The Reason the Stranger Was built (WY - MT Trip 2011)

[Kage]

I figured I’d make use of the vacation/Trip Forum rather than burying this in my build thread.

Warning, This is a direct copy and paste rambling from when we first got to Jackson WY.. So I was a bit nonsensical when I typed the first post after being on the road for 25 hours straight. I’ll update this thread as I have internet access. Future posts will hopefully make a little more sense. Enjoy!


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Well we made it to our first stop on our journey north, Jackson WY.

I can’t say that the ride out here was completely trouble free, (and no, I’m not talking about the tire issues). I’ll get to our rough spot here in a moment.

I’m not always going to have the internet available, so you’ll have to wait for updates as I have access. And be forewarned, I’ve been away since 5 a.m. Friday morning, and have only had two half hour naps since then (one Friday on today when we got here). So I’ll probably be slightly more nonsensical than usually.


On to the photos! The main link can be found here (linky)

Loaded up and ready to head out:

Good thing we don’t have any kids, as my wife tends to pack heavy :lol:

Photos of making our escape from the St. Louis area:

Things were smooth sailing, boy let me tell you!



Right until the key retainer for my front passenger caliper decided to abandon ship

Wife: “What was that noise?”
Me: “Hell if I know” (Me, steps on brake, listen to nasty nasty noises). “Crap!”

A side of the road inspection revealed that the caliper was mostly being held in place with the wheel. Since we broke down near Odessa Mo, we started with the Oreily’s in town. and worked our way from there to an Advanced, Napa, and Finally a couple of Autozones.

All the folks were real helpful, and in the end, we got the part we needed, But after all the phone calls (and trips to places with sketchy brakes, (Note to self, fix e brake)) I thought we were boned.

All for this part:

It also took out one of the brake pads while it was at it:

I’m not sure exactly why this dude took flight, but I picked up a spare in case this one takes off too! Thankfully, after 1200 more miles, it doesn’t appear to have moved (though it still fits in there “looser” than I’d like.

Fun in the AZ parking lot:

This little ordeal put us about 3 hours back behind our schedule, but we survived. So we left the Kansas City area about dark, so no photos of that :lol:

We had to head toward Denver to go north since MO 29 is still closed from the flooding in that area.

Some Sunrise Photos North of Denver:

Then we crossed into WY which gave us views of Brown, brown, and more brown. Oh, and a lot of high winds as well which made the hills 3 gear pulls at 55 mph (at best). Lets put it this way, even at highway speeds, the winds were strong enough to lay my cb Whip over on its side at a good 30° angle, and every wind sock we saw was taunt.

Finally some green showed up as we came closer to the Teton Nat’l forest:

Hey, mountains!

There’s some other random photos in that link. It took us 25 hours to make it to where we’re at now, and the truck is doing much better on the hills than I ever expected it would. To the point, where I’m considering not bothering to regearing. We’ll see if that thought holds true later on.


All right, I’m going to go pass out now, I’ll post more later if I can!

 

[88_Eddie]

some beautiful scenery there kage. did autozone give you any shit for working in the parking lot?

 

[59bisquik]

Great pics and cool rig...keep the pics coming!

 

[Sunk]

That's a pretty wimpy looking jack you have there...

Cool pics though, looking forward to more!

 

[railman]

nice start to the trip....

but, glad it worked out

l8r, John

 

[Kage]

some beautiful scenery there kage. did autozone give you any shit for working in the parking lot?

Nope, the guys were uber cool about everything. Much different attitude than my local AZ (the big O is king where I'm from)

Great pics and cool rig...keep the pics coming!

Will do!

That's a pretty wimpy looking jack you have there...

Cool pics though, looking forward to more!

Yeah, new jack is on the list as its not quite talll enough.

nice start to the trip....

but, glad it worked out

l8r, John

Thanks!

Sunday

Today we left Jackson and headed toward our next stop of Gardiner MT via Yellowstone Nat’l Park. On the way up, we knocked out the more ‘touristy’ portions of the park. And man, I can safely say that this is by the far the busiest park I’ve ever been in (even if it is labor day weekend). Stand in line to see something, 20 seconds to take a couple of photos, then get out of the way before you get mobbed by Japanese tourist.

Anywho, we covered about 200 miles today:

We started out by going back through Teton park and nabbing a few photos on the way (No officer, I’m not parked in a handicapped spot, I’m just posing!):

Sunrise:

Heading up the “Mormon Way” to see a barn the wife wanted to get a few photos of:

Barn:

Stopped by to see the Grand Teton Point:

Snake River:

Lake (I forget the name right now):

Entering Yellowstone:

We stopped at the Thumb Basin which has a lot of thermal springs. Kinda neat how much heat these things put out. And some of the pools are really clear too:

Then the wife nearly walked into this guy:

After we left the Thumb area, we headed up to see Old Faithful. The lodge they have up there is pretty dang neat too:

Busses they have running around:

And of course, the Old Faithful Photos (Much quieter than I thought it would be):

We then went on to Grand Prismatic Spring, walking up the trail:

Spring:

On to Gibbons Falls:

Falls:

Continuing on to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone:

Canyon shots (and falls):

Inspiration point:

And then the long winding trek out of the park to our hotel:

And that wraps up that portion of the trip. Today (Monday) I think we’re heading back into the park, I’m not quite sure yet though as the Wife hasn’t told me yet.

More photos are in that original link.

 

[doorgunner]

Man! I'm glad you decided to post in this forum....great pics...you young un's keep having fun & taking pics!

My wife has been talking about going up there for a couple years!!!!

 

[Kage]

Man! I'm glad you decided to post in this forum....great pics...you young un's keep having fun & taking pics!

My wife has been talking about going up there for a couple years!!!!

Will do! Take the trip if you can swing the time/money. This is our third year running out west some where (CO the first year, then UT/CO the second year, and this year WY/MT). Its allways been worth the time/money to get out this way.

Monday

We got an early start this morning to try to beat some of the crowds. Our first stop was Mammoth Springs near Gardiner.

Monday Travel:

Old Yellowstone Gate:

Road up to Mammoth Springs:

Mammoth Springs area:

From Mammoth Springs, we took Blacktrail Plateau Road to try to get off the beaten path some:

We continued on toward the North East entrance to the park. The road on the way to that entrance is abundant with wildlife much to my wife’s happiness. Our first encounter was watching two young bulls duking it out in the middle of the road. We came in a little late to see several cars backing away form them as fast as they could.

Cars trying to scoot:

Lots of Buffalo and other animals:

Leaving the animals behind us, we were going to start hitting the more ‘off the beaten path’ areas around the park, starting with Lulu pass. Unfortunately this happened, again:

Yup, another dang key took flight. Thankfully, we were able to find it. Unfortunately this is putting a huge kink in our plans to stay off the beaten path. It appears that everything it too loose, and will work itself out in short order when traveling bumpy roads. Tomorrow, we’ll pass through some larger towns, and I’m crossing my fingers that I can MacGyver something up in the Home Depot parking lot to hold it all together. That is if Napa doesn’t have the parts I need (All ready tried the other parts stores in town with no luck).

So while this sucks, its not the end of our trip, it just means we’ve got to stick to paved roads (boo!). Hopefully I can get something going, otherwise it’ll be a huge disappointment to drive this thing all the way out here and not be able to play with it.

Since playing off road went off the agenda today, we took to the pavement and ran up Bear Tooth Highway for a bit. This is supposedly the “most scenic highway in the US”. I don’t know how the rated it as such, but it was a pretty drive.

So that concludes today’s fun. If all works out tomorrow, I be able to rig something up to hold that caliper in place better, and we’ll get to go see some ghost towns.

As usual, there’s more photos in that first link.

 

[88_Eddie]

damn i wanna go back out there. the wife and i would have to take a month's vacation to drive out that way though

cool pics. hope you can rig something up to get that caliper on. check those drawers in the home depot, in the hardware isle. there's always some neat stuff hiding in there, maybe you can rig something up.

 

[railman]

some really awesome pic ya took there

again, bummer on the caliper...but I am sure you can get her fixed....

can't wait for the next update....

l8r, John

 

[escort_gts]

Awesome. It looks like a fun trip. Sucks that the brakes keep falling apart on you.

Sent from my HTC using Tapatalk

 

[superds]

The pics weren't showing up for me so I didn't get to see everything you're talking about. Could you tack weld (or braze) that clip in place so it doesn't keep falling out?

I'm familiar with the area your driving in. We snowmobile out there every winter. Did you make it up to "Top of the World"? How about Chief Joseph Scenic Highway? That's a nice drive, but opposite the direction of Top of the World.

I'll have to try again to look at your pics, I really like that area of the country and am interested to see them!

 

[stiluv]

nice pics. i havent been out there since i was a kid. we drove from cali in the back of my dads old 74 chevy pick up with a camper shell. that was before the seat belt laws. i would love to go back.

 

[Kage]

I'm not sure why some of the photos aren't showing up. They seem to show up for me so you got me...

Well we crossed into MT and promptly lost the internet. So here’s what we’ve been up
to the past few days….

Tuesday

We put some serious miles in during one day, 479 miles to be exact traveling from Jackson WY to East Glacier in one shot:

As you can see from the map, we did some running around Bozeman MT to try to find a caliper bracket in hopes of fixing my brake woes. Unfortunately, after calling and stopping by every parts store in town, I was out of luck. So off to Home Depot we went to gather supplies to MacGyver something together. In the end, I came up with a solution that seems to be holding up just fine. I’ll document that later on.

Unfortunately, when I jacked up the front to fix the brakes, I noticed that my lower ball joint was sloppy as heck on that side as well. So back to the parts stores we went to try to find ball joints and a ball joint press. Unfortunately, I struck out on the ball joint press. While I could just hammer the things out, I’d rather not do that, as with my luck I’d wind up bending the dang knuckle. So for now, the spare parts are just riding along.

We’d lost a lot of time running around Bozeman, so we had to abandon some more wheeling yet again (Monday/Tuesday were going to be our major wheeling days). We scrambled to make the best of it by running by some ghost towns.

On the way:

Our First Ghost town was Granite, the road up there wasn’t rough to traverse, mostly just a rock shelf road up to where the towns stood:

Then we got to the ruins of the tramway:

And into the town (not a whole lot left standing):

And back down we went:

Our next Ghost town was Garnet, this town lived into the 1940’s before being abandoned which is part of the reason there were so many buildings still standing.

The road up isn’t difficult, but it was very narrow and steep in some parts. It got a little interesting when you met a car head on:

After about 15 miles, we came to the town:

Some of the buildings even had period ‘stuff’ inside as well:

More buildings:

On the hike back out from the town, we saw our first bear… Well bear cub anyway. Thankfully we didn’t see Mama:

After we left Garnet, we went with the wind to get to East Glacier. The scenery kept getting nicer as we went north and got out of the ‘dry zone’:

We made it safely to East Glacier

Cabin at Travelers Rest:

That’s all for today!


Wednesday

Wednesday got a little screwed up. When walking out of the diner from breakfast, I noticed that the front wheels weren’t sitting ‘right’. I knew that one side had the ball joints going on it, but the other side should have been fine.

So I jacked it up and yup, both sides need Ball joints. This puts a wrinkle in things as I don’t really have a good way to swap those joints out, save for beating the crap out of it with a hammer. Not to mention, I don’t really want to do that involved of a job on vacation.

This lead to a bummer of a realization that no wheeling will happen on this trip. While that sucks, it doesn’t suck as much as having a knuckle come off while hanging out on the side of a mountain. When I left IL, these joints were used, but tight, so I don’t know why they’d decided to let go at this point in life.

So since I haven’t had the opportunity to lock in the front hubs (and looking like its not going to happen this trip). We decided to make a loop of this portion of the park by going up the “Going to the Sun” road.

Travel:

Lower elevation parts of the road:

It didn’t take long for us to run into road construction, which was the tune for the day:

Soon though, we were at Logans Pass, so we hiked the trail up there:

We caught this dude happily sunning himself on the way back down:

After Logans Pass, we hiked part of the Highline Trail:

It was a bit of a drop off:

Had to walk over an avalanche spot:

Looking down the slide:

Heading back up:

After we were done with that, it was time to sit in more traffic to make our way back down the other side of the mountain:

We stopped by Avalanche Creek and Falls, that’s some blue water there:

Our last stop for the day was Two Medicine. This area has a trick falls (When flowing at capacity, there is an upper and lower falls). Since its so dry here, only the lower fall was flowing.

Path to the falls:

Falls:

The rock was pretty as well:

That’s all for today!

Thursday

Today was a day of our longest (well, steepest anyway) hike. That being, the hike to Grinnell Glacier off of Many Glaciers Road.

Daily Travel:

Cruising into the park:

We did wind up cheating a little bit on the hike. You can either walk the extra distance around the lakes, or you can take a couple of boat rides to get to the trail head. Since we knew our hike was 3 miles up (and 1,569ft of elevation gain) we decided to take the easy route.

Hike Route:

It was unreal how hot it was walking up this trail! It has been very unseasonably warm here (like High 70’s at 6k ft warm). This was a bit of a two edged sword as it meant that all of the wild flowers were in bloom, but the heat and altitude nearly killed this flat lander.

I’ll just let the photos do the talking, what talking they can do. As they say, pictures don’t really do it justice.

We started hiking up from that lake in the middle of the photo:

Glacier and the Lake:

And then we started walking back down:

We were plum wiped out by the time we finished hiking. The hike from the boat to the glacier took us 4.5 hours (including goofing off at the top for awhile) and covered about 6 miles.







Friday
Today we grabbed a rental car as we had planned on heading up to Canada to look around Waterton. The wife was worried that customs might not care for the truck too much, so whatever. It didn’t hurt that the econo box we rented pulled off 40 mpg, which is a bit better than the 15 ish I’ve been getting with the truck.

So we covered 200 miles today:

Our first stop of the day had us going back into the US side of Glacier Nat’l park to hike to the St. Mary Falls:

Once we were done with the falls area, we started making our way to the great white north:

We then hiked around Red Rock Canyon:

And made our way to some falls that were in the area:

On they way back, this dude jumped out and led us down the path for a bit:

We then jumped back in the rental and headed up to Waterton to see the Prince of Whales hotel, and the waterfall there in town:

Lake in the area:

And that my friends pretty much wraps up our stay in MT. Tomorrow is a long drive day (About 12 hours) to the Bad Lands of SD.

Saturday

Today we two-laned it from East Glacier to Billings MT, and then rode the interstates to Custer SD. About 12 hours total of windshield time today.

Heading out to Glacier to Billings:

We stopped at this greasy spoon for lunch, it was some fine eat’n!

Saw this Cat cruising around Billings:

Billings to SD:

And crossing into SD:

That’s all for today!


Sunday
Today we wound our way by Mt Rushmore, and through the Badlands of SD.

Travel:

On the way to Mt Rushmore:

Mt. Rushmore:

Of course, we had to stop by Wall Drug on the way (worth the stop if you’re going by):

Badlands:

And now we’re here in Oacoma SD, which is about 12 more hours from home. True to the nature of the beast, the dang truck is trying to break again. When I pulled off the interstate and pushed in the clutch, I noticed that it didn’t feel right (I’ve got about ½ the pedal stroke I should have). So I’m pretty much counting on it giving out the rest of the way by the time we get home. Hopefully it’s the clutch MC and not the slave cylinder. Neither one appears to be leaking, so it seems as though its an internal failure at this point.

So what’s broke so far (to date, we’re over the 3500 mile mark on this trip):

- Brake caliper trying to take off multiple times (Fixed by jamming some metal to hold it in place at the home depot)

- Ball joints (not fixed, killed the wheeling fun for the trip, and making the truck a handful on the highway).

- Motor likes to detonate at partial throttle while cruising highway speeds (but doesn’t detonate when running WOT which is where I usually am on the highway).

- Truck likes to run hot on the highway (which has been par for the course on this truck) not overheating, but hotter than it should. Probably related to the detonation issue (dirty injectors maybe?).

- The rear end seems to have sprung a leak on the drivers side wheel cylinder, and on the pinion seal (there’s other leaks as well that I haven’t tracked down yet).

- And finally, whatever the issue is with the clutch.
Had I known we were going to have this many issues with the truck, we would have taken the eco-box instead. Live and learn.

Hopefully the ride home will be uneventful, and the clutch will keep doing what its suppose to keep doing.

 

[doorgunner]

My God!!!!!!

NO..................Really..................MY God!.....that is some beautiful country!!!

(try not to let the prob's ruin the trip)....just beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!