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Friday, November 6, 2009

Fall Trip 1 - Refrain

I just came back from another great trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was a biggest fishing trip I ever made with full of experience, learnings, and homework.

Before actual fishing, this is the prologue of this trip.
I hit the road about 10:00pm on Oct 25th. 15-minute & 17-mile in toward east, I got an unwanted "rise" on my dashboard.........

This reminded me of my last trip in late summer when AC system was down on the way (here). But then again, other than this pop-up, everything else looked, sounded, and smelled right and fine. One option I thought about was to go back my home, wait till morning, and see a local autoshop quickly because I felt it would be a minor problem. That way I can still make to West Yellowstone by night of Monday 26th. Yet, though I am not a mechanic at all, from my experience with my truck (100K miles), I decided to keep going. I had over a week of food supply, 10 gallons of water, propane, warm clothes, etc, in case I got stuck somewhere.

As I drove I-90 to northeast, rain got worse and worse all through Spokane and Idaho Panhandle. This really made my driving unhappy and sulked my spirits. Would Montana be covered by several feet of snow? But right after I entered Montana, it was almost all dry. I felt I was getting lucky in Montana.

Before I hit a "fishing town" like Ennis or West Yellowstone, I made a detour to Belgrade to visit an autoshop. Mechanic read the code and found out it was just the gas-cap was broke and loose. He suggested me to just buy a new one but also it could be any reason because my "Big Fella" is now over 214K miles!! At Napa shop in Belgrade, I bought a new cap with $14.99. That fixed the problem.

Then this whole trouble reminded me of my fall trip last year. I had a stupid flat tire ordeal plus my own stupidity (that I won't tell anybody) at Three Forks. I barely made to Belgrade, got it fixed, then left for West Yellowstone. Then I caught several fall-run brown trout!! This year, I took exactly the same route. This might be a good sign, huh??


During the stay, this was the coldest my truck themometer got........ See the un-scratchable frost........

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