Adventure

Trip Report – Montana – Week 2 of 4

November 30, 2020 by kvec Leave a Comment

Ennis, Montana and the surrounding area.

We love this place and decided to spend six days here.

Coming off the really stressful driving day from the Bighorns through Bozeman, we drove into Ennis seeing active smoke and fires on mountainsides on the Northside of town with 40-60 mph wind gusts.

Camping along the Madison River near Ennis was fantastic. Great fishing, great views, and overall super relaxing. On the downside, we’ve never seen it as crowded here as this year. Camping areas where you’d rarely see more than one other person this time of year were completely full on the weekends and very close to it on the weekdays.

I have mixed feelings when I see this overcrowding. It’s hard to know whether increased use of our outdoor resources is good or bad. On the one hand, it increases responsible stewardship and public lands are owned by all. On the other hand, the overcrowding damages said resource and somewhat reduces the experience of it all. I’m often left wondering if we are part of the problem or part of the solution.

We needed to make a few repairs to Derek’s bed as the wire cot frame was sagging a bit from us both lying on it trying to watch movies. In hindsight, using a wire cot for a long term trip wasn’t the best call. We should have taken the time to build a wooden bedframe. We definitely will make that change for next season. With a trip to the local lumberyard, Derek shored up the frame with some plywood and shims. Overall, Ennis was the perfect place to make updates and get some work down with cell/internet access.

We added a new paper towel holder and screwed in some new hooks throughout the trailer. It seems simple but its pretty crazy how disorganized stuff gets crammed into a small space. I also bought an “Ahhh Montana” fly-fishing art poster for decoration at the foot of my bunk. We got this great little softshell cooler to take while fishing and grocery shopping. We also hit up the local laundromat and handled all of the more administrative stuff in town.

Thanks Aunt Kim for the Bigfoot pillow! Love it!

So many neat things happened …

My solar outside lights turned on as we were eating dinner one night. I thought they wouldn’t work at all. It felt like a little miracle to me. Derek and I decided to sit outside under our lights that night and I looked over at the grass field and off in the distance in the moonlight a huge bull moose was walking through the grass to get to the other field. At first, I thought it was a deer but as we kept looking at it we realized it was a huge bull. It was so beautiful and chill. No one was chasing it with a camera like they do in Yellowstone. It was a special moment for me.

Establishing our base camp here and day tripping around the area was the plan. We fished on the Gallatin River and shot a new bigfoot video there. It was exciting. I’ll make a post solely on my Bigfoot videos to date. Look for those here. Before heading down to the Gallatin we drove to West Yellowstone.

Visited some of our favorite small businesses.

My favorite store on the planet is there and it’s called Free Heel and Wheel. They sell and rent bikes and gear, fix bikes, and certain sports gear you would need in Yellowstone Park and the surrounding area. They have a great coffee bar and assorted cookie kind of snacks for the active. When I’m there I always tell them they are my favorite store on our planet!

The fly-fishing legend Kelly Galloup has his own store named Galloup’s Slide Inn that has the fly-fishing gear, guided trips, lodging, and a fly-tying material section of his store that is unmatched, says Derek. Kelly was there that day and I’ve seen so many of his DVD’s about fly-fishing that when I see him in person I get a little star-struck. A few years ago, I had him sign my sweatshirt with a sharpie pen like he was a rockstar! It was funny.

Planning is everything when you have an adventure-packed day.
Ernie’s Bakery is the perfect place to order lunch to go. They have great sandwiches to choose from. They even have gluten-free bread! We picked some sandwiches and drove to the Gallatin River to fish in places Derek had never fished before but always wanted to try it out. When we were heading back to Ennis it started snowing and it accumulated on the side of the road. That was the first snow we saw in 2020. It ended up becoming a foreshadow for what we were going to experience later on in our trip. Stay tuned for that on Week 3.5 Trip report. Let me just say “Shit got real!”

We put the word “Adventure” in “Happy Adventure Club”!

Going into our fifth day in Ennis, Derek and I decided to investigate some new possible fishing areas for us. A nice jeep trail took us to a new fishing spot by some huge boulders that must have had mountain lions living around them. I always got that feeling I was being watched there. The sky was gorgeous that day.

While driving, we found a couple of abandoned properties on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land that at one point was a working ranch. We even saw the shell of an old-fashioned car that had bullet holes all through it, a root cellar separate from the house and underground into the side of a hill, and several old wagons, tillers, and other misc. farm machinery (photos below). They were all falling apart and weathered. It was a fun day to see so much. It felt like a ghost town and we were the only ones left on earth. Social distancing was not an issue here.

Trip Report – Week 4 of 4 – Boysen, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Hideout, and The Badlands. Then home.

November 13, 2020 by kvec Leave a Comment

Continued fro Trip report Week 3.5 of 4: here

The 3 B’s – Boysen State Park, Boondocking at Butch Cassidy’s hideout, and then bring on The Badlands...please.

We found a great campground at Boysen State Park that was right next to the great fishing in Wind River Canyon. We were there just a couple of nights since the fishing license there is kind of expensive. We needed to plan the perfect fishing day. We had to do some bouldering to get to the river in all spots, but it was worth it. The canyon was gorgeous. So were the fish.

Fishing in Wind River Canyon – Boysen State Park

On the hillside across the river, there was a train track ledge going through the canyon. In the evening a train came through with lights on. Kind of creepy and neat to watch. I felt like I was in a wild, wild west movie!

Speaking of the Wild, Wild West, we decided to drive to Kaycee, Wyoming to drive into the Willow Creek Ranch 30 miles to get to the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid’s hideout. There was a campground but it was too hard to get to it with the trailer in tow. So we boondocked just outside their hideout. It was secluded with beautiful 360º views. We were tired that day and decided to open the back trailer doors and take a little nap. The sun was warm and the breeze was cool. So relaxing.

The next day we left and headed to the Badlands. We found a great boondocking site and parked right on the edge. We set up our chairs and set up the stove to cook dinner. We couldn’t have a fire there. All of a sudden we looked to our right and a herd of Big Horned Sheep were make their way from the grasslands to the cliffs of the Badlands for protection that night. We sat and watched what they did closely. It was neat. They had a procedure for this trek. There was a frontman that was a lookout and stood at the cliff entrance as a guide. For the other large sheep and their lambs. There was also a large male sheep coming in from the back as extra security. The frontman was getting mad because the herd wasn’t hurrying fast enough to go down the cliffs. It just sat down and waited an hour for them to finish grazing.

The next day was a big drive to Minnesota. We stayed at Kilen Woods State Park. The campgrounds were really clean and the grass was so think at the capsite it was like a green carpet. Great showers too! We had a huge fire, since we had to use up all the firewood before leaving the next day for home.

The trek home was sad but, we wanted to see our cats. We dropped the trailer off at our storage spot and it felt weird to separate from our trailer since it was basically part of us for the past month.

We are planning a new trip for 2021 September – October right now and made some new updagrades to the trailer in the past few weeks. Look for the trailer work post next and MORE ADVENTURES!

Trip Report – Heading Out West – Week 1 of 4

November 13, 2020 by kvec 3 Comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

On my never-ending quest for Bigfoot.

October 28, 2020 by kvec 2 Comments

In 2018, Derek and I went out West to Wyoming. We camped a couple of nights in the Bighorn National Park and found within the campsite there were teepees made out of logs, made in the forest. I had seen a movie about Bigfoot building shelters. It looked like those teepees.

I made another video during that same vacation about wood knocks. It’s one way Bigfoot communicates.

Since then I had lots of friends ask me when am I going to do the next Bigfoot video. In 2020, so far I’ve done two. The first one is here for you to see. I have a new video coming soon.

2018

These are the two videos I did for facebook in 2018.

2020

This was on the Gallatin River in Montana, August 2020

Wyoming, September 2020

Better than a tent.

August 20, 2020 by drikfan 7 Comments

We love tent camping… for the first 2-3 nights. I guess we’re old(ish) now and the lack of good sleep started wearing on us. Excuses, excuses, I know – but the idea of a minimal camper – a hard shell tent with a real bed – started really appealing to us. Last year we went to the Chicago RV and Camping trade show and honestly just didn’t like many of the options. We don’t really want a kitchen, plumbing, complicated electrical system and all of that. We’re not trying to make a “home away from home” really – we just want to sleep better for extended periods of time.

The Plan

The first thought was buying or building our own teardrop camper. I still do like that idea but we had a month from when we decided to take an upcoming trip from when we started looking for options. Finding a trailer base and then building it out was going to take a longer time than that. We did find some teardrops out there that fit our needs well but they all had extended lead times that wouldn’t work for us. One we particularly liked was https://www.hikertrailers.com/ – great product and great prices but a 9 month lead time right now.

Next, we looked into renting a teardrop but the cost was pretty crazy – was going to run somewhere between 2k and 3k for a 3-week trip. Then while poking around in craigslist I saw that someone had taken a 6×10′ cargo trailer and built out the interior a bit. I started looking at trailer prices both new and used and found a great deal at Country Blacksmith Trailers in southern Illinois (https://www.countryblacksmithtrailers.com/) We came home with our econobody 6×10 cargo trailer a few days later.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDAK2i4gq1z/

The biggest challenge we’ve had is that there’s no reasonable place to store the camper in the city. We live in downtown Chicago and street parking is not really a safe option. I called about 40 storage facilities ranging from typical self-storage units to commercial truck storage, to RV specific storage, but it was way too expensive in the city or nearby suburbs. Typically in the $175-$250 per month range. We settled on a place out in the far western suburbs for 33$ per month. It’s about an hour’s drive (sigh). It won’t be an issue once the trailer is built out since we’re not driving there every day, but during the conversion, it posed some challenges.

The entire project cost a little over $4000 including a brand new trailer. We consider this year a prototype build out since we were limited on time. We also didn’t want to spend a ton of energy and money to do a high finish build out without pressure testing the layout. Our goals with the build were pretty simple for this year: Comfortable sleeping for 2 people, as much flexible storage space as possible, and being able to complete the build in under 7 working days.

The Build

In order to make it a bit easier to do the main build and also test the trailer a bit, we drove to Cleveland to visit Kristen’s mom. We set it all up in her driveway and got to work. Was really nice to see some family we haven’t seen for a long time due to COVID-19 as well. Side Note: Kristen found a new purpose in life that she somehow missed growing up – setting off fireworks.

The build plan was really simple. Step by step it went like this:

Install windows (day 1-2) (DON’T BUY CHEAP WINDOWS)
Paint the interior (day 3)
build a small dining table (day 4)
build/install bunks (day 5)
install table (day 5)
mount spare tire (day 6)
install an awning (day 6)
decorate/finish everything up (day 7)

We had a few issues with the build but nothing major. The first issue was the cheap RV windows I bought off of ebay. They were half the price of normal RV windows, but if I had to do it again I would spend the extra money. These will work, but they were a pain in the ass to install and required several trips to the hardware store and a lot of frustration. They also just feel kind of cheap compared to the more expensive rv windows.

The next issue was mounting the spare tire. I mounted it on the tongue with a specialized mounting bracket and it mounted just fine but it reduces the already pretty low clearance and also interferes with our Jeep Wrangler’s spare tire, reducing the turn radius in one direction. In the end I tossed it under the bottom bunk, wrapped in plastic so there’s no rubber smell and made a simple little mount to keep it in place. It will work for now, but at some point id like to figure out a exterior mount on the back door.

We decided to splurge a bit and bought a solar generator. So far its working great for our needs which, again, are really simple: charge phones & laptop, run a fan at night, lighting, etc.. We ended up getting a Maxoak AC50 as the generator and a Togopower portable 120w solar panel. https://www.maxoak.net/products/bluetti-ac50-500wh-300w. I’ll spend some time on our upcoming trip putting it to test a bit and report back as well.

That’s it for now. We’re busy packing for our three week trip around Wyoming and Montana. Looking forward to catching some fish and a lot of time outside.

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