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!