We all know how this story ends. By the third week of July, I was safely home. The following series of posts describes the journey home.
After two weeks in Glacier National Park and another four weeks in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, I was ready to start my journey home. Home was over 3000 miles away. This is the best way I can describe the feeling of making such a long journey home. I feel like I am in a spaceship falling out of orbit, reentering the atmosphere of the earth, and then navigating my way home.
I did not know what route I was going to take. The weather would be a significant factor determining most of the route. I did know how much effort getting home would take. Making my way home would require around ten refueling stops, making about a dozen campground reservations, and deciding on a route.
Following the directions by myself was one of the most challenging parts of the trip. I used both the RV GPS Nav system and Google Maps on a tablet. I also hand wrote turn by turn directions. This way when I turn came up on the GPS I was already expecting the turn. Blindly following a GPS can really get you into trouble in a RV. I’ve made that mistake. Turning around a 42 foot bus is not always possible or easy. Of course, there would also be all the traffic to deal with. Three thousand miles of driving at 60 mph is about 50 hours driving, not including getting into and out of campgrounds, refueling, and rest stops. I estimated the drive home would take between two and three weeks. The drive from Florida to Grand Teton National Park took exactly three weeks.
The drive to get out of Montana took me four days. Montana is a large state. I tried to limit my daily mileage to around 200 miles. I left on July 1st. I knew with the approaching 4th of July, campground reservations would be difficult. I managed to make reservations at five different places that got me through the 4th of July weekend holiday.
I felt melancholy driving away from Glacier National Park. I enjoyed my time there. The mountains are visible for a long time as you drive away. I kept glancing over at the mountains knowing I would most likely never be returning here. The first stop was in Great Falls. I thought Great Falls would be a small town, but I drove six miles on a busy street in the center of town to reach the campground. Great Falls is a large city for being so far north in Montana. I think the city is probably located there because the Missouri River flows by there. Weeks earlier I drove by the headwaters of the Missouri River. I probably crossed the Missouri River at least 10 times during the trip.
The next day I drove to Butte. The drive was pretty with a lot of mountains. I was not expecting mountain scenery. The many ascents and descents made me have to take special control of the engine and transmission settings. The town of Butte is an environmental disaster. There were huge copper mines in the area. The Berkeley Pit Mine was right across the street from where I staying.
The Berkeley Pit Mine is a type of mining called open-pit mining. The mine closed years ago, but the environmental disaster left is not fixable. The mine filled up to a depth of about 900 feet with water that is heavily acidic. The acidity is about the same as cola or lemon juice. The pit and its water present a serious environmental problem because the water, with dissolved oxygen, allows pyrite and sulfide minerals in the ore and wall rocks to decay, releasing acid. As a result, heavy metals and dangerous chemicals in the lake leach from the rock. These chemicals include copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.
In 1995 a flock of migrating geese landed in the Berkeley Pit and died. Cleanup crews recovered 342 carcasses. On November 28 2016 several thousand snow geese died after a large flock landed in the pit’s water to avoid a snowstorm. Now officials just try to scare the birds away from landing there.
When the pit water level eventually reaches the natural water table, estimated to occur by around 2020, the pit water will reverse flow back into surrounding groundwater. The reverse flow of water will pollute Silver Bow Creek which is the headwaters of Clark Fork of the Columbia River. After contamination of the groundwater occurs, there will be no water for the town. That town is doomed.
I did not hook up to the water supply in that campground, who knows how far the toxic waste really has reached. Of course in America, The Berkeley Pit is now a tourist attraction with an adjacent gift shop. They charge a $3 admission fee to go out on the viewing platform. I didn’t go look at the pit. Although it would have been fun to throw some of the rude tourists into the lake and watch them dissolve. Now when I see the ads for batteries saying CopperTop, copper top has a whole new meaning to me. The copper on top is gone, and the place has a copper bottom.
I expected an easy and scenic drive from Butte to Billings on I-90. The drive was one of the hardest days of driving I have ever done in a RV. There was a lot of rain, water spray from trucks reducing visibility, and heavy traffic. The terrain was almost all climbs and descents. I was constantly adjusting the engine, transmission, and engine brakes to avoid overheating the brakes and engine.
I kept a close eye on the engine temperature gauge. The engine temperature can rise quickly while ascending a steep grade. The correct way to handle these conditions is to adjust the engine and transmission before the engine temperature starts to climb, similar to staying ahead of the power curve. At the same time, I was also paying close attention to the vehicles around so I could drive safely with all the speeding traffic. No one seemed to slow down for the rain except me. Several times I thought I smelled brakes, then I realized the smell probably came from my brakes. There is a warning in the engine section of the owner’s manual not to use the engine brakes in the rain, so I used them as little as possible. Late in the afternoon I arrived in Billings completely exhausted.
The next day was a beautiful drive from Montana to Buffalo Wyoming. This was the drive I was expecting the day before. I traveled this road before back in 2014 at the end of a bike tour in the Beartooth and Cody area of Wyoming. I only selected Buffalo Wyoming because the town is halfway between Billings and Rapid City Wyoming, about 200 miles from each city. I drove to Buffalo on the 4th of July. The afternoon and evening I spent in Buffalo was one of the highlights of the trip, a completely unexpected and wonderful surprise.
To be continued in several more posts, the trip home was too long to put into one post.