Beautiful Payette River (plus winding roads and RV parks)

I have sprinkled this trip with various parkup options: Boondockers Welcome (but hopefully not boondocking unwelcome), Harvest Hosts, BLM land, campsites, Hip Camp, and yes, likely a Walmart in the future. But because of the whole M-F 9:00-5:00 thing, I have also sprinkled in RV parks: They have the WiFi and electricity that are just not optional.

So after two days in Caldwell, and after I had signed off from work, and after I had bought my new-to-me telescoping ladder, I headed out on what I anticipated would be a 2.5-hour drive to McCall, ID, to stay in a fancy RV “resort.” It turned out to be more like a 3.5-hour drive, in part because I had to stop to take photos of the absolutely gorgeous Payette River. And in part simply because of the taxing effort of driving.

I knew that driving long distances alone was going to be hard. When the wind comes along and seems to want to shake the van off the road, it is scary enough. But now I’ve been driving extremely winding roads, and gravel roads, and dirt roads, and snowy roads!! (That story for a future post.) Sometimes on these winding roads, as I’m working to improve how I enter and exit turns, I realize I’ve stopped breathing. I have to take some slow, steady breaths to get my heart rate down.

And then there’s the rattling and banging and clanging noises in the van. They could be worse. A lot of my efforts to cushion and secure things have worked. But these roads! They have really tested the van.

The big fail on the way up 55 along the Payette River was the big, heavy fridge drawer. It is on heavy drawer slides with two chest fridges in it, right behind the driver’s seat. I realized the day we installed it that it would need a lock to secure it from sliding open. Done. Seemed great. Then I drove over some very minimal bumps back home, and the lock failed. So I got a stronger lock. Seemed great. Made it to Idaho. Then I drove 55. The hardware for the second lock came completely out of the wood siding of the drawer. The drawer flew open. And when you are driving on a winding road, holding your breath around turns, the last thing you want to hear is a loud swoosh-bang noise right behind the driver’s seat.

The first time it happened, I pulled over and reinstalled the lock on fresh, unsplintered wood. But as I drove around the tight turns, I just knew it wasn’t going to hold. So I started reaching my hand back on turns in the “dangerous” direction for the drawer, to hold it. Well, that was not tenable for very long. So one of the first major turns when I did not hold it, it flew open and came completely off the drawer slides and scraped across the van floor til it came to rest.

I pulled over again and investigated the situation. I figured out how to get it back into the drawer slides without removing the fridges: I slid cutting boards under each side of the drawer until it was the height of the drawer slides so that I could slide the whole thing back together again. Then I decided to rig a bungy cord around it, which I did, but perhaps with little effect. By far the more successful solution was a massive amount of duct tape. And that is how I am driving it still, re-taping it on major driving days. I had to buy more duct tape.

A word about RV parks

One of the reasons, I think, to build an off-grid camper van is to avoid RV parks. I have taken it to campgrounds with no potable water and only pit toilets. I’ve now parked it in front of a random stranger’s house for two days (with permission). So it needs to be self-sufficient, which obviates any stay at an RV park. EXCEPT. I need to empty things that need to be emptied and fill things that need to be filled. That’s certainly possible without RV parks. But it is soooooo much easier at one. The sewer line is right there. The fresh water faucet is right there. Electrical outlets are right there. And many RV parks have laundry facilities, bathrooms, and showers. And some have pools and hot tubs.

But they also have RV-ers who, almost immediately upon parking their ginormous rigs, hoist their American flag on their built-in flag poles. Now, I do think some are veterans, and it is a way of signaling to other veterans who are living the RV lifestyle that they have something in common. However, I also think there is an element of emphasizing “us” versus “them” small-minded thinking. [Self-righteous rant DELETED.]

I am now four days past the drive up 55 and along the Payette, and two days past the McCall RV resort. So much to catch up on! Here are a few photos of that leg of the journey: