Day 13 -- Pindale, Wyoming to Aspen Acres RV Park -- 140 Miles

Today marks the 13th day of this summer's outting, and it also marks the day that we topped 30,000 miles on our Fleetwood Jamboree RV that we purchased used back in 2015. Incredibly, our rig had had two different owners by then, though neither owner did much actual driving it would seem. Amazningly, the rig had only a little over 9,100 miles on the clock five years after it rolled off the lot as a brand new unit.

Our first RV, a 1996 Fleetwood Tioga had about 31,000 miles on it when we located it on Craig's List in Lodi, California. The truck had been thoroughly used, but was still a strong runner, and we wanted to give RVing a try without breaking the bank. We bought it in 2013 for the comparitively low price of $14,000 and spent hundreds of hours joyfully exploring America, adding 20,000 miles of our own to the oddometer, and learning just what we did and did not like about the 31-foot rig's amenities.

Once we had decided what we wanted in a newer rig, we put the Tioga back on Craig's List and a chap from Pennsylvania saw it, liked it, flew out to drive it, and then paid our asking price and drove it away. It was sort of a bittersweet day, but now we could begin to search for just the right rig that would fulfill all of our requirements for something more modern, comfortable, and powerful.

Soon we discovered an unbeatable deal right near us in northern Nevada. The Craig's List ad for the little-used Fleetwood Jamboree looked too good to be true, but we piled into the car and went to see it. Incredibly, the rig was everything the Craig's list ad said it was, and the owner was willing to deal. Checking with our Credit Union, we discoverd that the asking price was a good five thousand under what they considered a fair price. That was all we needed to hear, and we shook hands all around and became the new owners of a five-year-old gem.

I thought about this saga today after we left Pinedale, Wyoming, drove a couple of hours to Jackson Hole, had lunch, then took the Teton Pass route to Idaho. I thought about our history of RVing as we began our ascent of the pass because the grade was a wopping 10%, both up and down, which multiple signs warned us about. A ten percent grade meant if you didn't have a good engine in your rig, you might as well get out and walk.

In the old RV, the Tioga, the engine was a 460 cubic inch Ford, and it would pull that heavy RV without too much trouble on flat ground and up minor grades. But when tackling some of the heavy-duty grades in Colorado and Wyoming, you'd often be down to 30 miles per hour as you topped the various passes.

But the new rig, the Fleetwood Jamboree, has a V-10 motor that seems to be much superior to the 460. Today we pulled the 10% grade, probably the steepest we've ever attempted, at a pretty steady 40 miles per hour, and the truck didn't lug or strain or complain at all.

Descending on the far side of the pass was pretty interesting. The Jamboree has three lower gears other then "drive," and I've almost never used any of the lower gears but 3rd low. Today, once we had reached the top of the pass, I put it 3rd low gear, then a few moments later in the 2nd low gear, and finally in the 1st low gear to make sure that I didn't get out of control at any point. I was a bit concerned that 1st low drove the RPMs up to 4,000, but we weren't in that gear very long. All the while we were descending, I had the emergency flashers going, something that I'd never done before in either rig.

I wanted to say a few words about last night's camp. While we were at the Pinedale Mountain Man Museum, I asked the staff if they could recommend an RV camp nearby since the closest camp we had seen was behind us about twelve miles. They told us sure, there's a brand new one just a mile or so from here.

And that's how we stumbled into the Yellowstone Trail RV Park just off main street. The camp was so very new, that it looked like they had just finished doing the paving and planting the grass around the campsites. The two camp hosts that I met, Jamie and Corey, were exceedingly cordial and helpful and got us signed up for a nice site. They were also eager to help us find a local camping equipment business nearby that we hoped to visit.

Amazingly, though we were just a block off Pinedale's main street, the camp was completely quiet and we enjoyed a truly peaceful night. In addition, the views of the surrounding mountain ranges are unsurpassed. Since the Yellowstone Trail Camp is just south of Yellowstone Park, you might want to keep it in mind. It's a great place to stop over, visit the Mountain Man Museum, then be ready to drive to Yellowstone National Park just 200 miles to the north.

After leaving Pinedale, we headed north so that we could do some sightseeing in Jackson Hole, gas up the rig, and find a quiet place to pull over and have lunch. We had also planned to do a bit of shopping in Jackson Hole, but we were ultimately deterred by the masses of other shoppers and their cars. We had such a hard time finding a place to pull over for lunch that we litterally parked in some homeowner's open field next to their house (photo above left). Since no one came running out to shoo us away, we stayed there. But we knew we'd never find a parking place for our rig amidst such congestion downtown.

Most of our day today was devoted to just enjoying the sights. We did stop at a few roadside historical markers, but mainly it was the scenery that captured our attention. There was so much to see that we even left the book on DVD turned off. At one point we stopped to photograph the Teton Valley and were soon engaged in conversation with another traveler named Bob. Bob told us that he and his wife were seeing American via compact car and had started just four days before from the state of South Carolina.

I was amazed and told him so. I said, "We've been on the road for thirteen days and have only gotten a couple of states away from where we live!"

Bob took that declaration in stride and told us about all the states he intended to see including the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Ultimately, he intended to return to the land of his birth in far off New Hampshire.

Neither of us could quite fathom how he could travel all those miles in the tiny car he and his wife were driving, but we asked Bob to take our picture (photo left), we wished him well, and we parted there at the roadside rest completely awed at his determination and tenacity.

Our current camp, called the Aspen Acres RV Park (photo right), is a hard-to-find tiny camp appended to a golf resort off route 20 in Idaho just to the north of Idaho Falls. As we approached the area, using the IPhone for guidance, we could scarcely see how there could be an RV park anywhere within fifty miles. Completely surrounding us as we drove were thousands of acres of potato fields.

But the IPhone kept giving us left turns and right turns and finally we saw way off in the distance about a half dozen acres of trees amidst the potato fields. Since it was getting on toward four o'clock, we hoped that the tiny brain in the phone would be correct, and we would actually find a camp at the end of all our twists and turns.

Thankfully, find it we did, and we're now set up so far off the main highway that you could explode an oil tanker out on Route 20 and we'd have to hear about it on the news. The trees around us are all Aspens and such groves make the nicest sounds when the wind blows. The camps are a little rustic, but we just love the isolation.