Ken and Karen’s travel adventures
Monday started out a little more cloudy, so we had to bundle up a little more to stay warm. Today we headed to the west of town, hoping that maybe we could stay at lower elevations longer to avoid finding too much snow too soon in the day. We started out with a stop at the gas station, then across the highway and out a paved road for awhile. Pretty soon we were crossing a pretty river.
Friday we drove the 175 miles from Missoula to Troy, to Kenny’s parent’s house. The drive was really pretty, since this time of year is still green in Montana. We didn’t have much wind, and the sky was beautiful. It is refreshing to see the clear, pretty rivers of the Northwest!
Tuesday we were up and getting ready to go around 8:00. It was cold and windy outside!!🥶. BRRRR as we were hitchin up the gettyup to go. We weren’t happy that there was wind, but we need to go, and thankfully it wasn’t gale force. Our route was to go up through Salt Lake City to a campground north of Ogden. There’s mountains with snow in between here and there. Salt Lake City is in an extraordinarily beautiful setting at the very foot of some very tall (over 11,000’) mountains. Thankfully the pass doesn’t go that high, but it might get interesting.
Sunday was really chilly in the morning, so we didn’t hit the trail until about 11:00. At least the wind wasn’t blowing, and the sun was out, so it was MUCH better than yesterday.
Saturday was cloudy, cool, and a bit windy. We didn’t realize how cool it was until we were out riding, and it was pretty darn cold! Even all bundled up like this, Kenny had gloves on, and we were still chilly.
Thursday we really lollygagged around in the morning. Kenny was making phone calls about one of the lithium batteries that still doesn’t want to work correctly. It sometimes decides that it doesn’t want to charge, or sometimes it doesn’t want to feed power to anything and just sits there at 100% and does not share. And most of the time it doesn’t want to report for duty on the blue tooth. The other original battery and the new one are working fine, but this one is still being a brat. Renogy has him doing all kinds of “tests” and sending in pictures before they’ll agree to replace it. Thankfully, we’ve had clear sunny days and the solar panels have kept the two batteries charged, so we aren’t missing the juice of the third one. We only run the generator if we want to use the microwave oven or the instant pot. I do like this solar system!
Tuesday morning’s wind was calmer than we expected, and cool, so we took our time getting ready to ride. I fixed us eggs, bacon and taters for brunch, so I didn’t need to pack a lunch for our ride. 😉 A real cooked breakfast around this camp is unusual. It’s usually 5 minutes of generator time to nuke a Jimmy Dean breakfast samich for the Captain and some oatmeal for me. We don’t do Fancy Nancy breakfast. However, if someone offered me a mimosa, I wouldn’t turn it down. 😉🥂
The route that I selected for today started out just like every other ride lately….an up-hill rocky trail. Hey, at least my choices aren’t boring gravel roads!
Monday we got up and were on the road by 8:00. We’re a lot faster loading Kawi and peeling out since we removed the all-season glass doors and patio railing from the back of Nitro! Especially when we can load him where he sits! The sun was up at 6:00, and I intentionally left the blinds open in our bedroom, so I was awake early. I got up and had everything ready to go, so Kenny only had a few things to do, we loaded Kawi, and away we went. Right off the bat, Hwy 17 went up a couple thousand feet in elevation, and it looked more like winter.
Sunday was another day for adventuring, and hopefully we wouldn’t run into any closed gates today. Although, now that we know that the whole entire forest is supposed to be CLOSED, we aren’t sure what we’ll find. So, first off, we though maybe let’s try going up the “main” road that was just outside the closed gate from yesterday, because it comes down directly to our camp. So we took off on the dirt road right here and headed north. Pretty soon it turned into an old paved road.
Friday we had to say our “see-you-in-June” good-byes to Rick and Rocky. They were leaving to head north today as well. Next time we see them, we’ll all be on our boats in Puget Sound! We were up at 7:30 to get the appropriate tanks emptied before departure, and get everything stowed and ready. By 9:00 we were loading Kawi and soon headed out the gate. Rocky took this picture as they followed us out.
