During my last post I was still waiting on my roof top tent. It ended up taking three days longer than I expected, but it worked out for the best. I met with my grandma, it was good to see her again and it brought me back to the visits I made in my childhood. I also got to reconnect with one of the few cousins I met as a kid, I hadn’t seen or talked to her in over 20 years. We hit it off great, very different lives and experiences, but similar outlooks on life. I wish we could have spent more time together, but I fully expect to come back sometime soon!
As I’m posting this I’ve had my tent for nearly a month and it’s been amazing! I’ve already tested it through a few lightning storms, a couple rounds of hail, wind, and obnoxious heat. I had a chance for snow, but I wasn’t looking forward to getting stuck in the mountains in Wyoming when I was already low on supplies, so I dipped before it hit.
After more than a week in southern Oregon and nearly 100 degree temps, I immediately went north. I stopped at Silver Falls Campground so that I could do the Trail of Ten Falls. It was a great trail and I got tons of pictures of different waterfalls, the coolest ones were the ones where you could go behind them and check for treasure. Sadly, the devs were clearly new at this and didn’t put anything behind them.
After the falls I went back up to Portland to visit my brother again, he had Ava (a niece of mine) and I wanted to meet her. She is five and super energetic and outgoing. We played for the rest of the day, I stayed the night and we all did breakfast in downtown Portland and played a bit more. I left for an oil change then headed east. I stayed in The Dalles for a couple days before moving on to Boise and my AC promptly died as I set out.
I spent three nights in Boise. I got in late in the afternoon and took the evening to hike up Table Rock, which overlooks the city. I had my headphones in until I had the thought that there are probably rattlesnakes in the area and that I should pay attention (there were, though I didn’t see any). Not two minutes later I heard I was surprised by this deer. He stood about five feet from me and just kept chomping. No fear at all.
The next day I took my truck to a mechanic to get the AC looked at while I did some errands and explored the area a little bit. He determined that my blower motor was going out and I had it replaced. It was a fairly slow day, but it was enjoyable. The next morning I got up early and went downtown. I went to Goldy’s Breakfast Bistro and then went to check out Freak Alley. It was really cool and there was too much to get pictures of everything, but it’s definitely worth checking out if you are in Boise. I took a walk through a nearby park and enjoyed a section of the Greenbelt Trail. I stopped in at the Bittercreek Alehouse, the beers were so-so, but the burger was absolutely the best I ever had, every ingredient is locally sourced and/or made in house and it tasted like it! I spent the rest of the afternoon at the library. I started looking for my next campground and realized that everything in Yellowstone and the Grand Teton’s was booked. I made a list of campgrounds that still had some first come first serve sites and just had to try my luck. Having realized that full campgrounds might be a problem for the fall colors, I booked a couple for Maine and New Hampshire in late September. Luckily they only open up six months in advance and there were sites available.
The next morning I made my way to Wyoming, after about an hour my AC died again. I secured everything and opened all my windows as it was in the 90s. I called ahead to a few shops but they said they didn’t have to ability to troubleshoot my issue. I needed to get to a dealership. I stopped at the first of three campgrounds and found that half the sites were open. Each campground was about an hour away and my most desired was the last one. I talked to the host and asked her what the likelihood of me getting a spot at one of the others was like. She said that since it was a Wednesday, I was probably fine, but if not, I could do dispersed camping right outside the national park. Hearing that, I went straight for the last campground and got in around 7pm, found a great spot and booked it for 6 days. Everything was dusty as hell and with my windows down I had a thick layer of dirt over everything.
The scenery was amazing, there was a hot springs pool, and for me the highlight was meeting some neighbors, especially Kory and Kelly, from Colorado. We had a couple of chats by the fire that were really helpful in considering what I want to do next. A key point was if you don’t know what your passion is, do something important, by doing that, it will give you time to find your passion and over time, you might find that the impact of doing important work is what inspires passion. They also had these packets called funky flames that you put in the fire which causes the fire to have some blue, purple, and green flames. While here I went through my first thunderstorm and had about 15 minutes of hail. I didn’t have any service so I was relying on other people for weather information. The last day was supposed to have an inch or two of snow. I had about 10 miles of dirt road and summer road tires on and I was low on supplies, so I decided to leave that morning.
Originally I was going to go up to Yellowstone next, but I was itching to drive further, so I decided to save that for another trip and headed to Grand Rapids South Dakota. The Toyota dealership couldn’t get me in for several weeks, but I grabbed a hotel in order to do some laundry and restock and looked for things to check out in South Dakota. I tried some restaurants and didn’t find anything special. The tap house was interesting, though, you get a wristband, then you scan it and pour your own which was great for tasting any of the 54 beers and 48 wines. Sadly, a lot of the taps were taken up with everyday beers and the local stuff wasn’t great.
I hadn’t considered the 4th of July and that made things a bit more difficult, but the trick of hitting a first come first serve campground on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday worked out. The amenities weren’t great, but I was close to some things I wanted to check out, in the black hills. I tried to go to the Wind Caves and the Jewel Caves, but being the 4th, they were free that weekend and I needed to be in line at about 6am to get in on a tour and it was about 40 minutes away. I did explore Custer State Park a bit and saw several herds of bison and drove the Needles Highway. I went and checked out Deadwood which gave me some mixed feelings, there was the quaint historic main street, but everything around it was run down buildings that were smoke shops, gas stations, and bars. I started thinking about it and that was most of what I saw all throughout South Dakota. I had another couple thunderstorms and another round a hail, these pieces were a lot bigger though, about the size of a quarter. It was coming down so hard, I thought it was denting my truck. I got lucky though and both my truck and tent were just fine. After four days in the black hills, I was done. They were fine I guess, but definitely not as interesting as all the advertisements made it sound. I thought about staying in the badlands, but due to the heat and my lack of AC, I chose to drive through them and make my way to Minnesota.
The humidity in Minnesota was instantly noticeable, but the campground had running water and showers. The humidity forced me to go through my clothes faster, but being able to clean up regularly made it much more enjoyable. I did some biking and some hiking and realized you either need to do it first thing in the morning or at like 9pm. Anything during the day will sap your energy so fast. I met some locals, Chris and Ron, for some good dinner and conversation. The evenings were really cool, a bunch of rabbits would come out of the woods and eat the grasses around the campsite and fireflies lit up the darkened boundary to the forest, magical was the best way to describe it. I had been calling around to get my AC fixed and found a dealership that could get me in the next day. So I drove into Minneapolis and found an Airbnb.
The dealership did a flush and refill of my refrigerant and thought it might have just been a contaminant in the system, if I still have a problem, I’ll need to replace my expansion valve and evaporator, which is really expensive and requires them to take out my entire dashboard. I haven’t really been able to test it, because it’s been relatively cool and the problem doesn’t really show up until the AC has to work hard.
I absolutely love the city. I’ve checked out a few restaurants and they’ve all been amazing. There’s so many interesting things going on, plenty of walkable and bikeable areas. I’ve found it really easy to talk to random people. There seems to be a large Somali presence here and it’s heartening to see the obvious displays of acceptance. There’s a ton of new experiences to be had. There’s also an integration between the residential areas and small businesses that I’m not used to and is really interesting. Several of the cafes, restaurants, and grocery stores are on the corner of a neighborhood. There are malls and dedicated areas for shopping, but for everyday things it seems like you can just walk down the street, which is really cool. The last instance of this that I noticed was in the library system. Instead of a couple central locations there are dozens of smaller locations all through out the city
As I’m writing this, the Toyota dealership is replacing my AC evaporator and expansion valve. I’m about to head out to another state park. I expect I’ll be back here after that or I’ll be up in Duluth. Several locals have said that that’s their favorite area of the state.
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