– September 2021 –
In the years before leaving Alaska, my absolute favorite hobby became “trip planning” So, ever the thoughtful fiancé, Austin bought me a subscription to the RoadTrippers app for Christmas (Ironic, given his absurd claims that I tend to over plan). In addition to a fun interactive map to keep track of all my planning, the subscription came with a KOA membership. And so goes the tale of our first night in a paid campground. 2 months and ten days into our journey we caved and paid $20 for a couple of nights at a KOA in Arco, Idaho. Laundry, showers, and complimentary waffles for breakfast are an unheard of luxury when traveling full-time out of your mid-sized truck. However, a recently noticed side effect to our new traveling lifestyle includes the inability to feel at home in an RV park. When you’re the only person not stretching out a deeply stained sewer hose and cranking up your deafeningly loud new generator, you tend to feel a bit apart from your neighbors. Nights spent in the middle of nowhere are far more likely to turn up potential friends and kindred spirits than a cushy campground.
Our KOA was nestled cozily between two farms in Arco, Idaho, and with a whole day stretching before us, we chose to explore the nearby Craters of the Moon National Monument. The brief drive out to the park is an uninterrupted sea of wind blown grass, then suddenly, you turn a corner, and you’re there.
Shortly after flashing our America the Beautiful pass and entering the park, we walk the short .6 mile Devils Orchard Nature trail. The landscape reminds me a little of visiting volcano craters in Hawaii or, as the name suggests, the moon itself. I expect to learn about the history of the park as we walk up to the info stands dotting the trail but am disappointed, they share nothing of the geological significance or founding history of the park but rather read like an alien pamphlet on the benefits of eradicating the human race. Don’t get me wrong, people do some messed up things, but it is bizarre to read one posting after another nitpicking everything humans have done in this relatively barren park, including but not limited to such atrocities as cutting infected trees and walking on rocks. This trail turned out to be an exception though, throughout the rest of the park, the postings we saw were informative and identified plant and animal life in addition to explaining its founding nearly a decade ago.
After the chaos of Yellowstone, we reveled in having the longer hiking trails all to ourselves, our voices echoing off the accordion shaped cliffs as we dared each other to lick a particularly round and shiny formation wrapped into a tunnel (I won). I surveyed the otherworldly landscape, trying to imagine what this would have looked like 2,000 years ago when the Shoshone-Bannock people traveled across this region and witnessed its final eruptions. We opted out of continuing on the 6-8 mile trails as the day grew hotter and, as always in a National Park, we worried about leaving Ivy in the car. By the time we pulled away from the park it was only noon and we had seen everything we wanted in just two and a half hours. Okay, now what?
Coming back into the town of Arco we made two important discoveries: 1. Pickles Place, the restaurant that makes our favorite seasoning in the world and stars in almost every single dinner we make, is located right there in Arco. 2. “Perk up” is not a coffee stand it is a soda stand, this would be the first of many run-ins with the popularity of soda stands over coffee in this part of the country, but it would be many weeks before we finally worked out why.
Back at the KOA, we throw a load of laundry in, take advantage of the empty mid-day bathrooms for a shower, and settle into Mako for a night of lazy relaxation. We grill the juiciest steaks I’ve ever had, ironically to a soundtrack of mooing from a choir of cows in the neighboring farm. We call it an early night and pull out in the morning, anxious to be on the road and baffled at how full the long-term guests section was. Just one full-day there had been a bit much for me.
Now we set our sights for Kamas, Utah, for one reason and one reason alone: Air Conditioning. After many months spent scouring the Internet for a factory AC system, when we finally spotted a used one posted to eBay, we nabbed it immediately. Now for the hard part. The 1982 Hilux did not originally come with AC and with our 3.4 swap under the hood, mounting a condenser would involve major modifying magic. With an assist from a brilliantly named Land Cruiser restoration shop, A Rusted Development, we were able to pick up the parts in Utah and start molding them into Mako. Unfortunately, an actual shop to work in was out of our reach so we settled for the next best thing:
A cow riddled hill side 40 miles away from help and with no cell service to speak of. In retrospect, this was an extremely stupid choice of location for a fix that would require making Mako completely un-drivable. Alas, not including the extremely nosy cow spectators, everything went exactly as planned and 12 hours of labor later, we were calling around to radiator shops for an appointment to build the AC lines. Just two days later, we arrived bright and early to Jmac radiator and handed over the keys to our overland castle for the day.
Luckily, there are worse places than Salt Lake City to kill time while your home is being improved. We order an overpriced Uber and head towards our first highly anticipated stop of the day: The Land Cruiser Museum. Devout Toyota worshipers that Austin and I are, this museum was practically an obligation, and one that we were eager to uphold. Entering the doors minutes after they opened for the day, we were lucky enough to have the place to ourselves and didn’t bother to whisper as we compared different land cruiser models and their potential as overland vehicles. Following about an hour and a half of perusing, we were out on the streets and beginning the 45 minute walk over to the Clark Planetarium, where admission is free and an educational IMAX movie would only cost us an extra $7.
It was here, as we read about the destruction from the Russian Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013, that we got a call from the radiator shop. With great trepidation, Austin takes the call out onto the sidewalk. The radiator shop has compiled everything they need and calculated a final cost, they wanted to confirm that we were okay with the $995 price tag. Well, no.. but what choice did we have? Constantly sweating through our seats was making us bad tempered and paranoid about Ivy’s health. Austin gave them the green-light and we did our best to distract each other from the nearly two weeks budget we had just blown in one day. With a year-old Dave and Busters gift card just begging to be spent, distractions aren’t hard to come by. We proudly break records in the Jurassic park, piano, and axe throwing games before we run out of tokens, and even manage to rake in enough tickets to purchase the world’s smallest packet of gummy worms. We finished off the day with our first ever Dim Sum experience, something we both seriously enjoyed, though admittedly I had a hard time eating anything with shrimp in it after a cockroach sighting in the restroom.
Rapidly running out of ideas to kill time, we were mid-way into ice cream tacos at sweet Rolled Ice Cream when we got the call. Mako is ready for pickup. In no hurry to throw money away on a rush-hour Uber, we decide to rent electric scooters for the 7 mile commute. But what do you know, renting just one scooter costs almost exactly as much as an Uber would have. Too stubborn to pay for a second scooter, Austin proclaims we can of course ride 2-up on an electric scooter and no obviously we won’t look stupid, how silly that I should even consider that. Spoiler alert: We do in fact look so ridiculous that we turn more heads in the two hours it takes us to arrive at the radiator shop than we ever have in 3 months of driving Mako. Don’t worry though, I was careful to make road-runner sound-effects around every blind corner (Beep-Beep) which, I’m sure recovered any lost street-cred. To our great surprise, the scooters come equipped with a limited perimeter, our’s reached the end of its tether about 1 mile before the finish line. Unfortunately, we did not read the user agreement, so when the scooter started obnoxiously screeching at us, we ignored it and just kept coasting for about 200 feet before we realized that we didn’t have any power. This was unfortunate as we now had to push and shove the heavy beast to an “approved drop-off” location I.E. the middle of the sidewalk in front of a Chinese restaurant, the patrons of which were now openly goggling at us as we give the scooter a final triumphant push. About two minutes into our unexpected walk, Austin realizes he is still being charged for the scooter we most definitely aren’t riding. It turns out we have to return to the restaurant a third time to take a photo of the scooter in its final resting place under threat of charging his card for the rest of eternity. Believe it or not, the Salt Lake scooter fiasco of 2021 ranks easily in the top-ten “best days” of our trip.
With just 15 minutes to spare before closing, Austin and I arrive at the radiator shop and see for ourselves the magic of air conditioning. It is glorious. Later that night, as we near our camping spot, actual snowflakes come swirling out of the vents. I know I should maybe be concerned by that, but I can’t quite manage it, I’m too cheery by the prospect of wearing something other than my tiniest shorts.
Unfortunately, our victory is short lived. Almost as soon as our air conditioning woes have been resolved, a new problem rears its ugly, oil soaked, head. The transmission is leaking. With nowhere to work, and no shops able to take us on with such short notice, I begin to seriously question if we will make it to Flagstaff at all, let alone in time for the Overland Expo. Wish us luck, we’ll have updates next week!