Thursday, June 30: Breakdown

Not a bad breakdown, but a little disconcerting at the end of a long day, and entirely my fault. 

We left Idaho Falls headed towards Rigby for, you guessed it, another geocache. This one was special as it was a webcam cache located inside the Student Center at Brigham Young University. Colleges and universities always scare me because they are notorious for tight street and no parking.  Idaho BYU was an exception. I dropped Betsy close to her destination and found ample parking around the corner. 30 minutes later she was back! However, in the meantime my tire pressure monitor went off to let me know I had low pressure on one of the inside duallies. I wondered what to do about it and was just about to call roadside assistance when the monitor reset and all was okay. Whew!

Here’s Betsy pretending to be a student:

From Rigby it was a pleasant drive to Montana with gentle grades and scenic mountains. 

Larry checking out the flowers.
Not doing what you think it looks like! 

Beautiful views. 

Geocache break! 

Montana presented some challenges. First was the backed up traffic in Missoula. It took a long time to get down the road to Costco for gas. And then we needed a campsite. I use AllStays on my phone to filter out acceptable sites and located a NF campground a ways down I-90 that took larger RVs and was in the pines. On our way we passed a campground accessible from the rest area and remarked at how nice it looked, but that it was right on the freeway. 25 miles later we are following directions to Quartz Flat campground when the GPS tells us to turn down a dirt road. The road quickly becomes one I’m uncomfortable with while driving the coach and towing the Jeep. We decide to drop the Jeep while parked at a wider spot on a slight incline. I’ve learned that it’s a bad idea to attempt disconnecting on anything but level and straight roads. This was going to be an exception because the road didn’t look like it was going to get any better and I was likely to have to back the coach down the hill to get out unless Betsy could scout ahead for a turnaround. BTW - Larry had decided to continue down the paved road toward what seemed to be another campground. Betsy called him to explain the situation. While disconnecting I realized Betsy was going to have to pull forward to take pressure off the linkages to the tow bar. She went to start the Jeep and it was dead! I had forgot to turn on the coach light for the last couple of hours which was how the Jeep battery kept charge. With a hammer, a lot of hard thinking, and time while waiting for Larry to come back with jumper cables, I was finally able to disconnect. Larry pulled in and tried to jump the battery. No luck ☹️. I called AAA. While waiting we kept the jumper cables in place and five minutes later we able to get the Jeep rolling. In the meantime Larry discovered a side road just ahead where we all could turn around and head for the small primitive campground Larry had discovered. It wasn’t the nice one with 48 RV sites, but it also wasn’t on the freeway. It would do nicely for the 4th of July weekend.