Good Morning Everyone. Yesterday was 4th of July. It was really hot here – I know I keep saying that and it isn’t going to let up for at least a week. But as Jack says “It’s that time of year”. I really don’t remember it being THAT hot last summer, but we had just moved here and there were other distractions. Now we’re here over a year and getting used to routines. The good news is that I have good puzzles to do on the iPad and good books on Audible plus other books from the Library. It’s all good.
I think I mentioned in the last blog that I was thinking about a trip to Yellowstone to visit Bill and Cathy and Rich. I used RV Trip Wizard to plot the route and I’m getting excited about going now. Jack and Metaxa will stay behind this time. He is worried about “Monsoon” season. I don’t have the same anxiety about it as he does. I’m used to big storms coming from Florida, but it seems to get to him. Plus, I really wanted to do this on my own this time. He hasn’t been there and would like to go so we’ll do it next year perhaps and take Metaxa with us. I’m still not sure it’s the best thing to share Daisy for such a long time. She really is my refuge and I love the way she is. I think it’s too busy for Jack. He has his daily routines and I’m not sure it will be good for him to be stressed out in her. But it would be nice to have him share the gas and food. Well maybe next year.
Anyway, this is how it is laid out at this point:
First stop – Flagstaff KOA: 273 miles from Tucson – 4h 14m
Second stop is in Utah: 271 miles from Flagstaff – 4 h 30m
Third stop is in UTAH also: 196 miles from Paradise – 2 h 45 m
My fourth stop is: Snake River RV Park in Idaho Falls – B & C’s recommendation
259 Miles – 3 hr 36 min
Then from there it’s into YNP from the West Entrance to Lake Village. 164 miles – 3h 13m
What is so cool about RV Trip Wizard is that I can print out the itinerary and it shows all my stops and the contact information for all of the places. Phone numbers, address, GPS Co-ordinates etc. I haven’t picked a date to leave yet, just waiting to hear back from Bill and Cathy. It also easily tracks my return trip the same way I came. That could change once I get up there, but it really makes it easy. I’m just hoping my Verizon Hot Spot will work. If I’m close enough to B & C I could use their Starlink perhaps.
So today is Wednesday and Jack goes to lunch with his car buddies. I sometime go to meet up with the “women”, but I’m trying to lose weight so I don’t want to go today. My project while he is gone is to take out the kayak and pump it up. I’ll try to do that while he is gone so he doesn’t laugh at my exploits. As it is he thinks it was a bad idea to get the thing and I’m somewhat in agreement, but I figure, I want to have it for my trips with RVW. I think I saw a trip to Patagonia Lake with RVW. Let me go see if I just imagined that. I was wrong about that. The next rally is in October to Catalina State Park. I’m reserved for that. It may leave September for Jack and me to go to Patagonia. He said he wanted to go there. We could do that and take Metaxa with us. I’d like to try the kayak there. It still may be too hot here for that place, time will tell. Let’s see if I can get the average temperatures for that time.
I thought I would play with the kayak today while Jack is at lunch with the guys. So glad I did that. I thought I would wait until it cooled down a bit to work with it, but then I figured, why not do it inside – genius!
Well………. I figured it would be a project but little did I know how big a project. I had to put the valve retainer rings to the valve base. Easy peasy right??? Look at this video – did I show this one yet? Anyway, I’m going to put it on here anyway.
The valve retainer rings were terrible! Thank goodness I had the directions with the kayak and it said to use a hair dryer to heat up the rings to stretch over the valves. I had planned to try to inflate the kayak. I have a feeling I’m going to need an automatic inflater rather than the foot pump based on this video that shows how “easy” it is to inflate it. If it’s anything like the valve rings just forget it. So it took me 1 hour to just put those fuckers on! Holy cow! Good thing Jack wasn’t around to watch or try to help. It would have been a disaster. I texted Sandy to warn her about it. She hasn’t even unboxed hers. Next time I get it out, I’m going to weigh the bag with everything in it. I bet it’s 50 pounds. It’s only supposed to be 26 pounds. But perhaps that is just the inflated boat. I’ll find that out too. So next Wednesday, I’ll try it again to inflate it with the foot pump.
So this is what the kayak looks like “in the bag”:
Look what I found on FB – always learn things on FB:
I was re-reading some of my posts and ran across these two videos. You may need to open them in a separate tab to get them to work.
This was OTIS2 coming to Arizona by transport:
Open them in a separate tab. YouTube doesn’t show them if they are “age” restricted and I guess I didn’t set that up on these videos – I try to remember to do that now.
So heard from Bill and Cathy. They said after Labor Day was the time to go to YNP. So I’ve chosen to leave on September 10th – it’s a Sunday. That will get me to YNP on Thursday and they will be off on Friday and Saturday. It will give me a day to recover from the road trip. Now I can get excited. The fun begins now to try to get reservations.
I just added my trip to my calendar. RV Trip Wizard does that too. Just discovered a new app that will come in handy:
I mentioned this “JUSTFIT” app a few weeks ago:
So yesterday my FB account was hacked. I got a message from Heather Westling and returned it to her. Apparently someone had hijacked her account and I got caught up in it. So now FB doesn’t recognize my email or phone number so I can’t log on. It’s kind of like “Upside”. I’m trying to get back on that too. I tried to deposit my $60 into my bank account and it hasn’t happened and now I can’t get into that app either to check my balance or add to it. I’m emailing back and forth but to no avail. Not having FB won’t be a bad thing, but now I want to delete the account rather than having it in “limbo”. I could start a new one, but I definitely don’t want 2 accounts. I’ll keep you posted. Guess I’ll just blog now and not worry about FB.
I booked my trip to YNP today & found a Harvest Host near the Snake River RV Park at the Idaho Potato Museum.
This is my trip – loving this Trip Wizard:
I’ve started a countdown: 63 more days until I get on the road again.
We were talking about the Jeep (Trvaler) today and found this picture to show how long we’ve owned her – since April 2023.
So now I’m thinking about going to Red Lodge to visit Carol Garvey on my trip to Yellowstone. I think I heard (may not have heard) that YNP only wants visitors in their sites for 3 nights. I could have that wrong, but nevertheless, I could shorten my stay at Yellowstone and go up to Red Lodge to visit her. Let me get the map route to Red Lodge from YNP.
Bill and Cathy sent me this picture of their view at “Happy Hour” today:
Cathy let me know that they have secured 5 days for me in their campground now so I don’t need to go to Red Lodge. I looked at the mapping and it looked a bit ambitious for Daisy and me. So now I don’t need to worry about it. I have decided to got to Zion National Park on my way home so I’ve extended my trip by one day. More will be revealed. That’s it for this post. Thanks for visiting. Look for my next post for updates on this trip.
