May 15-18 Camping in the Yaak

We thought we'd do another test run on the van so we took a couple of days off to go camping in the Yaak.

The "Yaak" is the area kind of along the Yaak River in the far, northwestern corner of Montana.  It is pretty "wild" country in that it has few inhabitants.  The vast majority of the area is National Forest. 

Here we stopped at Yaak Falls.  There are many places that are just as pretty or even better but this one is along the highway so it gets lots of visitors.  It begins right behind Susan and Scott.

This is the lower portion.  You can see where the rock strata is at about a 45 degree angle.  That's a large, flat rock the water descends over.

This is the view of it from downstream.  If you'll look up at the top of the rocks you'll see and old bridge abutment.  I couldn't find any locals who remembered there ever being a bridge there.  On the other side is a much larger one but it is made of field stone and has obviously been there a long time.

Of course meals always seem to taste better when you are camping.  Our first night out Susan served up pulled barbecued pork sandwiches with home-made pork-n-beans.  The cottage cheese was store bought.

We spent our first night at a rest area just outside of Troy.  Scott and I had a war of the dragon against his helicopter.  Of course his helicopter won multiple times (he always makes sure he has the most powerful toy when you play with him!).

Breakfast, day two ... pancakes!  

Just before breakfast we saw a medical helicopter set down and whisk two people off to the hospital.  We never did find out what happened.

Firewood!  One thing about camping in the National Forest around here is that firewood is normally abundant and easy to access.  The forest service lets you cut up anything that's dead for recreational fires.  (You need a permit for cutting firewood in larger quantities.)

This is one of the small lakes we spent a night at.  Scott is on the boat ramp with a girl his age whose family was also camping there.

We spent a little time fishing but didn't catch anything.

Susan took up a position a little more uphill.  Scott liked his spot because he could climb on the rocks whenever he got bored fishing.

We take our portable solar panels with us whenever we go camping.  This is a RAV 15.  We have three of them to keep our tablets and phones charged.

Dinner, chili dogs, cottage cheese and Doritos!

The same lake in the morning when the water is calm.

A small part of the Yaak River.

At the Caribou campsite.

We did a little exploring down an old logging road.  Odie in typical dog fashion was everywhere.  It was mostly uneventful except when a deer came crashing by almost at arm's length away.  Usually when I see them running that hard it's because a mountain lion is after them.   Odie, of course wanted to chase the deer but I called her back and made her stay with us.  We were careful to watch our back trail on the rest of our hike.

Scott needed constant reminders to stay close.  He's kind of like the dog and wants to race ahead from one new thing to the next!

There's a large open area below this ridge.  It looks like it was a staging area for a logging operation where they piled logs to be loaded onto trucks later.

We did a little mushroom gathering as well.  It was a good opportunity to introduce Scott to the fact that some are edible and some are not.  He caught on very quickly.

He gave up his boots so we'd have a way to carry his fruits of foraging.  Note to self:  bring along something to carry our finds in next time we go out.

We were hot and tired when we got back to camp and the fudge bars were really good!

There were both butterflies and moths in abundance and for some reason they seemed to like using Odie for a resting spot.

Snuggle time!  The best time of the day!

Susan tried a little gold panning.

She didn't find any gold, but ...

She found some really pretty rocks.  Scott was ecstatic!  He loved sorting through and admiring all the pretty rocks.

Whether you are young or old ...

... it's always important to take a rest break during the day!  You never want to over do things when you are "taking it easy." 

Snack time.

Susan and Scott playing together.

This is the stream that ran next to our camp.  The water is crystal clear and ice cold!

Someone left a large chunk of firewood in the fire pit. It was too green to burn as it was so I split it into smaller pieces.  I also had some firewood I'd cut from a nearby tree that was already dead and seasoned.

Between the two we ended up with a nice evening fire.

Of course if you leave a couple of boys unattended too long they come up with all kinds of things to do.

We began using our left over tinder (newspaper) to make planes, then boats and finally Scott decided he wanted a hat.  So that's what we did with it.

We got a laugh out of this sign.  We never did see the burn.

We stopped for lunch at another Forest Service Camp Ground.  This one was really nice but they charged you $7.00 a night.  We just used the day use area for free. 

It was along the river so we tried a little fishing. (No fish caught.)

Another view of the Yaak River.  

We had to take a photo of the tee-pee and satellite dish.  The guy had a "trading post" so we stopped to look around.  I ended up buying a hat there.  He had some cool, mountain man things for sale.  He's a retired teacher from Idaho who also goes to mountain man rendezvous.  We may see him at one in the future. The previous five photos are out of order and should have been before our camp at Caribou Camp Ground.

Now we are on our way home.  This is one of the higher mountains on our route.

We took a different road back home.  We'd never used this route before and I was concerned a little about snow in the higher places.  We hit some with this spot being the worst.  At this point we were committed because I'd already come through a couple of places where we wouldn't be able to make it back up if we reversed our route.  So we forged on ahead.  In the worst spot our left tires were within about six inches of going off the road into a ditch but we made it through okay.  We did have enough food on hand for a few days if we needed to camp while the road dried up.

Lake Koocanusa.  It's like a long snake stretching across our boarder and into Canada.  In case you are wondering, the name is a combination of Kootenai River, Canada and the USA.

We were home again an hour after this photo was taken.  

More to come in future posts.

16 May, 2014 Home again ...

We're back home, for awhile at least.  We have another summer trip coming up so we've been working on getting the motorhome ready for the trip.  We have a third motorhome now.  This one was purchased just for this trip.  We may keep it or sell it afterwards depending upon  how we like it.   It's kind of a cross between our big motorhome in Nevada and the smaller one we made out of a U-Haul truck.  The major issues will be reliability and gas mileage.  But not everything we've been doing is related to the motorhome.  There've been some other things to take care of as well.

We're still attempting to get some writing time in here.  I finally have everything I need for a vehicle recovery book I'm working on so I can get more done on it.  I'm also working on a couple of other books:  one on simple solar power systems and the other on alternative weapons for self-sufficiency.

I've needed some of the things at home here to finish the books. 

The motorhome was purchased just before we left for the winter in Nevada.  We had assurances that everything but the furnace worked which we've found to be true so far.  Surprisingly it had a full tank of propane.  The auxiliary battery was dead as a doornail but a few hours on the fast charger got it functional again.  It passed a load test anyway.  I'm going to install another back-up battery before we leave on the trip.  We aren't going to put solar panels on this one because we plan on being on the road a lot and the vehicle's alternator can keep the batteries charged.  We do not plan on using a generator either. 

The furnace is not a big deal at this time.  If we keep the rig we'll do a lot more modifications and get everything up to snuff.  It has a three-way refrigerator.  It does not work on 120 volts but does work with propane.  I have not tried it on 12 volts yet.  It draws 240 watts which is a lot of power for operation on batteries.  If it goes bad we'll replace it with an energy efficient unit that runs on 120 volts.

I'm still getting to know it and will have updates later.

I still have to fix some marker lights but that shouldn't be a big issue.

 

We took our time coming home and visited a few national Park and Recreation Areas on the way back.  We camped out twice and had a few nights in motels also.  One of the things we forgot to pack were cooking utensils for the motels.  We pack food along but it often needs cooked before eating.  When camping we just made a fire or used the backpacking stove.  However, our steel cups wouldn't work in a microwave so I bought this at Wal Mart for about $4.00.  We had to take turns cooking with it but it got us by okay.

 

Scott likes to look out the window and he likes to climb.  Here he got to do both.

 

 

We we're all glad to be home.  One of the first things Scott did was stack the cups.  It's fun to see them growing up and improving their physical and communication skills.

 

I got out our 65 watt solar panel out to top off the battery in the motorhome.  It was low but would still crank the motor over.  The carburetor was dry though and I ran the battery down pumping gas into the float bowl and had to put the fast charger on to start the motor.  I ran it a few minutes then shut it off.  I put the solar panel on it for a few hours to top off the battery.

 

This is an old panel and the wiring is connected manually inside the "black box." 

 

We use this one as a portable unit.  I have battery clips to attach it to whatever battery we're charging.  The chain is to secure it to something so that it doesn't grow legs and walk off without a fight.  It's often in use in the far corners of our property (way out of our sight).

 

Here the panel is leaning against the front of the motorhome.

 

Battery clips attached to the battery ...

 

and security chain in place!

 

It was also time to change the solar array from the winter to the summer position.  That's pretty easy.

 

Unbolt the arm at the bottom on both sides ...

 

then reposition it at the summer setting.

 

When I  added the extra panels a couple last year it made the array top heavy.  I put a safety chain on to keep it from falling over backwards when changing it from the summer to winter positions.

 

It's now facing the sun more directly.

 

We purchased a couple of Harbor Freight Tool solar chargers.  One is a small unit for keeping cell phones, etc. functioning.  The other is a 13 watt, portable battery "maintainer."  It's basically a solar powered "trickle" charger putting out about one amp.  It won't really charge a dead battery but it will keep one topped off if it sits for weeks or months at a time between uses. It comes with cigarette lighter attachments in both male and female configurations and with battery clips.  It also has a clip for charging batteries for cordless drills, etc.  It's very portable, folding up like a suitcase, and seems to do it's intended job well.  It was purchased to evaluate for the book on simple solar power that I'm writing.

 

I have it attached to a deep cycle battery here.  I've also installed a small charge controller.  A lot of comments on the unit said it needed a charge controller.  I'm not so sure that is the case.  At less than one amp it would be very difficult to damage a battery using it without a controller.  At any rate, I actually purchased the charge controller for the 65 watt panel.

 

The 65 watt panel installed on the deep cycle battery.  I was doing some comparisons of the two.  Obviously the larger panel had more output.  You can actually recharge a battery with it.

 

Here the HF unit is hooked to the motorhome battery.

 

I was greeted with a summons to jury duty upon arriving home so we made the 90 mile trip to the county seat  (Libby) for that.  They had a huge pool of jurors and since my name was near the end of the list I was not chosen.  It sounded like an interesting (civil) case.

 

It's a beautiful drive along Lake Koocanusa.