Because I Can: It Was the Best of Times, and it Was the Worst of Times

Thursday August 13, 2015 Day 16 Bridger-Teton National Forest, Sacajawea Campground, site 21

249 towing miles

What an unbelievable day! And I mean that in a good way, and a bad way. We are not where we planned to be, but maybe even better than we planned. We were in for an adventure we didn't expect. The day started out wired from the beginning.

We made our coffee and hit the road at 08:00. At least that’s when we left the campsite. We went to the dump station to empty tanks, but most necessary of all, take on fresh water. We didn’t know if the next campground would have water or not and we were sucking air out of the tank. Some of the remote campgrounds don’t. So after dumping, we connected up the hose to the fresh water fill and turned the valves and nothing came out! It’s the same place we successfully filled on the way in. So we ended up back in the campground and hooked up to one of the water spigots in the campground. Fortunately they had threaded fittings. Not all of them have threaded hose connections. We topped off the freshwater tank, and blocked the road in the process, but only one car had to turn around because of us. We finally hit the road at 08:30.

Our destination was a few Bridger-Teton National Forest campgrounds along the Gray's River. We would check them out and pick one. They were on a national forest road along a 22 mile stretch south of Alpine, WY. We picked a route that would take us on back roads from the south and join up with Gray's River Road.

I chose to go north up the west side of Flaming Gorge instead of taking the east side on US-191. The GPS told me to tale US-191, but I defied her. We went to Manila, UT on UT-44. This took us through the Uinta Mountains. We had to go around Sheep Creek Canyon on numerous switchbacks and 8% grades, but the views were breathtaking. Sheep Creek Canyon is a side canyon to Flaming Gorge.

From Manila, we took WY-530 all the way up to Green River, where we connected to I-80.

We stopped at a Smiths grocery store (I think they are owned by Kroger, because they have Kroger products). Smith’s grocery stores are common out here. Before this trip I never heard of them. But I digress.

We were on I-80 for six miles and got off for WY-372 towards LaBarge. This was all straight flat highway you could see for miles. There were the occasional rocky ridge or flat topped buttes in the distance. It looked like the place where the coyote chased the road runner with all his Acme mail order anvils and rocket powered roller skates. We followed this highway for 49 miles and didn’t encounter one town or any reductions in the 65 mph speed limit. There was no traffic either. Maybe one or two cars passed me, in either direction.

Look! There's a curve in the road!

Driving through the town of Green River,

Wyoming, just before getting on I-80.

Just before LeBarge, we turned off onto a state road that eventually would hook up with a county road that follows Gray’s River. We had about 70 miles to go after turning onto the county road. The first ten miles were paved. Then it became a gravel road, but a nice smooth gravel road, less bumpy than the paved road. Then it became a national forest road and that’s where it deteriorated into a nightmare. At first it got rocky and we had to slow way down because it was bouncing the trailer all over. Then it became washed out with ruts and holes and trenches. It was really rough going, even if I wasn’t towing the trailer and was just driving the truck. We were hoping that it would get better but it didn’t. At this point we were barely crawling along. Then we came to a gullied, washed out slope that looked impossible. Fortunately, there was a turnoff and a driveway with a cattle guard which lead to an abandoned ranch. It gave me the option to turn around, which I couldn’t do until now. We would have had 50 miles to go, but we didn’t know if it stayed that way all the way. We were very concerned about the trailer. Inside, the cabinet door over the microwave (the library) that had all my books had opened up and all my books were all over the floor. The coffee grinder in the cupboard tipped over, dumping grounds all over the place. One of the window frames which holds the shades came off on three corners and was dangling on the window by one corner, resting on the dinette table. The panel came off on the converter. But in spite of all this, there was no damage. It all went back on and we cleaned up the books and grounds.

Here's a photo of my library when it is in the cupboard where it's supposed to be:

Dragging the trailer into and out of some of the holes and trenches was hard on the transmission. It was like trying to pull a big boat up a boat ramp. The transmission gauge was showing that I was getting close to being in the yellow. It is the first time I have ever seen the transmission gauge move. That bothered me. I was in no place to be broken down with a damaged transmission. But when I turned around, I sat there for about 10 minutes and it cooled right down to normal. We had covered about two miles of the bad area before we decided to turn around. First, we couldn't make that decision until we had a place to turnaround and second, we were convinced we had to when the transmission was starting to heat up and we had a washed out, steep slope to go up. So now we had to go back over where we had come. It took us about an hour to go those two miles. Marsha got out of the truck in some places to direct me the best way through the ruts. We made very slow progress. When we got to the "good" gravel, we went fast enough, that we could hear the doors lock. That is about 5 mph. We were really moving now!

We finally got out of it and back to LeBarge.

Because our minds were preoccupied with our traumatic experience, it didn't occur to us to take pictures of the horrible road.

We found another campground 22 miles west of Big Piney, which is about 20 miles north of LeBarge on US-191, a real highway. But, to get to it, you take a state highway for 10 miles west out of Big Piney and then it turns into an unpaved county road, then a national forest road. So we got a little apprehensive, but we had lost 3 hours and it was getting to be late to start looking elsewhere. We took a chance and it worked out fine.

I stopped in Big Piney to get some gas and inquire about a Wyoming fishing license. They sold them there. A non-resident license is sold by the day or seasonal. I bought 3 days at $14 per day. The seasonal is $110. The campground guide said Sacagawea is on Piney Creek and has trout.

We made it to Sacajawea National Forest Campground and what a beautiful spot it is. It is in the mountains in a pine forest. There are 27 sites and only four were occupied. Lots of privacy. We are right on a small creek. The creek was too small to fish. The campground host stopped by and told me of a great trout stream six miles from here called the North Piney Creek. I will investigate it tomorrow. We are very happy to be here after the day we had.

Here's some pictures of the campsite and surrounding views from it.