frame of mind following the long delay in letting her stretch her cables on the open road, or there’s a loose connection somewhere, because she is still delivering the same searing criticisms with steely certainty and it’s getting a bit wearing. So now we simply flip the mute switch and continue sipping our gin whilst marvelling at the fact that an RV built in 1994 can have an on-board ice maker.

The boys are becoming quietly confident behind the wheel of our rig (with the odd yahoo! and manly backslap when a cornering challenge goes well), and I am slowly but surely re-arranging every compartment (I think there are about 45 in here), and finding things to bleach. I haven’t been in the driving seat yet and will wait till more open plains present themselves before giving it a go. Today we have done a fair bit of climbing into the Rockies in Idaho. Sailing up to 4600ft on Interstate-90 was no trouble at all for the wagon, which is encouraging as we will be heading into Yellowstone National Park shortly and may find a few larger inclines than that before long. Although we were trudging in snow earlier today, the ski season now has finished, though only yesterday. We could see some great looking powder just above our heads as we lunched at Lookout Pass. I-90 took us into Montana where the road follows scenic wooded slopes, winding rivers, and valleys with stunning snow-capped mountain views.

Having now found our feet with the business of RV motoring, we have endeavoured to take more pictures today. Here’s a few…

1. Ryan in his tullyroan slippers in the Rockies

2. Bertha cruising at altitude (4710ft)

3. Bill and Ted on their excellent adventure

4. Bertha meets some friends

5. Blue skies. (The black material appendage at the front, to protect her from chips, is called ‘a bra’ in RV-speak)

6. The open road, Montana

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Day 2: Finding our rhythm

May 2, 2012 by malkie

Day 2 began earlier than I had hoped – 3.57am. The following hours involved rolling around in bed hoping to go back to sleep, checking the weather forecast at various locations on our route (which included a mixture of sun, rain, snow and thunderstorms) and trying to find highlights of Ulster’s win over Edinburgh on Saturday.

I eventually clambered out of bed at about 7am and made my way to the bathroom. I bumped into an unshaven Ryan and was impressed with his overnight facial hair growth. I encouraged him to grow a beard – when else was he going to get such an opportunity to experiment? He thought about it for a while, even brought it to committee (Lucy and me (but mainly Lucy)) but I found him shaving in the RV 30 minutes later and that was the end of that.

There was much to work out today – how to stop the Merc/Benzo/Dingy/Yute from running out of battery, how to get some internet access on the road and how to turn a corner in the RV without getting stuck and either unhooking the Benzo while blocking traffic and inviting the attentions of a local security guard or waking up a fellow camper and asking her to move her pick-up (both of which happened to me on Day 1). All of these things were successfully achieved before lunchtime.

The afternoon was spent eating up the miles (250 in total). Ryan and I shared the driving from Oregon, through Washington and finally into Idaho in some difficult windy conditions with tumbleweed blowing across the road.

We arrived in Post Falls and pulled into a local RV park for the night. With our power and water hooked up, beers were being drunk within 10 minutes and dinner within 45 minutes of arrival. We ate and drank and talked for most of the evening.

We found some rhythm today and the daily rituals began to emerge…fruit salad, yoghurt, granola and maple syrup for breakfast, emptying the wastewater before setting off on the road, hooking up to fresh water and electricity, beer and chips (i.e. crisps) on arrival to our evening campsite, Lucy’s ipod playlists filling the airwaves in the van in the evening and the daily chores in the RV (note Ryan and Malkie cleaning up after breakfast).

3.57am seems like a long time ago. It’s been a long day but slowly and surely as we inch our way across this vast country we’re finding our rhythm.

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Idaho? I dun know…

May 1, 2012 by ryan

The second day of driving has swept us along into our third state: Idaho, via a short cut through Washington. Amazing to feel the difference in climate here, cooler and damper. No, it’s not because we are closer to Ireland. We’re in the Idaho panhandle and looking towards the foothills of the Rockies.

Mentioning the Rockies brings some trepidation, even tomorrow there’ll be some big climbs and we’ll be 3,200ft above sea level at the end of the day, by easy reckoning. Good job the rig is running like a song and should pull up these slopes without fussing.

It’s amazing how easy it is to put an emotional framework onto the RV’s role. Perhaps we’re getting to know her. And like all of my friends, I wouldn’t ever mention the bad points.

Meeting the other RVers is interesting too. Uncle Stephen tells me that the folk who have sold their houses and travel around in their RVs are called “full-timers”. So what does that make us? They seem to be very friendy nonetheless…

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