Vangelina's First Road Trip!

Scott Smith at SmithMade finished up the van in early February. What better way to test out all the systems than to immediately take it on a road trip! Our friends from OC invited us to Whitefish, Montana for Presidents Day Weekend. AM and I planned to head to Whitefish, and then make a route south that took us to see Ethan in Boulder. Our first overnight stop was in Pocatello, ID, in a simple KOA campground. No sense going too exotic for our first overnight stay in the van. We knew it was going to be a cold trip, so that would be the biggest test of the van - would the heat, hot water, and pipes all survive the journey?

We arrived in Whitefish on Thursday, February 13th and stayed in the Moznetts condo. Vangie was parked outside with the heater on to keep the water and pipes above freezing temperature. The skiing was fantastic, and we had a great time!

On Monday morning, we set off for Big Sky, Montana to ski at least one day there. Through the Harvest Hosts app, we found an alpaca farm in Manhattan, MT to park for the night. We got to feed alpacas, and get a tour of the farm by our welcoming host. That night, we headed into Bozeman for dinner at Copper, then it was back to the alpaca farm to hunker down for the night. The next morning, it was off to Big Sky for a COLD day of skiing!

After a day of skiing, we found a secret boondocking spot to spend the night. It was -15 degrees F overnight, and our heater was going all night long. When we woke up, Ozzy’s water dish was frozen, and we started to get a little worried. Was our van up to the task? When I started to make breakfast, we knew something was wrong. Yep, frozen pipes! After some troubleshooting with Scott via text message, we found the problem. One of the heat ducts was detached from the heater! We were only getting 50% output! Our second day of skiing was cancelled, and we made a trip to the hardware store for a screw driver (yeah, I didn’t pack tools…) to fix the duct.

Next stop was Jackson, WY. Annemarie has some previous clients in Jackson, and they graciously allowed us to stay on their ranch for a couple nights while we skied Jackson Hole. We really just wanted a parking spot, but they insisted we stay in their honeymoon cottage on the property. It was amazing! And yes, Vangie sat outside -with heater running - while it dipped to -27 degrees F overnight. SO COLD!

After Jackson, we made the long drive to Boulder to see Ethan! Our campsite for three nights was the street outside his house. We all went to Copper Mountain on Saturday, and AM and I skied Eldora on Sunday while Ethan was studying for a midterm (such a good boy…). We were able to take him to dinner a couple times, and treat all his housemates to thai food too.

We departed Monday morning to make the two-night trip back to Mammoth. We didn’t realize we’d hit the worst weather of our trip going over Loveland and Vail passes! We had to stop for a couple hours to hunker down while the storm passed, and then made the slow drive over the passes into Utah. We found a great boondock spot near Salina, UT, and then headed home!

What a great trip! The van went back to Scott for some fine-tuning, and she’s ready to go for the next trip!