Life from the road - Our adventures to the Lewis and Clark Trail

and everything we discovered along the way!  

A very special guest post by Bert Henderson

Great Falls Portage is a National Historic Landmark, in Great Falls, MT

First there were red lights..then blue lights, and not those blue lights indicating a special at K-Mart.

The red lights were the fire trucks answering an alarm at the “Flying J” where our traveling companions Ken and Karla and we were spending the night outside of Memphis, TN. The blue lights were from the police cars that had arrived to Quell two out-of-love teenagers breaking up, and that break-up included the involvement of ALL of their friends..along with their loud, obscene voices and screeching tires. All of this gave us the start of a very exciting evening right in front of our two coaches – better than the movies. This kind of excitement was not planned for when we started our journey.

Heading out for the Lewis & Clark Trail

Carol at Botanical Gardens, St. Louis, MO

When Carol, Ken, Karla and I decided to sign up for a 43 day RV caravan that followed the Lewis and Clark trail along the mighty Missouri River—we had no idea what to expect. The tour began in St. Charles, Missouri (MO), and ended in Warrenton, Oregon (OR). Neither Carol nor I had ever been in the northwestern part of America. What I didn’t realize was there are many steps necessary in planning for that kind of long journey. Also, in addition to the 43 days traveling in the caravan, it did not include the three day trip to reach the rendezvous point in St. Charles, MO, and then two weeks or more traveling back home from Warrenton, OR.

The RV caravan tour company we chose was Adventure Caravans. This company was very helpful by providing us with printed brochures with itineraries; driving directions including driver’s logs; deciding what clothes to take and other assorted items that we’d need for the trip including food, pots and pans, and our daily essentials, including toilet articles.

In addition to the travel logistics, the tour company provided plans in advance such as which RV Parks you’ll be booked in, and what you’ll see along the way, and where you’ll go when you arrive in a city. The tour company also provided for luxury motor coaches to see the local sights, made arrangements with tour guides, made restaurant reservations, prepaid for your RV parks, attractions, and in general, took care of all of our needs, so all we had to do is drive to a destination and enjoy the trip.

Stern Wheeler, Bismark, ND

A “wagon master” is assigned as the tour leader to go in front of all the coaches and make sure that everyone takes the correct roads and completes each day’s drive by arriving at the pre-arranged RV park on time. By having a drivers’ meeting every evening before a travel day, the wagon master made sure the RV drivers had some familiarity with the driver’s log, road maps, bad roads, speed traps, and where to buy fuel. He also was responsible for having everyone arrive on time for the bus tours, boat trips, and train rides in each city. As the representatives of Adventure Caravan, the wagon master and his wife set the tone for the trip to assist and help the RV drivers overcome any travel difficulties that might occur. On this trip, we were very fortunate to have a familiar wagon master, one of Ken & Karla’s favorites, Bobby and Marcia Hanbury.

The caravan also has a “tail-gunner” who is the mechanic and assists those who have mechanical problems. He and his wife (Bill and Carol Hamilton) are the last to leave the RV Park each travel day and the last to arrive at the new or destination RV Park.

Bert at Missouri River, Dillon MT

Preparing for the Trip

Prior to the trip, we purchased a decent camera to record our endeavors and provide pictures for this article in this post. I also had to get my amateur radio (HAM) license so I could legally use a more powerful radio to communicate while driving my coach. Citizen’s Band (CB) radios have a very limited range (line of sight) – especially in the mountainous terrain which we could encounter. The only time I used my CB radio was when we arrived at the destination RV Park during the caravan so the wagon master can communicate and park us in each RV Park. I was one of four licensed HAM operators on the trip. Most of the coaches in the group only had CB radios.

St. Joe Lewis and Clark statue

Other things we had to consider in preparation for the trip was how much food to bring us while we were traveling  -- being ever mindful of the refrigerator in the coach not being as large as the one in our home. I had my coach serviced, as usual, with additional work done to the suspension. I also purchased spare parts including extra oil, fluids, hoses, filters, cleaners, tools, and an auxiliary inventory of equipment.

Before the trip began, the tour company had a wonderful orientation dinner in St. Joe, Missouri, for the 39 people who comprised our caravan of 21 RVs. We all introduced ourselves and told why we decided to be part of the caravan.

Heading for Home

At the farewell dinner in Warrenton, Oregon, each coach occupant had to tell the funniest and the most memorable moment of the trip was for them. For Carol and me, being first time caravaners, we were overwhelmed with the beauty of the scenery we saw at every turn, and especially at the crest of every mountain. We all appreciated the camaraderie of the other caravaners.

Marsha, Bob, Carol and Ken at Multnoma Falls, Portland, OR

On the way back home, we had an opportunity to see the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and the Painted Desert. After a restful stopover in Grove, Oklahoma, for Ken and Karla to visit family, we traveled north to Pender, Nebraska, to get factory work done on my tow-bar before we turned south and headed home.

Our travels made the shape of a figure eight across the U.S. and after riding almost 10,000 miles, we arrived home to unload and clean our coach. That took two days before we could take the RV in for its much needed service including lube, oil, filter, and minor repairs. Returning from the service center, we sadly put Leo (the name we gave to our RV) to bed in the storage yard and began planning for our next trip. 

Bert and Carol Henderson are 20+ year residents of Homosassa, FL, and 50+ year Florida residents. Bert is retired from the University of Florida and Carol, a Registered Nurse, is retired from Omni Home Health Card in Homosassa. You can reach Bert and Carol at bert@citruscountylife.com Photos by Bert and Carol Henderson. Article originally published in Citrus County Life Magazine

Learn More About Stoness Travel Guides

A special guest post by Passport America Member, James Stoness

Canyonlands, UT

A long time ago my father took our family on a little trip each summer, an experience similar I suppose to many of your childhoods. Or maybe a little different because dad was not interested in camping so we went the motel route. The traveling habit became entrenched in me and soon I had a new bride who had never traveled and who was keen to see the world.

We started out in the old style ‘tourist tent’ and explored a rainy trip through the Smoky Mountains where the waters came in one side of the tent and out the door as we sat high and dry on our air mattress. We quickly moved to a tent trailer and moved into different travel rigs as the years rolled on.

We live in Eastern Ontario and our trips radiated outwards until we had crossed both Canada and the USA in all directions, many times. Sometimes the snowcapped jagged peaks of Banff drew us, and other times it would be the rugged canyon lands of Utah, and Arizona. Another time it would be a yearning to hear the rolling surf of the Pacific Ocean in Oregon, or to watch the world’s highest tides in Nova Scotia reverse the direction of a river.

 Friends would come back from seeing Yellowstone NP and I’d ask how they liked the Devils Tower as they returned through the Dakotas. “Didn’t see it. Don’t know anything about it.” They almost all responded this way when asked about anything that wasn’t dead in front of them as they drove.

I had always researched things to see, and since I’d studied geology at University there were a lot of geological features I wanted to see. Most turned out even better than I expected. The Goosenecks of the San Juan River were striking, as were the Mittens in Monument Valley. Seeing the mountains of the Icefields Parkway in Alberta with its pristine blue jewels of lakes and dashing streams was far better than reading about it in the paper. The written word cannot do these places justice, and yet people were not visiting them because in too many cases they had never heard of them.

Chama Steam Train, NM

I decided to use my years of traveling to create scenic travel guide books. Instead of just highlighting scattered scenic drives, I decided to create several scenic trips that could be chained together to make longer trips. This way a person would have guides to follow on the way out to a destination and then it would be possible to in many cases select a different route back and be able to have some comments of what to see along the way in the scenic guide book. Sometimes the guide book would have more than one route to a popular destination and so the reader would select from them, picking the one he found most interesting.

Bryce Canyon, UT

The beginning of the book would have a large map showing all the tours. A click on the tour number would take you to that chapter where there would be a marked route map with numbers, and the text would mention things about the numbered area. Each guide book contains many colored pictures. The index is fully clickable, taking you back to the place where the word is mentioned.

My first scenic guide book, ‘The Lure of Pine and Sage’ covered part of the USA from roughly the Mississippi River west to the Pacific, and from Denver north into Canada to include the Banff Jasper region. 

I followed this with, ‘Cactus and Canyons’ running west from the Mississippi River to the Pacific, and from Denver south to the Mexican Border.

Next came, ‘Canada: Beyond the Far Horizons’ covering Canada from the Capital, Ottawa, west to the Pacific Ocean and North to the Arctic Ocean.

I’m presently working on a guide book covering from Ottawa east to the Atlantic Ocean.

 

These are available on CD or as ebooks from my website www.stonesstravelguides.com .

The downloads are around 20MB. They are not ‘talking’ books. There is a lot of information that is useful to a traveler, even if they’ve been there before, and the pictures are good for the armchair reader who maybe is doing a little reminiscing.

Travel whenever you can get away. Too many friends grow old and never see much past their own little town, and there are so many things to see. Enjoy the world!. 

Photos and Article Provided by James Stoness - See his novels now at:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jstoness

www.stonesstravelguides.com