Summer at Yellowstone Holiday RV Park - 2022

 

When we arrived at the Yellowstone Holiday RV Park outside of West Yellowstone, we parked in a regular RV spot.  The place where we will be camping at doesn’t have the water turned on yet, but will be in a week or two.  Then we will move to that spot for the summer.   In the spring before the park is open to the public, we have moochers hanging around the park for free.  That’s right, Bison was everywhere processing the grass into…you know what the output is.  One day, as we were walking out our door to take Scout out for a walk, a mommy and baby bison came around the corner of our RV.  She stopped and huffed at us.  We slowly kept walking away from her, letting her know it’s cool and that we were just leaving.   All was good, she has seen us many times before this encounter and the other bison that was 20 - 30 feet away didn’t care.

I bet you’re wondering what we did while we were there.  Well let me tell you.  We just sat around and B.S. the whole day. (Ok, that was for Vickie, our boss).  What we really did depended on the day, one day we would work in the store/office, rent out boats, pump gas into boats, fill propane, and be the gopher for management.  When we were done with that shift, we would clean the bathrooms, showers and laundry room (morning shift), (afternoon shift would clean the store).  If we didn’t work one of those shifts, we would be cleaning cabins.  After we cleaned the cabins, we were done for the day.  So, on those days we might not work at all to a half day depending on how many cabins that needed to be cleaned.  If we had a lot of cabins to clean, management would come and help.  Vickie is the best! (That was for Vickie too!).  We worked 5 days on and 2 days off and got paid for all hours worked.

On our days off, we would do the normal stuff like go on hikes, visit Yellowstone, go fishing (oh did I tell you we had free boat rentals too, if they were available? Oh, I didn’t?  Well, we did.)

The park has nice patios at each site, an Osprey nest across the street, and one time a black bear swam across the lake into our campground.  It just ran out and across the street into the hills.  No threat to us.  I tell you it’s cool watching the Osprey dive into the water to retrieve dinner.

One day, one of the guests invited us fishing on his boat.  He took us out on the lake and showed us how to catch fish with his fly poles.  It was fun.  We caught about 8 or so trout.  Mostly rainbow but I managed to bring in one brown.  They all were over 20” long.  I think this was the first time I ever saw a trout come out of the water…way out of the water too.  I won’t forget that trip.

One trip we did while we were there was a visit to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife refuge.  It was just a day drive and we didn’t see much, but we did see a moose, some elk, pronghorn, deer, some sand hill cranes, and a bunch of other birds.

We visited Bannock State Park which was a ghost town.  All I can say about this was hippies moved in at some point and in the 70’s they left.  But the buildings are from the 1800’s I believe.  Check out the link above for info about it, and this link for pictures.

We had the opportunity to see three plays while we were there.  Two were in Island Park, ID (about 20 miles away) and one was in West Yellowstone.  I think I liked the Island Park Yellowstone Playhouse ones the best.  They were a little cheesier and they served dinner before the show, where the West Yellowstone's Playmill was a smaller venue and I think the story was a little too dry for my tastes.  But they were good.  To give you an example of Island Park, we saw the play “Idaho Jones”.  His brother was the more well know Indiana Jones.

One day I wasn’t feeling up to par and I was scheduled to work the next day, so we took a trip to Big Sky to get a covid test done.  I passed the test and let our boss know I had Covid.  I think it was the next day, I noticed Terry was just feeding me cardboard.  She was sneaky about it too.  Some of it was liquid cardboard, some looked like noodles, but it was really just cardboard.  Eventually my taste buds came back.  Thank god, don’t know if I could go forever eating cardboard.  Terry got it too, but she didn’t lose her taste.

Near our RV, we had a couple of families of ground squires living in the wood pile and by the parking lot.  Then one day, they were all gone.  Nothing but two gigantic holes in the ground.  Oh, and there was a happy Badger in one of the holes.  He must of went to town on them, or they all escaped, but we didn’t see them or the badger again.  Here are the pictures of him.

One ghost town we didn’t visit yet was Nevada City, just outside of Virginia city.  Both are ghost towns, but Nevada City doesn’t have anyone living in it.  I’m not sure if it was really a town or just a bunch of buildings that was moved there.  Anyway, one interesting structure was a two-story outhouse.  This is where it pays to be on top!  Here are our pictures of this town.

We checked out Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park and its cave just southwest of Three Forks one day.  It was a cave, but you had to walk about three-quarters of a miles to get to the opening.  It was a fun cave as you had to duck and suck it in on a few occasions.  This is what we saw.

Towards the end of the season, we headed to the Grand Tetons National Park for the day.  One of our adventures was a boat ride across Jenny’s Lake and a hike.  When we were in line, we saw it was going to cost us $40 for the two of us, but when we got to counter, we found out it was free for us since we were veterans.  Gotta love that.  Here are our pictures.  The moose was by Beaver creek, 13 miles to the west of our campground.

When we first moved into our summer spot, we noticed one of our spring hangers (the part the spring connects to the frame with) broke.  So, when I called a welder to come out and weld a new one, he said he will come before we leave when it’s not that hot.  In the meantime, off to the spring store again to get the part.  Found out I had to buy the whole set and not just one hanger.  Oh well.   After the welder showed up and welded the new hanger in, we had one week left before the end of the season, so I went to my boss and said “Since the trailer is now fixed, I’m giving my one-week notice!”, she said “In one week you’re fired!”  we giggled for a few minutes, and then I went on with my business.

We ended our Camp Host summer on 30 Sep and headed back to Benson.  On the way back we stayed at the Idaho Potato Museum, Rowley’s Red Barn (Of course), J&J RV Park, and Lost Dutchman State Park (needed rings cleaned again.).

Oh wait! I forgot to mention one important detail!  While we were in West Yellowstone, A lot came up for lease to the waiting list.  We were number 107 on the list and put our name in.  We got lot 13.  It had a little shed on it, which would work for us until we found a lot we liked better.  Guess what, a lot we liked better came up, so we called the office and snagged that one!  It’s lot 80 and has a nice casita on it.    Here is a short video of our site and part of the park through the eyes of our truck.   

When we arrived, I turned the water on and found out the hot water line under the kitchen sink and bathroom sinks were leaking.  I fixed those, but then noticed the water heater was also leaking.  So, we had to get that replaced.  We replaced it with a on-demand water heater.  After they removed the old water heater, we saw the wall and floor where the water heater was wasn’t done, so we had to fix all of that.  But now all is good.  Here are some pictures of it.  

We had a nice visit from both Michael and Justin's family this fall.  Unfortunately, that was during the time the water heater wasn't working.  Since we now have a lot, we were looking for a golf cart to buy.  You know those things are expensive?  When we were driving down the road, we saw one for sale for $1800.  Since most used ones go for over $3000, we jump on and got it.  It's a 1981 yellow beast.  We call it Buttercup.  One day while driving it, it just died.  After pushing it back to the lot, I took a look under the hood (seat) and saw one of the wires was broke.  I fixed it and it's running again.  Next fall, I plan on replacing all the wires so it will be good for another 40 years.  Currently we don't drive it much, we walk most places, but you never know what the future holds.

Ok, so that’s it for this year.  Next year we are heading to Alaska!  Maybe I will keep up with the blog so you can come with.  I’m going to try at least!