The great US road trip...well at least the
first bit.
So on this trip we learnt that our car
wasn’t really that great, lots of strange happenings and one big repair
job...but more about that later.
The trip started off well enough, we headed
south from our winter base of Golden BC into Montana. Our previous land border crossing into the
states in Alaska had been a rather scary affair with a somewhat psychotic border
guard but this one was the opposite. The
guards were nice and friendly and they didn’t even want to search our car
(which we were very happy about...not because we were hiding anything dodgy but
because we couldn’t be bothered unloading our very packed up car).
Our
first stop was a small town called Whitefish in Montana. We didn’t really know much about Whitefish
apart from it having a fairly decent ski field and that seemed a good enough
reason to go. Due to time constraints we
only had enough time for one days skiing, but we were lucky, the weather and snow conditions were
perfect. Whitefish isn’t as challenging
as Kicking Horse but it does have a few good runs....although a little
short. It is very popular with families and
being a Saturday the mountain was very busy however, unlike Kicking Horse the
lifties could actually organise a lift line. Some locals told us about a good
run off a ridge slightly out of bounds, so we hiked up and got fresh tracks at
3 pm in the afternoon. I was having a
bit of uncoordinated day and crashed a lot, I also forgot to bring the camera
so we only got a few photos on Chris’s cell phone.
The next day we headed south to Jackson,
Wyoming. It was our longest day of
driving on the road trip....almost the length of Montana, a corner of Idaho and
into the north west corner of Wyoming.
In Jackson we went skiing at Jackson Hole. Jackson Hole has a reputation
of being one of the most challenging mountains in North America. However when we were there much of the upper
mountain was closed (all the steep interesting bits) and the weather pretty
average. The snow conditions were pretty
bad too, super icy off trail in the morning and the stickiest snow I’ve ever
skied on in the afternoon.
Jackson is the closest town to Yellowstone
National Park. In winter the park
basically closed except for a few guided trips.
The two options were to go on a crazy looking tracked bus or on
snowmobiles. We chose the latter option. I discovered that snowmobiles are really hard
to steer and you end up getting really sore arms, so Chris drove most of the
way and I hung on at the back. Our trip
took us into the main hub of the park, where old faithful and other geysers are
located. We got to see lots of bison and
the geothermal area. To be honest the
hot pools and geysers around Rotorua in New Zealand are actually more impressive
than the Yellowstone ones. After eating
a yummy bison stew for lunch we hopped back on our snowmobiles for the return
journey. It was the last day of the
winter guided season so there were heaps of other snowmobiles and busses, the
park is then shut for a few weeks in preparation for the busy summer season.
So the car....in Jackson we noticed that
there were strange bubbles in the reserve coolant and that the car was going
through quite a bit of oil. On our way
down to Colorado we stopped at a couple of garages to get their opinion, the
first didn’t think it was anything important and told us the car was fine, the
second had a look and thought that it might be the headgasket. To replace the headgasket is a major job...a
couple of days work and a lot of money.
The second mechanic told us that he wouldn’t be able to get on to it
until the following week...assuming he could get the parts. As we were in the middle of nowhere Wyoming
we didn’t like our chances and we especially didn’t want to get stuck there for
a week. So we carried on to our
destination for that day, Boulder, Colorado, hoping that the engine didn’t blow
up and topping up the oil and coolant every hour or so.
Well we did make it to Boulder. We had planned to spend a few days there
staying with our friends Damo and Elyse checking out the area and maybe getting
in a day of skiing. However that was all
put aside while we sorted out getting our car fixed. Luckily Chris had made sure that our warranty
(we got when we bought the car off a dealer back in Vancouver) covered head
gasket replacements and that our Canadian warranty company covered repairs in
the US. So a few days and $1700 later
our car was fixed.
The drive to Utah was pretty scenic,
through the Rocky Mountains, over the Vail Pass, past several ski fields that
come all the way down to the interstate and through the Colorado River
gorge. Somewhere in backblocks Colorado
Chris decided that he had a craving for junk food...specifically American style
drive through junk food. Being drive
through novices (we very rarely ever get takeways) we weren’t really sure where
to go and what to do. After pulling off
the interstate we bypassed Macdonalds and Burger King and went for Sonic ....as
it had a cooler sign. Instead of a drive
through it had several parking bays with menu boards and intercoms at
each. Chris made his order (a milkshake)
and a few minutes later it was delivered to the car by a girl came on roller
skates. Classic American style, Chris
was pretty pleased with the whole experience.
In Utah we stopped in Moab for a few
days. Moab is famous for its mountain
biking and its amazing scenery including two national parks within short
driving distance of the town. It was a
very snap happy few days.....with hundreds of photos of red rock arches (Arches
National Park) and canyons (Canyonlands National Park) and other miscellaneous
red rock features. Canyonlands national
park is located where two major rivers (Colorado and Green) meet. The most
accessible part of the park is the island in the sky section at the northern
end and this is where we spent a day checking out. There are numerous short walks and vista
points to appreciate the landscape, while not as large as the grand canyon it
is still pretty impressive. We didn’t
have time to check out the other parts of the park as these would have require
a long round trip from Moab and some areas are only accessible by 4WD.
Arches National Park is all about
arches.... and for many people all about taking photos of the arches at the
right time of the day. So we spent the
morning rushing around trying to visit all the “morning” arches then returned
in the evening to photograph (with about 100 other people) the delicate arch at
sunset. We took many many photos and ended up deleting most of them.
