June 1, 2024 – Day 78 Walnut Creek State Recreation Area, Papillon, NE – Kalona City Park, Kalona City, IA Having decided to ignore the possibility of a malfunctioning engine, and in the true tradition of SCCA rally, just Press on Regardless. Really, what other options did we have? Our destination was a small town outside Riverside, Iowa. The plan was to spend the night and then head into Riverside for a very exciting day! But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Let’s get there first. Like Nebraska, Iowa is pretty boring. But unlike Nebraska, Iowa looks like what you’d expect Iowa to look like. It’s flat and has really…

May 31, 2024 – Day 77 Lake Manawa State Park, Council Bluffs, IA – Walnut Creek State Recreation Area, Papillon, NE Someone did call us back around 8:30AM. They found us a truck place that handled gasoline engines! We had to “bang a youie” and drive about 30 minutes back into Nebraska and away from home. We couldn’t stay at Lake Manawa since they were full for the weekend. That meant finding another campground in the Omaha area where choices are already pretty limited — on a weekend. We headed out to the garage with no Plan A or Plan B in place to find out what was up with…

May 30 2024 – Day 76 Lake Manawa State Park, Council Bluffs, IA We woke up in the morning ready to get the chip in the windshield taken care of. Around 8:15 we started to get ready to leave camp. We had a 9AM appointment and it was on the other side of Council Bluffs, IA. Paul started up the RV and it was running rough. BANG…BANG. Paul shut if off. He crawled under to see if anything had broken or exploded but everything looked ok. He started it again and it was fine. We drove to the glass shop. The revs dropped at a traffic light. He put it…

May 29, 2024 – Day 75 Victoria Springs State Park, Anselmo Nebraska – Lake Manawa State Park, Council Bluffs, Iowa Paul had gotten on the various Facebook groups for our brand of RV and they helped him debug the hydraulic issue. Bad solenoid? Nope. Low fluid? Not that either. He got out there with the volt-meter and learned… nothing. Eventually the Facebook brain trust suggested something else, could the grounding be bad? He undid the bolts that attach the hydraulic system to the RV, re-tightened them. Lo and behold it worked again! What happened is that the hydraulic bay is right behind the driver’s side tire. Road spray and debris…

May 28, 2024 – Day 73 Curt Gowdy State Park, Cheyenne Wyoming — Victoria Springs State Park, Anselmo Nebraska We pulled out of Curt Gowdy this morning and were quickly struck by how many windmills there were! Lots of windmills. Now the odd thing is, the heading above says Victoria Spring State Park. When we headed out we had no idea where we would be sleeping. Victoria Springs is the type of park we don’t like — half the park’s sites are reservable and rest are walk-in plus they won’t let you make last minute reservations for the sites that you can reserve. Paul called and left a message asking…

May 27, 2024 — Day 74 Yampa River State Park, Hayden Colorado — Curt Gowdy State Park, Cheyenne Wyoming Today was high altitude day. As such, you don’t get any photos. Let’s just say the drive from Hayden, CO to Walden, CO was really nice. But we were both busy driving the Jeep and RV so no pictures! We did it this way because we were going up and over some big mountains and lightening the RV’s load is wise. To that end we also dumped tanks and carried only a half tank of water. Paul did set a new high score of 9,564 feet. Here’s the elevation and gradient…

May 23, 24, 25 & 26, 2024 — Days 69 – 72 Yampa River State Park, Hayden Colorado We’re having a bit of a vacation from the travel. Partly we’re just tired of moving around. Although the last 3 stays were on the long side, the last 2 involved significant car travel to see the sights. Also, it’s Memorial Day weekend. Crowds, traffic, and drunk drivers aren’t our thing. So we’re just staying put. Here’s some short posts. May 23, 2024 We have a few go to breakfasts when we’re on the road. Today it was hardboiled eggs, fruit, a piece of toast with guacamole (or humus) and chopped cherry…

May 22, 2024 — Day 68 Steinaker State Park, Vernal, UT — Yampa River State Park, Hayden Colorado We said good bye to Utah and continued our eastward journey to home. It was I-40 the whole way. This road is pretty normal for the area. It has very little traffic that’s probably because much of the land here is open range. The speed limit is 65mph. Does that mean you could come across cows crossing the highway? Yes. We kept it at 55-57 mph and that made for a pleasant, quiet, cow-free trip. We saw our last Dinosaur. This time it was a whole town! That’s right—there’s a town called…

May 21, 2024 — Day 67 Steinaker State Park, Vernal, UT Today we went back to the Dinosaur National Monument to see the wall of dinosaur bones as well as explore the parts of the park closer to Utah. But, before we even headed out we had a problem. The slow leak in the Jeep’s tire had become a fast leak. We had been loosing about 1psi every few days. After we had topped it up the previous day overnight we lost 11 psi. That’s too much of a drop. We found a tire place that appeared to have good reviews and headed over. We sat in the waiting room…

May 20, 2024 — Day 66 Steinaker State Park, Vernal, UT We had an ambitious plan to do all of Dinosaur National Monument in one day. But some of the things we wanted to see are a 2.5 hour drive each way. We vowed to wake up “super early” (about 6:30AM) and maybe get breakfast at Denny’s in town. Then start driving. We crawled out of bed a little after 8am. Already behind schedule it was then we realized it should be a 2 day trip to Dinosaur. That’s ok, we had 2 days. What else were we going to do? Attempt another visit to Moonshine Arch? (Actually, that was…