back from the Idaho BDR early this week. I've been slowly cleaning stuff, and putting things away.
The knock sensor finally set the engine SES light off on day 2 of the trip. Scanned it, and decided to carry on. Looks like I'm going to have to take care of that in the near future.
The only other issue I had to deal with was the trailer battery wasn't charging, but I'll detail what happened in the trailer thread.
I was worried that the 100A HO alternator (based on the Vin) wouldn't be able to keep up with charging each battery with 20A. Fortunately, we never pulled more than 40A out of each battery. This meant they were both charged after about 2 hours of driving.
While idling, I was getting about 12.2v at the volt meter. But anytime we were on the gas, I was getting about 13.6V, even while charging.
The drawer system worked flawlessly, as did everything else. I had zero cooling issues, AC worked great.
We managed to complete the BDR in 11 days.
The first day, we camped in a USFS Camp ground right on the middle fork of the Boise River. It was lovely, and the wife and I had plenty of room in the tent with my daughter and
@David H S daughter sleeping on top of the X.
We rolled out at about 10:30, and worked our way to Lowman for gas. Unfortunately, none of the pumps in Lowman were working, so we made our way about 8 miles down Hwy 21 until we found a pump. From there, we back tracked, and made our way to Deadwood Reservoir. We managed to find a spot right on the lake, and settled in for the night.
The next day, we packed up, and pushed north to Yellow Pine. On the way, we let a truck with two barrels pass us. Little did we know, that we'd run into this truck again.
When we made it to yellow pine, there was the truck, bringing gas to the town. I managed to talk him into 7 gallons, which would be helpful down the road.
We left yellow pine, and made our Warren. We didn't need to get gas there, which was good, as it was closed, and the guy in Yellow Pine said they were charging $12/gallon. We managed to find camp just outside of town.
At the summit of Elk Pass
By this point,
@David H was feeling pretty crappy. We pushed up into the mountains more, and managed to find a clearing big enough to fit 5 rigs at about 7:30pm. We set up camp, ate dinner, and hung out around the fire for a bit, before going to bed.
Abandoned Bus. Lots of stickers from those who've stopped.
My wife enjoying the driving:
The next day, we pushed into Graingeville for gas and some supplies. By this point, I'd used just about half of the water in the trailer. We got gas, then went to the grocery store. We parted ways with
@David H once we left the grocery store.
Once I filled my water tank at the local nomnom, we worked our way towards Elk City. We found a nice gravel spot next toaa creek about 10 miles from Elk City.
Since we had access to unlimited water, we all took showers. We took our time rolling out of camp the next day.
@M Rose decided to hang out and work on his rig, and meet us before we started the Lolo Motorway.
Three rigs rolled out of camp, and proceeded to Elk City, our last gas before Montana.
We gassed up in Elk City, and made our way out of town to find camp, before hitting the Magruder.
We found camp at the top of Green Mountain, next to the fire tower.
Sunset on top of Green Mountain:
On the Magruder!
Conditions on the Magruder were optimal. The roads were fairly smooth, with little in the way of drama. I could have done the whole thing in 2wd, if I wasn't towing the trailer.
A fire had gone through the area several years ago, so most of the trees along the route were bare. There's many forest service campgrounds along the corridor, if you're interested in staying at one.
We completed the corridor in about 8 hours or so, and reached Montana. We went a little off route to a camp site recommended by
@Ubiety, and found camp at a beautiful spot along a creek.
The next day, we proceeded up the highway through Darby and the other tow S along the highway on the way to Lolo. I definitely want to go back and explore the towns on a different trip.
While we were waiting for M Rose to arrive, I noticed that the battery in my trailer wasn't charging. I minaged to find the cause of the problem, but had more than enough battery to run the fridge until we got to camp. We met up with
@M Rose in Lolo, and proceeded to start the Lolo. Right after we hit the road though, m rose started smoking, and had to run back to Missoula for a quick repair to his valve cover gasket.
Knowing there were fires in the area, we decided to stop at the Lolo visitor center to check the latest closures. It was a good thing we did, as the section of the route that goes past the Indian Post Office was closed. The Ranger recommended taking fsr 107 to reconnect to the route, which is what we did.
We proceeded along the route dodging logs that were cut just wide enough to fit vehicles through.
We made it to on of the possible camp spots I had marked.... It turned out to be one of the best camp spots of the whole trip. It was a tiny camp ground with 5 spots right along Rocky Ridge Lake. And we had it all to ourselves!
While
@Hogman whipped up some delicious gumbo, I got to work fixing the battery charger in the trailer. I'd used anderson powerpole connectors to connect the charger. I pulled out my tools, cut the connector off, and crimped the wires together directly. The battery started charging, and I was good to go.
The next day, we reluctantly left that camp ground, and proceeded towards Pierce. We gassed up in pierce, then headed back up into the mountains, and tried to reach Avery.
This section of trail would be pretty rough, and it would take us all day to hit our milage goal of 100 miles. We didn't quite make it there, and found camp about 12 miles outside of town at out 9pm. We set up camp, ate some dinner, and most everyone went to bed.
The next day,
@Ubiety and
@Hogman had to head back to the puget sound area, so once we hit Avery, they unfortunately had to hit the highway. The last two rigs continued on with the goal of hitting Clark fork.
We went through the tunnels outside of Avery. My daughter loved this section, and the sound the horn made as we went through. Once through the tunnels, we worked the graded gravel road on our way to Wallace, which is somewhere I definitely want to go and spend some time.
We gassed up, and continued on the route...
Trying to reach Clark fork after Wallace was a SLOG. the distance from where we camped to Clark fork was almost 150 miles. The road was pretty rough as we got further north, and when we got about 25 miles from Clark Fork, we can hit a road closure. A quick look at the map, and we found another road that would lead us there.
We reached Clark Fork at about 9pm. We found a place to eat, and I started working on finding us a hotel.
We spent the night at the Fairbridge Inn and Suites just north of sand point, and the next morning, I aired up the tires for the last stretch, as we'd be taking the highway.
And with that, we drove up the highway to the border!
I'll be adding pictures to this as I collect them. I don't have all of them yet.
