No escrow required.....

7:11 am - Wednesday - June 10th - Island Park, ID - 37° F, 98% humidity, wind 1 mph out of the west by northwest....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 62° F.....got down to 37 ° F overnight.......50° F inside the coach......the view this morning.....↴

 Looking east towards the rising sun

I have to admit that I had mixed emotions about moving to our FREE dry camp spot at Bill Frome Memorial County RV Park Tuesday morning.  The high for the day was only going to be 53° F, it was heavily overcast, and rain was in the offing according to the weather guessers.  Not an optimal day for unplugging and heading off into the kind of unknown, but that is kind of what makes this nomadic life interesting, and new every day.....the unknown.  On top of that I was not feeling 100% physically.....my intestines had been gurgling for a couple of days along with the expected loose bowels.  Nevertheless, by 11:25 am we were completely unplugged, and I was dropping our 2007 American Trailer back on the hitch.  Within 1/4 mile of the park I turned north on Idaho 287 heading up to County Road 055 which would take us to our site for the next 5 days, or so.

After paying $210 for three days of full hookups while we rode out the series of winter like storms sweeping through Island Park it was good to be facing no fees for the next period of time, and being closer to Henry's Lake.  Let's face it, there are times like the past three days, when you have to bite the bullet and pay way too much for full hookups, but it is the free camping, dry camping, and boondocking that evens out the average daily cost as you change your view from time to time.

We reached the County Park just before 12 pm, and were set up by 12:15 pm......Claude and Gail arrived about 45 minutes later, and are parked in the site just to the west of our site.  We opted to pull in head first to get a better view out our front windows.....

....and Claude backed his Wanderlodge in to his site to create our own common area between the two rigs.....

......I told Claude I was feeling a little under the weather and he suggested I ingest a couple of ounces of apple cider vinegar for my stomach and digestive tract, so I did.....TLE just so happened to have some on hand....and what do you know?  Within an hour I began to feel better.....you just never know.

Since I was feeling better I walked down to the boat launching area to check out the view.  I found two storks in the water next to the boat dock....

.....and a few sea gulls.....yup, sea gulls.  This little FREE county park is basically a fishing camp for locals, and it appears that the lawns get mowed on a regular basis.  There are concrete picnic tables, fire pits, and pit toilets, as well as the boat launching ramp.....all for free, and we did not have to go through escrow to change our view......just haul anchor, drive 8 miles, and drop anchor......no titles, no deeds, no property taxes, no utilities....just livin' off the grid......

 Nicely mowed lawns separate each site here

....and the park is surrounded by aspens, which must have been planted when the park was built years ago.  We spent most of the afternoon indoors as it barely hit 50° F, and there was a breeze, but it is supposed to warm up into the 70's by Thursday (60's by Wednesday), which is when we'll do some exploring.  We had a nice sunset.....

 Looking northwest

Looking southeast

.....as is often the case when I when I have my bouts of self doubt about a particular decision, this one turned out to be a good one.  After 8+ years of being a vagabond I am learning to trust my instincts, and they are more often than not right.  We love our new views, and location!  Our orientation is north/south.....we are facing south, so the sun will rise directly over our flat solar panels and replenish our electrical supply in our two 8d batteries.  At The Big Eddie we faced north and got great results.  With the sun almost at its zenith with the summer solstice fast approaching we need not tilt our panels anymore.  This is the first time we have done much boondocking in late spring and early summer....it's nice not to have to tilt the panels to get the same results.

By the way, we are currently residing in Fremont County (Idaho) where there have been just 4 confirmed Wuhan flu cases, and ZERO deaths.  Our little tribe continues to be asymptomatic, and loving our lives in rural America.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Day three of the 'hunker down'......

8:20 am - Tuesday - June 9th - Island Park, ID - 36° F, 98% humidity, 10 mph out of the southwest......feels CALM here.  Heavy cloud cover still today with a forecast high of 53° F.....today is moving day.....I think. The view this morning.......

Day three of our three day hunker down was blustery, snowy, and rainy.....it snowed for a few hours, but never stuck, and then rained on and off for several more hours.  Our Newell was rocking every electric heater available, including the water bay electric heater.  Mid afternoon the skies began to clear.......

.....and we made plans to drive into West Yellowstone around 5 pm (about 14 miles away) for dinner at the Slippery Otter Pub.  We ate there almost exactly three years ago as we were heading to our job working at the Mammoth Hot Springs General Store for the summer.  The only thing that has changed since then is the Corona Virus, which means there are fewer tables available for the foreseeable future.  Glenn and Laureen who managed to snag a spot a Henry's Lake State Park (they arrived a day earlier than we did) joined us.

West Yellowstone at this time 3 years ago was 'hopping'.....very busy, and parking was hard to find.  This time around we parked right in front, and the town felt like it was mid October, and the end of the season.

Glenn and Laureen have their site at Henry's Lake until Wednesday, however, our reservations here at Valley View RV Park come to an end Tuesday morning.  Claude and I have been checking out local boondock sites, and I found a county park on the west side of Henry's Lake called Bill Frome Memorial County RV Park where you can camp in your RV free for up to 15 days.  There are no hookups, but there are defined sites, picnic tables, and pit toilets, as well as a boat launch ramp.  On our way home from West Yellowstone we drove 6 miles up Idaho 87 to County Road 055 for another 3 miles......

......the road is paved for all but about 1/8th mile, which makes access super easty.  It looked perfect to us, so I think that is where we will head Tuesday.

As the day came to an end around 9 pm I could see the skies finally clearing.....

.....and how much more snow there was on the local mountains......is it winter, or summer?

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Weather induced social distancing.....

8:38 am - Monday - June 8th - Island Park, ID - 31° F, 95% humidity, wind 11 mph out of the south.....heavy cloud cover with an 85% chance of rain later today.  Snow was forecast overnight, but we.....thankfully.....only got a dusting.....all gone now.  The view this morning......↴

We had no plans for Sunday as the forecast, which was realized, was for rainy, windy conditions all the day long, so staying inside, and hunkering down was the perfect anecdote for the conditions. 

(Update......it's about 9 am Monday morning now, and it just began to snow again....uh oh!  It is very fine snow being driven parallel to the ground by the wind.)

TLE read most of the day whilst I watched 'bad TV' and napped.  I went outside a few times when the rain abated, but that was only for a few minutes at a time as the wind chill factor made it impossible to wear flip flops and shorts for long.

Valley View RV Park sits adjacent to a fuel station where the current diesel price is $2.79/gallon.........

....the view of the mountains across the highway later in the morning revealed a little more snow than the day before.....

.....there is this cool, vintage road grader which sits just across the interior gravel road from our site.....

....and that is the sum total of our Sunday....mostly about nothing....lol.

As has been our custom since February 4th we continue to find ourselves deep in extremely rural America.  The further north we move the less we see face masks worn by anyone...in fact I have not seen a face mask in about 5 days now.  We all continue to be, as one might expect, asymptomatic.....not even so much as a sniffle.  We are also far from any rioting, or demonstrations.  Life seems normal here in Island Park, ID, and just as much as we are deeply thankful to be in such a safe, remote place, we continue to pray for all who live in urban areas of our country during these times of social upheaval.

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!

Hunkering down.......

8:28 am - Sunday - June 6th - Island Park, ID - 43° F, 98% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the north......heavily socked in today.....rained all night.....forecast high today is 47° F, so we are just 4 degrees away from that........we have full hookups this morning.....snow forecast for later today, and tomorrow....the view this morning......↴

It was surprisingly warm (65° F) Saturday morning as we finalized our packing, and trailer organizing, considering the fact that it was supposed to be storming later in the day, and that was the reason we were leaving our beloved boondocking site for the security of full hookups near Island Park, ID.  The warm temps did make it easy to finish what we were doing, and by 8:45 am we were rolling our wheels out of The Big Eddie vowing to return again......

....as we headed west on Idaho 33 out of Driggs we bade farewell to the ever majestic Grand Tetons.......

.....within 30 minutes we had transitioned onto US-20 northbound to Island Park, and hopefully a couple of sites at Henry's Lake State Park, but it was not to be.  I had checked their website that morning and saw there were only two 28' sites available in the entire park, and there had been no cancellations, so it was on pretty quickly to 'Plan B'.....get a couple of sites at a nearby RV park to ride out the coming storms until Tuesday.  US-20 is an exceptionally nice secondary road, and for the first 10-15 miles it was a divided highway eventually narrowing to two way traffic.  We only had to make one long (4 miles) climb from about 5,400' to 6,400', and eventually reached 7,000' feet by the time we reached the Valley View RV Park just across the highway from Henry's Lake.....

Henry's Lake across the highway

.....we arrived at Valley View (and they do have a view of the valley) around 11 am, and were promptly checked into site G-10, a pull through, which is long enough to accommodate our Newell and trailer, but they have a policy against trailers being kept in the site with RV's so I had to drop it in their storage yard.....oh well, it's only for 3 days.  Our black tank was about two thirds full, and I thought about waiting until we left to dump it, but I also knew we would be pretty much stuck in side for those three days using only our facilities, and did not want to have to dump it in the forecast snow so went ahead and I dumped it right there and then.......in the sewer, of course.

We were setup in our sites by 12 pm, and settling in for the fast approaching storms.  By 6:45 pm the rain had begun in earnest, and a few minutes later the 40 mph winds arrived.....for awhile the rain was going sideways, and the coach was rocking side to side.  Since we were 'cabin bound' for the evening we binge watched 'Maine Cabin Masters' until bedtime......kind of a nice way to spend a rainy, windy evening!

Thanks for stopping by!

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It didn't blow me away.....

6:39 am - Saturday - June 6th - The Big Eddie, ID - 65° F, 35% humidity, wind 19 mph out of the south by southeast.......partly cloudy with very windy conditions  all night, and today so far......forecast high is 67° F.  Thunderstorms later today, with more rain Sunday, Monday and Tuesday....time to roll our wheels!

And the winds blew.....and blew.....and blew.....pretty much all day Friday the winds blew.  With those prevailing conditions it was easy to focus on beginning to put stuff away in preparation for our reluctant departure Saturday from The Big Eddie.  We have a number of increasingly inclement weather days fast approaching and it is time to head for the comfort of hookups while we ride them out.

My friend Claude installed a household fridge in his 1984.5 Bluebird Wanderlodge when his Dometic absorption fridge died a while back, so he needs to deliver AC power to it on a regular basis to keep the temp down around 40° F.  To do this he has been running a 2500 watt Yamaha generator, and even his onboard diesel genset every few hours to keep it it cool.  I suggested to him that he find a way to deliver AC to the fridge via his 1750 watt inverter continuously during the day when he has plenty of sunlight flowing through his 680 watts of solar panels to keep his batteries from being depleted in the effort.  He had been told by the guys at AM Solar that his inverter could not handle the power needed by the very small household fridge, but that did not seem right to me, so we ran an extension cord from the inverter to the fridge, and it worked just fine.  The fridge draws about 6.5 amps when it runs, but it only runs 20-30 minutes out of each hour cycling on and off every 20 minutes, or so.....problem solved.  

The rest of the day was spent reading, and napping....not much else to do with the strong winds blowing out of the southeast.  Around 8:30 pm the winds abated, and I lit a fire in the portable firepit.  We had some trash to burn, some cardboard boxes I had broken down, and some wood so we made an evening of it.....

 

....eventually the fire came up to 'operating temperature', and the trash/cardboard was consumed pretty quickly......

.....around 10:30 pm we called it quits for the night as the wind was begining to make a comeback.....

......storm clouds moving arriving via the wind obscured what was sure to be an interesting moonrise.....

.....we'll be on the road by 9 am Saturday heading toward Island Park, and Henry's Lake State Park hoping we can snag a couple of  'first come/first served' sites.

Thanks for stopping by!

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The tribe.....

7:40 am - Friday - June 5th - The Big Eddie, ID - 53° F, 70% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the east.......partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 81° F.....the view this morning.....↴

A lot of people came in yesterday afternoon and evening

I, apparently, was not in a picture taking mood Thursday.  The only picture I took all day long was as we were exiting Hacienda Cuajimalpa from a wonderful, amazing Mexican dinner.....TLE can never pass up a ride on a coin operated horse.....but I get ahead of myself.....

.....being way out in the boondocks has its advantages. Since February 4th we have been living in either very remote areas, or in extremely rural areas.  As a result we have spent little, or no time in densely populated cities, which has kept us from acquiring the Wuhan Flu (COVID-19 for the politically correct among us).  When we finally began to realize we had more chance of being struck by lightning than getting the flu we stopped wearing our masks, with the lone exceptions of getting a haircut in Durango, or ordering our lunch in Telluride.  We now have 6 people in nomadic tribe, and we are all in the age group that is at risk, but we continue to be asymptomatic.  

The other advantage to this lifestyle is we are so far from large cities that ANTIFA has not felt compelled to come to our neighborhood.....not many TV cameras here to promote their antifascist fascist ways of destruction and mayhem. On a side note, it is a little hilarious that a group which claims to be antifascist uses fascist tactics to make their point......kind of Orwellian, no?  Anyway, life goes on in rural America with barely a hiccup.  It has become quite apparent to me over these past few months that living in urban America is coming with a higher, and higher cost.  I continue to wonder if we will begin to see another great American migration....this time out of urban America to rural America.  I thank God everyday that I have the ability to be mobile and live where I wish....often for free as we are doing right now.

Back to the here and now......Thursday was marked by blustery winds all day long....blustery enough to keep TLE and I inside reading most of the day.  The Teton River is predicted to rise another foot in the next 36 hours so we are keeping an eye on that.  Mr. Jello has added another wrinkle to our plans to reside here on The Big Eddie for 10 days with a weather forecast showing 80% chance of rain beginning Sunday for three consecutive days....there is no way we want to be here in a flood zone with three days of rain on the way, so we will be hauling the proverbial anchor Saturday morning and heading for higher ground....probably 80 miles north to Henry's Lake.

Around 6 pm our nomadic tribe of 6 headed into Driggs for dinner at the aforementioned Mexican restaurant.  Glenn and Laureen will be leaving our tribe to begin a slow trek back to Austin, TX  in about a week, so they wanted to treat us to dinner.  They will be heading up to Henry's Lake a day ahead of the rest of us to stage for a few trips into Yellowstone NP.  Like the El Michoacan restaurant in Ramona, CA, Hacienda Cuajimalpa is also named for a region in Mexico....it is one of the 16 boroughs of Mexico City.  I ordered their Hacienda Plate which comes with cream filled, bacon wrapped jalapeño poppers, fried shrimp, and thinly sliced skirt steak.....amazing...just amazing.  Everyone loved their dishes, and being able to 'dine in' was the cherry on top of the sundae for all of us.  Thank you Glenn and Laureen for your generosity, and for picking the perfect restaurant! By the by....Yelp gives them 4 stars on 59 reviews.

We were home a little before 8:30 pm, and by 9 pm we had another fire going (the wind had finally abated), and we sat out until after 11 pm talking about cabbages and kings.  Sitting around a campfire is one of my great pleasures in life.  There is some unquantifiable element about sitting across a campfire from people you know and respect, no matter their age.....age just seems irrelevant around a fire....I don't know why.  Everyone just feels like a peer.  I find people to be at their utmost transparent selves around a fire.

Well, that's my 2¢, and I'm sticking to it.....thank you so much for taking the time to stop by today!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!

"God willing, and the river don't rise......"

7:14 am - Thursday - June 4th - The Big Eddie, ID - 55° F, 63% humidity, wind 6 mph out of the south by southeast......heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 71° F.....the view this morning.....↴

 A new resident this morning....

Not much to report from paradise on Wednesday.  We spent the day pulling out more stuff until it became obvious about mid afternoon that it was going to rain, and rain hard.  TLE and I had to rush to stow the patio awning, and put away our lido deck furniture getting it done just before the torrential rains struck.....

......the rain was accompanied by lightning and thunder, and blotted out the Grand Tetons for a period of time......

.....within an hour the storm cell had passed, and the Grand Tetons had returned to our view in all their glory.....

.....as things dried out we decided we could eat a communal dinner outside.  On this evening Gail provided the entree (enchiladas), plus chips, salsa, and a salad......the enchiladas were excellent!  Everyone brought their own beverages.  Considering how hard it rained, things had dried out sufficiently by dinner time, and the evening air was pleasant enough that we lingered for quite a while talking, and laughing.  

It appears to me that the mountains to our east have a new coating of snow upon them.....

.....just before the downpour Claude decided to turn his Wanderlodge around so the patio would be facing the Teton's....he barely finished leveling and covering his outdoor stuff with a tarp with the sky fell......

....we were treated to a pleasant, if not spectacular sunset, and then it was time to retire inside for the evening.....

......TLE and I read until sometime after 10 pm before heading off to dreamland.

One issue we are paying very close attention to here at the Big Eddie is the level of the Teton River which surrounds us on three sides.....the area between the river and where I am standing (now flooded) was totally dry when we arrived Monday afternoon.  Since then it has flooded (not from the rain).....

 The Teton River in the background

.....and now we are seeing it on our side of the road (below).....that is cause for concern.....

....so we are going to be ready to leave if the need arises.....stay tuned!

Thanks for stopping by!

When you shop Amazon, please use our link (below) to access their website.......we will appreciate every purchase you make using our Amazon Affiliate link, and  remember, using our link will not add one penny to your purchase, plus we will receive a small commission which over the course of a year adds up to enough to by a tank of diesel for which we thank you very much!