The Maine and Eastern Seaboard Trip, Just the Facts, Maam!

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MN Blue Skies said:
I would be great is someone organized a rally there next year.  Anyone volunteers?

Maybe we could hit someone up in Yellowstone to take it on!

cadee2c said:
Right now we are staying at Crystal Springs RV resort just north of Albert Lea.

I think we will be nearby there when we get to Iowa. Watch for us to come to town!
 
Jackson Rancheria
12222 New York Ranch Road
Jackson, Ca 95642​

After staying at a few different RV parks that had little to offer in the way of amenities, we rolled into Jackson, Ca to stay at Jackson Rancheria Casino and RV park.  Many of the RV parks that are owned by Indian casino's are generally pretty decent, but this one is exceptional in my opinion.  The all cement double wide sites are surrounded with lush grass and meticulously cared for plant life.  There is generous space between sites, and they are  laid out on the diagonal to provide an even bigger space feel.  There is a walking path that surrounds the whole park, and although a bit hilly is a great place to stretch and exercise a bit. 

This is surrounded by great scenery of rolling green hills and plenty of trees. The restrooms are modern and clean, and easily handicapped accessible. The free park WiFi is strong, which is a good thing because my Verizon air card was running pretty slow due to distance from the nearest tower. 

We had paid a group rate here as we were attending a mini rally with a bunch of folks we have become friends with from our brief but memorable 5th Wheel ownership days. Our rate was $35 a night, but I believe the regular rate is $45 to $55 a night depending on back in or pull through site, and weekend or weekday. There is a large off  leash dog area, a big pool, and two hot tubs to relax in. A free shuttle to the casino runs every 30 minutes and drops you at the casino door which is about a mile from the RV park. 

Just down the hill from the RV park is a gas station that has diesel and will easily fit your big rig to fuel up. There is also a car/RV wash that is touch-less where you can get the RV washed for $40. If you join the Casino's players club, a coupon on the RV site brochure will give you an additional $10 off that price.

We were so busy with the events and people at the rally, we never even made it to the casino. We did find time to hit a few wineries though, and picked up a case of Zinfandel to take with us. This is  one of the few places that we could be happy staying for a few weeks if we could fit it in our plans.  We have been here 3 or 4 times, but I don't think we have made it to the casino yet. I can highly recommend this park. 
 

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That looks like a good place. I haven?t stayed there but over west of Lodi at Flag City RV Resort and if it is hot you might try Duck Island RV Park. It is right on the river Before I stayed there I didn?t know about how the wind always blows up the river and it is a cold wind from the ocean. That is why they have all the windmills there. You are right there are a lot of good winery?s around that area.
Bill
 
Sparks Marina RV Park
1200 E. LincolnWay
Sparks, NV 89434

This entry will combine 3 different parks as they were shorter in duration, and we didn't do as much wandering.  We have stayed at Sparks Marina before, and came back because we like the area. The park can be a little odd, in that there is no real grass in the park.  All of their sites have a grass areas between them, but it is all Astro Turf.  It is in good repair, and the park keeps it clean by constant raking, sweeping, and they even run a lawn mower over it to suck up any loose debris that falls on it.

Because it's astro turf though, they don't want any animals reliving themselves on it.  Which  can be kind of a struggle to keep rover from peeing as soon as they hit the door.  There are 2 dog runs to use, if you can  get that far before the ?accident?.  They do  have handicapped facilities, and offer free WiFi, for email browsing primarily. The sites are average size so you can get an awning out, but not a lot of extra room. There is an additional parking area next to the rig to put your toad or tow vehicle.  We paid $43 with Good Sam discount. 

There is a nice marina across from the park where sail boats and paddle boarders play, and there is a 1 ? mile walking/jogging path around the lake.  There is also a big off leash pet area at the marina that is on the lake as well, so if your pooch is a water lover, they will be in heaven. 

There is a pool and hot tub (which I used) and enjoyed immensely. I can recommend this park for visiting the Reno/Sparks area.

Iron  Horse RV Resort
3400 Idaho St
Elko, NV 89801​

After leaving Sparks we needed an over niter on the way to Salt Lake City. Iron Horse fit the bill nicely. It sits back off the road, and a bit lower so traffic noise was not an issue. This is a well maintained park and is not very old. We have stayed here before a few years back and I liked it then. One slight negative is that the sites are ?Jack and Jill?, but only on the drivers side of the vehicle. The utilities share the same strip between you and the rig on the drivers side, but out your door on the curb side there is a spacious patio and grass area. 

The grass here is meticioulsly maintained and kept nicely mowed. There is a small pool and hot tub, but I didn't get the chance to use them. There are Handicapped facilities, and the price includes free WiFi, but our Verizon Air Card worked well here.  There is some train noise in the area, but not close enough to be bothersome. Even though our stop was brief, I could easily come back to this park and stay a week.  The town was nice and had a good variety of stores.

We paid $48 a night for a long pull through paved site, which was nice as I didn't want to unhook the Jeep for the short stay.  I would stay here again. 

Salt Lake City KOA
1400 W North Temple
Salt Lake City, UT 84116

We had not been to SLC for quite awhile, so we wanted a place to stay to do some touring. We went with the KOA, but were not too impressed with it. While the roads and sites were paved, fairly rare for a KOA, it had some negatives that were tough on us.  Probably the biggest one for us was the noise level in the area. A train track nearby had a seemingly constant supply of freight trains going by. Many in the early morning hours, like 2 or 3 AM. And each and every time the conductor would sound the horns as many as 9 or 10 long blasts going by.  And then there was the noise from the nearby airport as jets took off and  landed regularly and helicopters circled at random.

The park itself is huge, with over 1000 RV spots, most of which are permanent or extended stay rigs. That makes for quite a bit of traffic in and out around the clock. I didn't get a chance  to check out the restroom facilities, as most of our 5 days we were dodging the rain and thunder storms that were going by. The park does offer free WiFi and our air card signal was good here. The views from the park of the snow capped mountains were very nice to look at. I needed to use a remote satellite dish though as the many large trees make the RV mounted dishes useless in most cases. 

The touring we did do of Temple Square and the Capitol building was great, but we skipped visiting the Great Salt Lake, after a report of swarming biting flies from a couple on the Capitol tour with us. Diane's blog has a lot more info on the places we visited with lots more pictures.

We paid $50 a night with GS discount, and there is a pool and small hot tub. I chose not to use the hot tub though as another camper that had 7 small children and was camping in a pop up camper used the hot tub daily as kind of a bath for all of the kids.  Gotta love a KOA. 

We were recommended to a local Mexican food restaurant down the street that I took Diane to on Mothers Day, the Red Iguana. It was a great recommendation, as the food and the service were fabulous, and the prices were reasonable. 

There is a nice paved walking/jogging path next to the park that we did use to run on one day between the rain drops. I probably wouldn't come back here if in the area, just too many negatives for us.     
 

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I chose not to use the hot tub though as another camper that had 7 small children and was camping in a pop up camper used the hot tub daily as kind of a bath for all of the kids.  Gotta love a KOA.

Nothing like relaxing in someone else's bath water. 

Looks like we were following you a bit.  Spent Sunday and Monday nights at Gold Dust West Casino in Carson City.  Then had the brakes inspected in Sparks, 30 miles or so further North.  That kept us off the road until 4PM Tuesday.  $75.00 for 3 hours work.  Damn I love getting work done outside of Los Angeles.  We were on I-80 till Wells and then headed North to Twin Falls ID.  Looks like you're taking the long route to Yellowstone. 
 
We used the "Cowboy" RV park Bill. I can't  recommend it though. It is a mobile home park with a small RV area. The sites are small, close together, and over priced. I will elaborate more on that in the next entry.
 
Last time in the Yellowstone area we couldn't get in the park and stayed on the north side. off US-89 south of Livingston. The place we stayed was nice wright on the banks of the Yellowstone river.
Yellowstone's Edge RV Park
3502 US-89, Livingston, MT 59047
mtrv.com
(406) 333-4036
The only negative is it was a ways into the park.
What is the address of "Cowboys" so I don't make that one of my picks. :D
Bill
 
I will cover two stops in this blog since the first one was only an over niter to get to our next destination.  If you were following Diane's route map you would notice that we skipped the 3 or 4 days in the Tetons camping with electric only.  Usually electric only camping does not bother me, but it is a little more challenging when it may be snowing outside. And we got lucky skipping that stop for reasons that I will get to in a moment.

Cowboy RV Park
845 Barton Road
Pocatello, ID 83204​

After deciding to skip the Teton's at this time and head right for Yellowstone, we made an overnight stop at the Cowboy RV Park. It was rated well in various on line web sites, so we stopped in for the night.  I am glad it was just a night, as the reviews ?stretched? the truth a bit. The Cowboy is actually a mobile home park that has a small area for RV's. The sites are narrow and long, but there are 2 sets of hookups at each long pull through making it 2 sites instead of one. If it was busier we would have had to disconnect the Jeep and find someplace to park it, as there would have been no room in the site.

The sites are asphalt and have a small concrete patio, but they were obviously built a long time ago when RV's didn't have slides. When we pulled in and put out our curb side slide, about 2' of the patio was left.  Most of the park is all permanents, who get up and go to work early mornings so you are treated to many vehicles starting up and moving about. A school bus also picks up and drops several children off daily that also live in the park, which is also right in front of the RV spaces. There is no pool or other facilities, and  no restrooms that I could find. As for WiFi, I could only see private signals when I scanned the area.  For all this we still paid $38 a night. If ever in the area, I would look to stay somewhere else. 

Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park
210 S. Electric St
West Yellowstone, MT 59758

Things got a lot better when we rolled into Grizzly RV park for the RV Forum.net rally.  Kim Bertram did an outstanding job organizing this rally and securing the rally rate, spaces,  and amenities for us. We have been here several times in the past and always look forward to our stay here. The park is big, and has RV spots as well as cabins and tent spots. We got in at the off season rate, and then Kim negotiated a rally rate of $45 a night for us, an excellent deal. The spaces are angled with decent room between rigs, the patio's are good sized and well placed.  We were also given use of their new indoor Pavilion that was just built. It is so new that the plumbing and heat are not hooked up yet, but that didn't stop us from using it almost daily.

All of the restroom facilities are top notch (as we had to use them) and handicapped accessible. Free WiFi is available throughout the park, but our  Verizon air card worked pretty well. The signal was strong from a nearby cell antenna, but the bandwidth did suffer occasionally during peak periods.

The west entrance to Yellowstone is minutes from the RV park, and we made a few day trips into the park to scan the numerous wild life roaming around.  We saw bear, bison, and  tons of smaller animals just coming out of the long winter season. Diane's blog goes into more detail of the animals with lots of pictures.

Sometimes RVing is easy and non eventful. And sometimes it's not. Extending our stay here to 10 days was a blessing in disguise. The reason I mentioned earlier that I was glad we skipped the Tetons was that the first day we pulled into Grizzly, Diane alerted me to a strong propane smell at the door of the rig.  A quick check with some soapy water on the connections at the on board propane tank revealed that a short hose from the propane tank to the regulator was leaking badly at a crimp joint. After a few attempts to re-crimp the connection, it was obvious that a new hose was in order.

I quickly learned the the only propane dealer here in town has went out of business, and few if any propane supplies are available. A few gas stations still sell propane gas, but nothing else. The local hardware store sells a few propane parts for BBQ's but that's all.

I determined that the closest propane dealer with parts is located in Belgrade, 90 miles away. I called him Friday afternoon, and the owner,  Larry, of MAC propane helped me out. Even though he was closed Saturday, he offered to make the hose I needed, and  would meet me at a location near his house the next morning.  We happily drove down the mountain, as without propane, we can't use the tankless hot water heater, cook on the stove, or use the gas heat. We have electric heat sources, but none are as effective as the gas if things really get cold. 

We met Larry and picked up the hose ($20), then continued into Bozeman to do a little shopping since we were nearly there already. About 2 PM we were on the way back up the mountain about 30 miles from Bozeman when the TPMS idiot light on the Jeep dash lit up.  Within seconds, a loud rumble was heard and then the ?bang?.  We completely blew the left rear tire on the Jeep. Fortunately a turnout was directly in front of us on the other side of the road so I wheeled into it and stopped.  I put the spare on and inflated it while Diane tried in vain to search for tire shops in Bozeman. No cell signal was to be had, but a Park Ranger stopped to check on us and told us about a tire shop that the Park Service uses in Bozeman, ?Tire Rama?. 

My Cooper's have been pretty good tires, and I had about 65,000 miles on them. When I got to the tire shop I learned that Cooper no longer makes that specific tire, that it had been replaced by a new model. While the new model was similar, the sizes were a little different, so I purchased a set of new tires ($800) and was back on the road about 4:30.  The guy at the tire shop did inform me that a few of my wheel studs were badly threaded, and one in fact was unusable. 

So we made it back to Grizzly about 6 PM and quickly installed the new propane hose.  Yep, the new hose leaked too, just from the other end!  I called up the propane shop owner, Larry, and described the issue.  The long and short of it was that we made yet another trip to Belgrade the next morning (180 mile round trip) to meet Larry at his shop and get another new hose. And this was on Sunday afternoon! It seems that the tank fitting on the first hose,  while brand new was defective. 

This time the propane hose fit and put our propane tank back in service. Still bugged about the damaged wheel studs, I found a shop here in town to replace the damaged stud and gave him directions to inspect the others.  When I returned I learned that 3 studs were damaged,  and one completely broke off during removal.  ($177) Things just keep getting better.

Because of our extended stay at Grizzly, I took advantage to get some stuff shipped here. Plus there was also some other needed repair items pop up. Here is a rundown of fixes:

1) 4 new Jeep tires.
2) 3 new wheel studs and lugs.
3) One propane hose.
4) 4 new TPMS sensors on the RV. (Replacing some that were timed out at 3 years old)
5) Switch out my  VMSpc WiFi JIB for a USB JIB. (warranty from Silverleaf)
6) Replace cooling fan in Diane's Wine Cooler.  ($6 from Amazon)
7) Replace 2 burned out LED lights in living area.
8) Replace defective BBQ regulator and control switch (warranty)
9) Ordered new battery for Diane's laptop (Amazon)
10) Added a pushup mast pole for my Wifi  antenna to back of RV. (My latest mod. Hopefully it works).
11) Re-secure the trim over the Residential Refer that contains the catches that hold the doors closed. 

As you can see, sometimes stuff happens when living the RV lifestyle.  It's not cheap, it's sometimes not easy, but it is always fun!
 

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6) Replace cooling fan in Diane's Wine Cooler.

Obviously the most important part!  Well, maybe the propane hose for heat and stuff.  ;)

ArdraF
 
Yeah, it has been. The most serious thing, the tire blow out was one of those things. I would have liked to have caught it before it blew, but the on board TPMS is not that good.  Since I run the tires at about 38 to 40 PSI, the sensor light is set to go come on at about 38#. That means that the light will often come on and go off with a change in weather.

And the propane hose was a fluke as well.  Well, just take it in stride and keep rolling.  There's lots more miles to cover!
 
Sarge

One place to visit, the only thing that is free.  Staten Island Ferry. Go to the Battery (downtown). You will see the ferry therminal.  The Ferry is free, you will get a great view of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Verrazano Bridge. When you get to Statan Island, you have to get off the ferry, but follow the crowed and get back on the ferry.  Try to pick a nice day, but there is inside seating.

You will be near the Freedom tower AKA Twin towers ( walking distance)

Enjoy
Jim
 
Hopefully the two of you will have left the PITA issues behind at Yellowstone and will enjoy the rest of your adventure.  Safe and trouble free travels. 

Gary
 
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