Here goes! Our very first family roadtrip with a new motorhome! Zane had been working in ND for most of July and August, and his job was going to continue for a while longer, with no real work for him in ID that would allow him to come home to us nightly, so we decided to buy a motorhome and hit the road with him so that we could be together as a family.
Zane took the week before Labor Day off to come home and look for a motorhome. This worked out best since I had that week off of school as well and we hadn't started the kids' schooling yet. Nathan and Daniel were going to go to public school again, but with the traveling, that wasn't an option, so we are once again homeschooling all of them, and it's going well so far. So on Monday that week, we went down to Utah and looked at a few motorhomes that night. We had a budget of $8000 max, from Zane's savings from the work he had done in ND up until that point. The motorhomes we looked at that night were all okay, but they either wouldn't fit us in size, or they needed a fair bit of work done, which wasn't something we wanted with how quickly we needed to get everything done to come back out. Then Tuesday morning that week, we struck gold! A new motorhome had just been posted to KSL that morning and we went down to Sandy to look at it. We looked through it and the couple selling it gave us a lot of specific information about it. They had it for two years previously, and took good care of it, and updated quite a few things in it to make it better and more comfortable. It is an older model, a 1987, but it is in really good shape and the price was fantastic: we purchased it for less than $5k! We drove it home, after also buying a car dolly to tow the van with, and started to get things ready that week in order to try to head out Labor Day weekend.
Originally we thought it would be fun to take the kids through Yellowstone on the way over, but realized with it being Labor Day weekend, it would be insanely busy and we didn't want to try to deal with crowds and traffic. Then when we did get everything ready Sunday night and started to head out, Zane had me get out at the corner to see if the van would ride okay with the taillights on the car dolly, or whether the turns would be too tight, and the lights would scrape against the side of the van and break. Lo and behold, it was most definitely too tight, and we got it stopped before the lights broke, but had to unhook the van and drive both back home that night.
Zane spent Labor Day cutting the car dolly and finding and welding some steel on to it to extend its width sufficiently so that we didn't have to worry about the lights on it. It took a lot of the day because he needed to find the right size steel and get it worked out. Then we got everything ready and headed out successfully Monday night. We drove through most of the night and stopped a little ways before Billings, MT, and just parked in a parking lot near a hotel and gas station that night, and slept till the morning. We headed out again, stopping in Billings and a couple more places for gas and meals. Tuesday night, we made it out to ND finally and Zane went to work the next day.
When Zane was here before, he was sleeping in his van at the city park in Lignite, ND, about 10 minutes east of his job site. The park has public bathrooms with a shower in each one, so that worked out well for us for a few days. However, the police and one of the city council members stopped by on Friday in the early evening, asking us to either leave Lignite or rent a spot in their RV park, which was a gravel parking lot with hookups, just north of the little grocery store. Lignite is a town of less than 200 people, but with the oil boom here and all the work, many RV park owners and housing owners are charging an arm and a leg for housing or RV spots. It would cost us $700 a month, or about $24 a night to stay in the "Lignite RV Park." (Quotes added as a sarcasm emphasis since it was really just a gravel lot!) Nathan had broken our only ignition key that Thursday, so we had to head down to Minot, ND (about a 90 minute drive) that Friday night to get a key blank so Zane could make another key copy, since the key broke past where most places could make a copy. We also did some other needed shopping at Walmart that we had planned to do that Saturday, and came back to Lignite. Zane stayed up a little bit and made a working copy of the key in just over an hour by filing it down. I love having a husband who can do these things! We were pretty frustrated with things, but Zane had heard about a place called Northgate Dam about 20 minutes the other way from Lignite. We drove up to it Saturday morning, and it is beautiful here. There is electrical hookups, but only outhouse-style toilets and no showers. Definitely not our favorite, but Zane has just been able to stop in Lignite on the way home still to shower, and we have gone back a couple of times for the rest of us to shower as well. It only costs us $10/night for a spot with electrical hookup, and it's beautiful and serene, with very few other people here during the week. Those that are here on the weekend have been friendly and courteous, not at all like the policemen we had to deal with in Lignite. They were friendly on the surface, but when Zane offered to pay for the electricity we had used (since we had plugged in to an outlet at the park; there were a lot of them, and no sign was posted saying non-residents weren't allowed to plug into them), they said "Oh, no, you don't need to do that. But you do need to move your RV. You can move it to the RV park (and they had the owner's name and number ready, go figure...) or you can go somewhere else." So while the surface courtesy was there, it was only on the surface, not true courtesy. They said we could leave and they wouldn't press misdemeanor charges against Zane. Fortunately, they gave us a day to move it, since we told them the ignition key was broken, and they didn't exactly have a locksmith in a town that tiny.
So since then, we have just been camping out up here at Northgate Dam, and have loved it. We are headed back down to Minot tomorrow to purchase needed supplies, including some more fishing supplies. Kids younger than 16 can fish without a license, and Nathan and Daniel have had fishing poles so we brought those, and Andrew fished with a long stick today actually, and caught a fish! Unfortunately, it got away before the kids could kill it, but it was a pretty decent sized fish, close to a foot. Not bad for an 8 year old with just a stick and some fishing line and a lure!
We plan on buying a fishing pole for Andrew this weekend, plus a net, and perhaps some more fishing lure/bait to use for next week. We had originally thought Zane would be done with this job by today, but it will be at least a few days into next week, so we will stay here a little longer. After that, he will be going to a little town called Grenora, close to the MT border. One of these weekends, we are going to go up to Canada, because we are not far at all from it; less than 10 miles! The nearest decent sized city to here in Canada is about an hour away, Estevan. So it's not too bad. Zane and I had purchased passport cards a few years back when we went on a cruise and they are good for land or sea travel for 10 years. With those, and with our kids being young enough, we only have to have their birth certificates for land crossings into Canada and Mexico, so we brought those with us.
So far, it has definitely been an adventure! I had originally signed up for another semester of school, but I dropped the classes the first week of school because that was the week we were in Lignite for a half a week, and there is little to no internet at all on the Verizon network. Ironically, I have good service up here at the campground, much better than in Lignite. Right now, I am signed up for the Verizon Mobile Hotspot option on our account, where I use my phone as a wifi device that allows up to 5 devices to be connected at any one time. It has been perfect, and with our plan, is only costing us $1/day for unlimited data usage. That's a better price than we get at home with our CableOne internet!
We are still keeping our house in Idaho Falls, and we unfortunately still have the one in Blackfoot. We would like to get that fixed up a little and sold, but we have just not had the time or money to do so yet. Our trip now is temporary, which is why we haven't tried to sell our house in Idaho Falls or anything yet; we will be heading back, I just don't know when for sure.
We would really prefer to keep our roadtrip fairly quiet, because we don't want everyone knowing our house is going to be vacant for a while, so this is the best way to let trusted family and friends know how things are going with us. I will also post pictures as we take them.
Hope all is well with all of you! Thank you for your support and love for our family.
