Well, we have been ignoring the internet for the past few months. We did some home chores, visited with family, and played with grandkids and dogs. Life has been good, but YouTube has been ignored. I apologize to anyone who was waiting for my next adventure. my Adventurers have been limited to say the least, but I will catch you up to date.

I decided to run up to NY and visit my son to attend his sons 1st birthday August, 11th, my sons birthday is a few days before so I really owed them both a visit and birthday presents. For my son we did a few more house improvemenst. IT’s one of my fatherly duties. I have the tools and possibly the knowledge.

From MY SONS house in Syracuse,NY. On the way south from NY I Stopped at the STEAMTOWN NATIONAL PARK just off I-81 in Scranton, PA to collect the national park passport stamp I had decided to start collecting. And we (Akela and I) walked around the static displays of all the old steam engine trains they have on site. its a great national park if you like steam engines.

SteamTown is the national park dedicated to steam trains and the age of steam locomotives and their maintenance. The facility is located on an old railroad maintenance facility including a round house Turntable, where an engine can drive on to the turntable and you can rotate it around to drive off into any of 13 garage bays where it can be worked on. all of thi is in good working order and all in full operation.

From there we traveled down to Washington, DC to drop in on a old high school girlfriend who broke up with me in the 80’s. and for whom I still pine for. we had a nice visit discussing old times and what we have been doing in 40 years. SHE went on to get a phd in environmental biology and took a job with the federal government. and I of course got married and had kids and live a basic dull working life. Until YouTube got under my skin of course.

From there we returned home to pick up some gear I had forgotten , then we went up to Mammoth cave for a night to get their passport stamp, then we went west to Illinois and stayed at RENDLAKE as we did on the way to south dakota. earler in the year. IT is definitely one of my favorite campgrounds. And at $9 a night with elect &water, it fills the needs. We then went back up to kansas (Where I said we would never go back again because of the many tick bites we got, ) but time, money and convenience got the best of us an we went back to perry lake outside of Kansas/Topeka.

Then we made the long trip across Nebraska to McConnaughy lake and lake Ogallala. We spent a good deal more time this time at Lake Ogallala than we did when we went to South Dakota, as we asked around several locals what we should make the effort to see. And so we went and saw the ASH HOLLOW area, which is an area the settlers came through during westward expansion following the Oregon and California trails. The area has wagon wheel tracks made and permanent changes to the plains and hills. And caves where people took shelter for storms or renegade Indians. IT was an interesting place, except the visitor center was having their annual Native American sacred activities so we were not allowed in the centers. We did visit WINDLASS HILL. A place where wagons came down off the plateau and left a long scratched trail that eventually eroded into a deep gulley and a sod house near the bottom which I believe was a school house at one time

We then set off for a oneday stop before Yellowstone since we had screwed up our reservation schedule. AND drove 20miles of dirt road up into the mountains of Wyoming to get to the extremely primitive forest campground/site(EASTBROOK). Wyoming is one of those western states that has a free range law for cattle. IF you don’t want cows on your land, you have to fence them out. SO we were in a place of many cows and cow pies and cow flies. IT was listed as having water, but the water was neither potable or palitable. There was a very interesting host who was a forest service employee who had taken the “DOGE” buy out and so was on the US Payroll until end of sept. he was hosting with his wife and mother in this incredibly remote area.

After a relaxing night there we set the compass for Yellowstone and it was all downhill. so we camped at grant village campground, which had no hookups, but did have a large shower facility and laundry. And the shower was free for each day you camped. We saw bison, and lots of birds, but the bears and wolfs were hiding.We did drive a few hundred miles around the park and saw all the bubbling mud and steam vents, though that wasn’t the reason we had come. We stopped at Old Faithful AND waited the 50 minutes it required before it decided to do its thing. But we got the passport stamps for OLD faithful and several other Yellowstone visitor centers. Yellowstone is huge, and there are visitor centers every 30 miles. IF I was to go back I would return to Grant Village, Just because they were so friendly and so well equipped with showers and laundry and groceries, restaurant and nice campsites. You don’t choose a campsite, when you arrive they assign you one based o your size. We almost got one in the open where we might have gotten some solar, but the one tree that was on our site was on the south side of us and so we did not get solar, but we still had plenty when it was time go.

After Yellowstone we headed south to Flagg Ranch, which was just a very large ranch just outside Yellowstone and had full hookups and nice facilities. and was still cheap. After that we continued further south to Gros Ventre (GRO VANT) campground in the Tenton mountains NP. They do have electric sites, but we didn’t book one. This is one of he few places you might see moose, bear Elk and sheep. We did not but there were many people looking along the rivers and roads. Your also just 15 miles from Jackson hole and all the touristy crowds of that area. We just missed the economic summit that was there with federal Reserve head Jerome Powell. Just north is the national elk refuge where in the winter you can see 2-3000 elk herding up. And all of a the males are loosing their antlers and the boy scouts are scooping them up to make the silly antler archways into the central park of Jackson, WY.

AFter all that, we continued south further to the great salt lake and camped on Antilope Island State Park, it has electric & Water sites, but they had been rebuilding the water system and somethin went wrong. so there was no water in the park. NO showers, no toilets (Porta- jOHNS) none. So we went into town and filled the trailer at a gas station that had avery nice RV-trailer fill station. Antilope Island has millions of shore Birds, and bison, praire dogs, pronghorns, Sheep, and borrowing owls right next to the road. We almost got a photo of the burrowing owls, but they decided to be shy and flew away as soon as I pulled out the camera. then we started the trip home going straight south to Escalante staircase and Utah’s Kodakrome basin state park. this was a super nice state park with great sites with elect. and water and a shower house with rain fall shower heads and fantastic tile shower stalls. They also had a hummingbird feeder right outside the registration building with 16-25 hummingbirds. 5 different species.

then we went south to get on Interstate 40 and just follow that home. but in new Mexico it got dark as the sun went down and we were pulled over by a passing tow truck yelling at us we were on fire. well not quite on fire, but maybe close the trailer axle was glowing cherry red like a holloween pumpkin and so we pulled over and dosed it with some water and tried to call a tow to come take care of it and we did reach someone who said they might be able to do a roadside repar, but not until morning, so we spent the night on the side of I-40 and at 9am the tow truck and a flat bed came and took the wolf pup to their yard to tear it apart and see what it needed. they spent a day working on it an replaced all the burned up parts, brakes, drum, bearings,