The final countdown on the big road trip

Todd Duncan Tennyson

Todd Duncan Tennyson

Well-known member
Ladies and gentlemen,

the time has come for the final countdown. Two days remain.


Me and Anya have been working way too hard for a long stretch, so we've decided to bug out of So. Oregon for some r&r.
The forest fire smoke here is awful, and it is really bad for the restaurant business as well (nobody comes out.)


We looked into buying an old econoline 250 van and fixing it up, but with all of the red tape and registrations and certificates and the notion of not really knowing if the folks that had it last really took care of it, we opted for the known evil.

I have a 98 Ford expedition. I have walked the walk with her.
taken care of her myself, and am comfortable with the shape she's in.

I yanked the seats out of her, and put up a 120 watt panel system on the rack.
Got a 125 amp hour sealed battery tucked in under a platform board (where the seats used to be.)

Ran 4 Ga wire with a 140 Amp breaker on the hot lead, and punched it into an xantrex 1000 watt true sine wave inverter.
Just for the heck of it, I grounded it to the chassis.


I rounded up a 4 wt 9 ft flyrod, and got half a dozen 7.5 ft leaders tied up and ready.
Got a Jerry can locked to the back of the whole thing with 5 gallons of fuel.

Found my old 20 ga sxs and 3 boxes of cartridges for it (mostly #6.) Might have a few 4s in there too.
Hung my home made chest on the back of the hitch rack and have a gallon of white gas,
a heavy duty tarp,
a restaurant sized powder fire extinguisher. a giant tow strap and a coleman white gas stove.

Got out my DeLorme maps for Or/Id/Wyo
I have a gps, but it only gives me longitude and latitude
So I am going to have to teach Anya how to read the T square based on lat and long and find out where we are at.

I have most of the route committed to memory, but' I'll ask her to help me out some, just so she will be used to how to read a map and use LAT/LONG.

Got a 7 gallon water tank and a few quarts of oil in case the old beast has a gasket go.

Bringing our walkie talkies (say they are good for 35 miles, but in reality, maybe only 3.5 miles.)


I got a box of Parachute adams #16 and some royal coachmen in there too that I tied with Dad 20 years back.
Might have a white wulff in #14 and a few hoppers in #14/#12.


Got my father's ashes in a special box that I am going to let loose on a small stream (his favorite) up near Stanley Idaho.

I made a promise I'd set him free there.


Going to give anya the bear spray for critters and the .357 for people.
I will have my Old 6 Shot GP 100 with Hard casts for bears.


I'd love to take the red dog, but, Yellowstone probably isn't the best place to go with a dog, and he is still getting better from his surgery and twisted knee.


Haven't had to dose him on Rimadyl yet, (seems to be getting better on his own.)


Since we will be camping out of the truck, I decided to buy an 11,000 lb trimax chain which I can lock to the seat anchors. Then I will attach it twice to the pelican box.
I'll throw the sidearms and computers in it if we decide to go for a walk in towns.


After this excursion, I am going to learn a few things.

1.) Is it possible to run a vacuum cleaner 100 miles from nowhere and vacuum up the sage?
2.) Am I really a mechanic?
3.) where to go in Mid Sept for the Big Adventure with My red dog after anya goes back to Thailand.


I hope to be able to send you all photos and a blow by blow of our experience if you are interested.



It'll be great to let loose for a while.


best,

Todd
 
Have a good road trip!

I'm looking forward to lots of pictures

Good luck with the critters, the people, and your rig.
 
Well what an adventure we have endured.

View attachment IMG_0268.JPG

View attachment IMG_0263.JPG (at the base of the warner wetlands)




We drove from so Oregon and up over to Klamath falls in some of the thickest smoke I have ever experienced.



The visibility was about 400 yards and we were hopeful that we could escape.



The route from there took us east to the town of lakeview.
At that point, we fueled up and continued towards the booming metropolis of Adel.

I thought it might be beneficial to ask a local if it was better to take the road south into Nevada, or go up and through hart mtn, so in the town of Adel, we stopped into the only place there was to ask.
A young gal walked up and said '' hello.''

It looked like a town hall, restaurant, post office, and a place to get in from the cold. Nobody else was there.


I said, '' if a guy wanted to head on over the hill and get to Steens mtn, would they be better off going into Nevada, or going up north through Plush and over Hart mountain?''

She said she'd never heard of them.


I bought a pepperoni stick and we decided to go through Plush, because I didn't have a Nevada map.



From there we entered the Warner wetlands at the base of Hart mountain, ascended the mountain road and drove another 55 miles on a terrible washboard of a road.


We did get to see a nice buck speed goat and bumped a sage grouse up along the roadside, saw a mature golden eagle nearly catch a cottontail, but he missed, and the bunny bolted across the road to live another day.


After we made it back to pavement, I realized that the trip wasn't going to take 5.75 hrs as per the google earth estimate.

Anya's back was giving her troubles from the terrible road, so I put the hammer down to make the most of the daylight we had left.


We saw several groups of antelope hunters as we skirted Catlow rim and Roaring springs.
The smoke and the angle of the little sunlight making its way through put a surreal red orange cast to everything.

It is a funny feeling doing 85mph in a 20 year old truck along such a stretch of road.

The whole rig sways with the dips and rises of the road, and you have to keep both hands on the wheel. You need to be able to see 3/4 of a mile ahead and try not to use your brakes.

Finally we made it to the s.e. Marge of Steen's Mtn, and back onto the washboard road.


Anya kept asking why it was that I wanted to go there?


I said, I can not explain it, you just have to be there to experience it for yourself. I was so hopeful that the smoke would clear and I could show her the stars when we camped out that night.


As we crested the last wash boarded rise at about sundown, she saw the expanse of the alvod desert. "Wow" she said.

It is breathtaking, and although we made it, the sky was still thick with smoke.
Least we made it before dark, and naturally, I drove the battle wagon way out into the middle.

[inline IMG #0261.JPG]

It was very windy, and we removed our stuff and Anya had a glass of wine and she asked if it would be windy all night.
I told her it would be until the mountains just to the west of us cooled off and the convection stopped.

She asked, "what is convection?"
I said,
"Imagine turning on an electric stovetop, and then imagine putting your hand above it and feeling the air rise, that is how the mountains are acting like the stovetop, they absorb the heat all day, and it moves the air across this flat space until they cool off, it will be very still in the morning."


View attachment IMG_0260.JPGView attachment IMG_0269.JPG


I will add more when I am able, I am using a differnt computer, and having many technical difficulties.

Stay turned for a story full of smoke and fire and several days sidelined with auto breakdowns and different trips to different repair shops...
View attachment IMG_0261.JPG
 
Always a fun way to start the day Todd. A cup of coffee and a good adventure story. Thanks for taking the time to share.
 
Big storms roll in
you can do as you wish


storms from the sun
storms from the sea


storms drawn up
politically


storms that are only between you and your god



You can walk
you can run
you can turn to the answer

in the barrel of a gun


there is no joy
there is only work
it goes on forever


there is no finish line
there is death


and the end







there is no redemption


across every endless hillside

and around ever sunburned bend


you will be beaten down



Hear what I say
in my telegraphed slang
and cheapened poetic ways




people will look at you like you are insane
as though you've lost your mind


they will see you with your hood up and steam rolling from the radiator


they will just keep rolling right on by
because nobody gives a shit


nobody cares about anyone but themselves
in this toxic rotten place
 
Hey Chris,

Well the trip was nearly a total disaster.

The battlewagon had a fuel pump failure, so we limped it into boise and spent the night at a hotel.

The next day and about $1000 later it was fixed, so we ambled up to spread my dad's ashes in the creek near Stanley Idaho.


Along the way, the forest fire smoke was choking us, so In Idaho City, I pulled in and had a Forest service guy call up to his office near Stanley to see what the conditions were.

He said that it was worse, and that the camp we were going to stay at that night was a warzone. All of the firefighters and trucks and logistical ops were staging there.


So we turned around and headed to back to I 84 and thought maybe we could make it to Ketchum and camp out along the Big Wood river.


About half way up rattlesnake grade out of Mountain home, the check engine light came on again so I pulled over to check things out.
There was some kind of oil all down the undercarriage of the battlewagon.

I checked the oil and the transmission fluids. everything looked good.

There were speckles of some kind of oil all over the back of the rig too. It was almost as though someone didn't want us to head east. I am uncertain why, but sometimes if a guy does all he can to do something, and it doesn't come together, then, maybe he needs to reconsider things and exercise patience.



We were able to coast the wagon most of the way into Mountain Home.

They've got a Ford dealer there and we had them check it out.



They claimed that there was a coolant leak and had to order a part from Portland.

Meanwhile, we holed up about a mile away at a best Western.



After 2 days, the part was installed and we were supposed to be good to go.


When you plan for months to go on a trip, and end up spending all your time in a hotel wating for parts and repairs, it might be possible to get frustrated.

My wife experienced this phenomenon, and despite walking to the Walmart 3 times over 2 days, and hosing a beer in the Pilot gas station crapper, it started to spread to me too.


By the time we got the rig back, I was concerned that driving away from civilization might be a bad idea.

So I did a 180* and we headed west back through boise and through Burns. I gassed up the battlewagon there and got a cup of coffee. Anya still wasn't talking to me and it had been about 5 hours.



We got back in the rig and headed west, and I took the cutoff towards lakeview at Riley.
About 10 miles deep on the route, the check engine light came on again.


We pulled over at a gravel pit and I checked all of the fluids again.

I said to Anya, "Guess it was a good thing we didn't head further East."

Upon realization that my hunch may have been appropriate regarding the status of the rig, She Nicened up a bit.


It is about 90 miles from Riley to Lakeview. The road carves along a Fault block range and immediately at the base of its long N/S face, there is Abert lake.

There are Bighorn sheep and Mule deer, Even some Chuckar and lots of rabbits.
At the time we drove its marge, the sun was about 45 minutes from setting, and it lit up the hillside.

The smoke was gone, and we could finally see blue skies.

Anya remarked, "Wow, this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.


There were thousands of little shorebirds, and some ducks. You could see the reflection of just about everthing in that huge body of water.

I just nodded and agreed,
"It is beautiful."
 
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