Another epic road trip! Phoenix to Yellowstone to Seattle & back.

Way Out West Road Trip!

33 days on the road.
49 hours of driving.
3,430 total miles.

Our biggest trip yet started out great but ended up with a couple of major problems with the motorhome. The last 1,000 miles we had to drive without the engine air conditioning and a leaking heater core causing us to stop every 100 miles to add a gallon of antifreeze to the cooling system. Other than that, everything went well!

Assorted photos from the trip:

Grand Tetons and Yellowstone photos:

Itinerary:

• Night 1: Nice spot at the Wahweap Lodge & Marina/RV Park overlooking Lake Powell.
• Night 2: We were supposed to stay at an RV park near Provo, UT, but they claim they never got our reservation and were full-up so we drove another 75 miles and stayed at the Cherry Hill Camping Resort in Kaysville, UT. Very nice park with pools, slides, a lazy river and lots of things to do for kids to do. I would stay here again if in the area.
• Night 3: Stopped off at the Snake River RV Park in Idaho Falls on our way to Jackson Hole.
• Nights 4 & 5: It was a beautiful drive from Idaho Falls to Jackson, WY along the Snake River on our way to two nights at the Virginian RV Resort in the middle of Jackson. We really enjoyed the scenery while driving the Jeep around Jackson Hole and The Grand Tetons. If you ever go here, be sure to have dinner at the famous Million Dollar Cowboy Bar (I had a Rib Eye steak that was cooked to perfection!).
• Night 6: There was only one night available at the Colter Bay RV Park. when I made our reservations 4 months ago, so we took it! It's a really nice Park Service campground right next to beautiful Jackson Lake in the Grand Tetons National Park.
• Night 7, 8 & 9: We used Fishing Bridge RV Park as our home base in Yellowstone National Park for 3 nights. On the advice from another camper we ran into earlier, we took the south Grand Loop Road around Yellowstone one day, which included Yellowstone Lake, Old Faithful, the brilliant-blue Grand Prismatic Spring and the lookout points overlooking the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The next day we took the upper loop from Highway 89 to Mammoth Hot Springs and many grand vistas of northern Yellowstone National Park. Both days we had to deal with the traffic jams of people watching the Bison cross the Grand Loop Road along the Yellowstone River. It was like driving through a zoo! 
• Night 10: Drove out of Yellowstone via the West Entrance, which was a parking lot full of cars waiting to get into the park. I'm so glad we stayed IN Yellowstone, not in West Yellowstone, so we didn't have to deal with the traffic. After leaving the park, we slowly made our way through Montana driving along the Madison River in the pouring down rain and a thunder and lighting storm that lasted for about one hundred miles. We found a nice little RV park for the night named "Jellystone RV Park", which our grandaughters would have loved if they were with us.
• Night 11: Stayed overnight at Sunrise Resort on Moses Lake.
• Nights 12-23: Used the Lake Pleasant RV Park in Bothell, WA as our home base for 11 nights in Seattle. It's a great RV park except their wi-fi is absolutely worthless. Jason and I worked at a Starbucks because we couldn't get a signal at the park. Had a fun family picnic day at my brother's property near Gig Harbor. It's always great to see all the relatives and catch up.
• Night 24: Stayed near Salem, OR at the Illahee RV Park on the way down to Medford to visit Kyle & Crystal in their new home city.
• Nights 25-31: Used the Medford/Gold Hill KOA as our base to explore the Medford and Ashland. Because of all the forest fires around Washington, Oregon and California, you could only see about 5 miles most of the time. We can't wait to go back another time without all the smoke so we can see the countryside. It looks really beautiful.
• Night 32: Stayed at what should have been a very nice RV park; Flag City RV Resort, but it wasn't because there's no water in California to water their plants and grass. It's so sad to see everything in California drying up. The drive from Medford to Lodi was smoke and haze the entire way, limiting the normally pretty scenery to less than a mile at times. I-5 goes right next to Mt. Shasta, but we couldn't see it at all because of the smoke. Lake Shasta is virtually dry. We all hope that California gets a couple years of normal rain.
• Night 33: After the above-mentioned A/C and cooling system problems, we limped into Los Angeles and stayed at one of our favorite parks; the East Shore RV Park, which is part of the Bonelli Regional County Park. It sits high up on a hill overlooking Puddingstone Lake with beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and great sunsets. After a good night's sleep, we got up at 5am to drive to 107° Phoenix without our front air conditioning working, and a puddle of anti-freeze in the front passenger seat floor. La Mesa RV thinks it's a leak in the heater core, which was dripping anti-freeze at the rate of about a gallon every one hundred miles. I went through 8 gallons of antifreeze on the drive home. Try filling a poorly-placed overflow tank on a hot engine in 107° and see if you still like RV-life! (after a day to cool down, yes, I still do, although I was eyeing a new motorhome at La Mesa RV today as I was dropping our troubled motorhome off to be repaired). (10/21/15: traded in the gas coach for a new diesel pusher - read about it here).