Sept 21st to 24th - Challis, Yellowstone

Sept 21st - Fri - North Fork, ID
A cold that has been threatening me for several days finally got the upper hand yesterday. So Terry decided that we would stay another day here - the campsite and owners are really nice and I could take it easy and try to get rid of the cold. You can wash your rigs at your site in this park so Terry took advantage of that to clean both the 5th wheel and the truck. I caught up on the blog and did some much overdue backups on the computer. I was also able to swap a bunch of paperback books that I had read. Turned out to be a very productive day.

Sept 22nd - Sat - to Challis, ID
Short drive today to Challis Hot Springs Resort. From the Montana border you drive through narrow valleys. Then just north of Challis it opens up into a wide valley. Very pretty. There are a lot of large cattle herds and a few large hay farms.
We relaxed in the indoor (107 degrees) and outdoor (97 degrees) pools that are filled with water from the hot springs. They do not have the nasty smell often associated with hot springs and are very clean with water continuously running in & out.
Terry set up the satellite dish with no trouble at all. Then we had to go to the lobby to get wifi and download new keys for the receiver. Worked great after one more trip to the lobby for more info. Terry was tickled to have all his TV channels again. I didn’t even mind not going to the pools again as there were lots of families with kids there in the evening.

Sept 23rd - Sun - to Yellowstone
Had a big rainstorm last night with lightning and thunder. It rained off & on as we drove south. Terry checked the air pressure in the tires and discovered that we had a valve stem leak in a front tire on the truck. Little towns that we went through were all closed up for Sunday but we found a tire shop open in Idaho Falls and got it fixed. We stopped for lunch and had another huge cloudburst as we were eating that stopped by the time we had to walk back to the truck.
Nice drive to Yellowstone. Some bushes and trees are turning color and there was bright yellow and red scattered on the hills. We stopped at a PA park that turned out not to be honoring PA any more so we continued on to a National Forest campground 3 miles north of West Yellowstone. The spots are large, separated from each other and have 50 amp electric service for $20.
We spent over an hour trying to set up the satellite dish and could not get the signal!! Very frustrating. The antenna does pick up 3 channels so Terry had something to watch as the temperature kept dropping.

Sept 24th - Mon - Yellowstone Park
Spent the day in the park. It was cool but there was no rain. Some of the hills had a good dusting of snow and people are saying it is going to snow here tonight. The forecast is for temperatures below freezing tonight in West Yellowstone.
We did not see Old Faithful erupt. There was an hour to the next projected eruption when we were there and we did not want to wait. We did a lot of walking on trails to view mud volcanoes, water falls, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and misc steaming holes. We saw lots of buffalo, some elk & deer, no bear and lots of fly fishermen in the rivers.
We came back to the rig to pick up empty propane tanks and went back to town to get them filled. The first service station said they only filled tanks between 8 and 3. The guy said there was only one other place to get propane and it probably wasn’t open since it was 5:15 (he was right). We drove around some more and saw another service station with a propane tank that had weeds around it like it wasn’t used any more. We checked anyhow and just had to wait a few minutes while a guy came to fill our tanks. Another guy stopped with 2 tanks while we were there. He had gotten the same unhelpful response from the same station that we went to first.