Making our way out west. Getting organized first in Wisconsin.
When planning the trip, we thought it would be good to camp somewhere nearby to test everything out. We stopped in Viola, Wisconsin at a county park. Our plan was to try everything out in our trailer at a campsite just to make sure we were ready for the extended trip and had everything we needed.
The Viola campsite was nice. It is the first place I ever fly-fished. Derek couldn’t help himself and fished for a couple of hours when we got there. I set up camp and relaxed and took a nap with the back doors of the trailer open. The sun was going down and the warm sun was beautiful through the trees. We made dinner on the campfire and knew the second-day drive would be 14 hours. Our glamourous destination? A Cabela’s parking lot in Rapid City, SD. We had to pace ourselves too with a max of around 65mph while towing. Jeep Wranglers are NOT the best tow vehicle…
We left Viola after a nice breakfast of eggs and bacon. We’ve done this drive tons of times, and were kind of dreading it, but it was not as bad as we thought it would be. When you start getting into the western half of South Dakota, (coming from the East), you see a difference in the plant life and land. Fewer trees and more plains and then rolling hills. You also start seeing the billboards for Wall Drug.
Rapid City, South Dakota – Cabela’s Parking lot.
We finally got to Cabela’s lot and found a spot with a little privacy. You can’t really spend time outside your trailer there. It’s just for getting a quick night’s sleep and to get on the road the next morning.
Cabela’s parking lot in Rapid City, SD
Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming
The drive to the Big Horns from Rapid City was fairly uneventful, if beautiful. We stopped in Sheridan, WY for some supplies and hit our first climb up the switchbacks heading to Burgess Junction.
We stayed at Tongue Creek campground for three nights four days. Our campsite had a pretty creek flowing through it. This campground had a water pump and the cleanest pit toilet I have ever seen.
The fishing was really fun up here. We caught cutthroat and rainbow trout. The Bear Lodge Resort at Burgess Junction had showers for campers like us. They are behind the tavern for $2 per person. It was our first shower of the trip. I like showers.
Fireside Old-Fashioneds 
The stream through our campsite. 
Back door open. 
Leaving the Big Horn Mountains.
We had a real scare driving down the west side of the Big Horns toward Cody. This descent starts at a bit under 10k feet and drops to 4500 in about 8 miles. About halfway down our brakes felt squishy and we pulled over. All four brakes were actually smoking! We thought we had been taking it easy on the brakes and using gearing to slow our descent but we drastically underestimated how much we needed to use the engine for that. Luckily this was just a learning experience and no damage done.
Heading down from the Big Horns 
Smoking brakes
As we drove toward Bozeman, a flashing engine light came on and then turned off totally freaking us out. We stopped and checked everything and it seemed ok so we kept on driving. While on I-90 just outside of Bozeman, we had it on cruise control and the transmission shifted down and spiked the rpm – causing the flashing light again.
We were just outside of Bozeman at this point, so we got off the freeway and crept toward town. Derek stopped at a gas station to get error codes but the car had none. Pretty weird to not have any codes after a couple flashing engine lights.
We stopped for lunch and a drink (needed to calm some nerves!) at Montana Ale Works while Derek called the local Jeep dealership. Unfortunately they were super rude and didn’t have any time to look at the car for nearly two months. When Derek explained that we were travelling and if they had any local recommendations of someone else he could call, the woman he spoke with at the dealership literally laughed at him and ended the conversation with: “Good luck with that. You wont find anyone to help here – EVERYONE is too busy.” I’d not recommend the Bozeman Jeep dealer for any reason after seeing that go down.
Derek looked at some reviews online of local repair shops and called Deeter Auto Repair. They were super helpful and understanding of the situation. Unfortunately they couldn’t really do much since there were no error codes. The tech talked at length with Derek and we decide to proceed while taking it easy. He suspected the issues were just due to heat from the towing stress and using the automatic transmission. Turns out he was right. With our setup you really need to shift manually if you’re either climbing or descending. Again, lesson learned.
At Montana Ale Works 
Ennis had bad weather when we arrived.
Our goal was to get to Ennis, MT that night. As it turned out, it was not difficult to take it easy due to the 40-65 mph winds in the wide open country there. It was a crazy wind storm and we couldn’t drive faster than about 40mph due to the wind. Yay, another stressful drive!
We made it to Ennis in a couple hours and the wind/rain continued throughout the evening. Ended up cooking a quick dinner between rainstorms and getting to bed early. Honestly, it was a pretty stressful day. On a positive note, we learned how to actually drive our Jeep while towing a trailer!
Thanks for sharing your adventure.
Thanks for sharing your adventure. Again.
Heh thanks Anand! Still need to catch up sometime. We’ll figure this out once the world returns to some semblance of normalcy.