WELCOME TO RIVER DAVES PLACE

Argo Family Vacation 2021

pwerwagn

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I had planned to document this trip like Dave did his. It did not happen during our trip, so I thought maybe when I got back I would do it. Here we are a month after the trip. It wont be as cool as daily updates, but I will try to go back and hit the high points to give others ideas!

About 8 years ago we bought a Gulfstream Super-C (kodiak chassis) to start taking longer summer trips with the kids before they are all grown up and gone. I have had an RV of some sort since I was 16, but wanted a motorhome for a trip like this. Every summer, we did ~week long trips to places, but we always talked about taking a month or more off in the summer and doing a big trip. My wifes Vet work, my work, etc always seemed to change our plans. We had decided Jan of 2020, this year for sure. Well...thanks to covid, that didn't happen. Then my Dad unexpectedly passed away as well in August of 2020. Being hit with the hard realization of how short life can be (my dad was only 62), we made it a point to plan for the summer of 21. My wife had since changed careers and became a HS teacher, so summers for her are no problem at all anymore.

We had spent the better part of 2020 remodeling our motorhome. I de-stickered it, made it all white, redid the interior, new flooring, new shower, new tires etc. I had already gone thru and done upgrades on everything else (Bilsteins valved for the coach, track bars front and rear, steering stabilizers, air bags, spare tire carrier, etc etc etc), so it was good to go for a big summer trip. Fast forward again a few months, and my mom offers us my dads Gulfstream super C that he bought for himself as his retirement gift. It would be MUCH nicer for our long trip, but it was bittersweet to sell our old RV. This is our old RV after we almost finished it. All I had left to do was to wrap the cab white and swap wheels, and it was done. Instead I sold it near the peak of RV prices and came out pretty well (used it for ~8 years and nearly doubled my money):
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So after selling this RV, we purchased my Dads. My Dad bought it when he retired and did quite a few nice things to it and put about 13K miles on it. He never got to finish it up the way he wanted before he passed away. I bought it for that reason, to keep his dream alive and finish it for him. It was also going to be really nice for the upcoming trip we had planned. I purchased it in march of 2021 and did a bunch of upgrades before June. I gutted the cab and did dynamat/noico sound deadening, I put on a 4" exhaust, deleted the EGR, removed the viscous fan clutch and put on a Horton EC450 electric fan clutch, etc. Before he passed we had just put head studs, new oil cooler, etc on it. It also has a rubber damped rear shackle setup, better slide controller, King shocks, etc. The motorhome is a Gulfstream Supernova 6372.

My plan was to finish my 1979 ramcharger/cummins conversion and flat tow that around the country behind the supernova, but time didn't cooperate and it was easier to tow the JKU. I got the ramcharger about 85% of the way ready but ran out of time.
Here is a picture of the new motorhome:
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Our initial plan was to leave New Mexico, and travel up thru Utah, wheel moab for a week or so. Then up to yellowstone, mt rushmore for a few weeks, then down thru wyo/colorado and spend the last week in Silverton, since we have spent a week there with family every summer since I was a kid. We didn't really have any plans, any dates, just ~5 weeks of vacation and go where we wanted to go.

About a month before we planned to leave, some friends of ours rented a house a Lake of the Ozarks. They invited us to go, but it was the first week of our trip. After my wife and I talked a bit, we decided that since I wouldn't have the Ramcharger done, wheeling Moab wasn't all that enticing, and I didn't want to take the rock crawler because it wouldn't be practical for the rest of the trip. So, we flipped our plans, and decided to go east instead of west. After that things just fell into place. With ~2 weeks before we left on the trip, we totally changed our agenda. We also have family that bought a house at Flathead lake MT in the meantime, so we thought it might be cool to "swing by" Montana. We still wanted to hit Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, and spend a few days at least in Silverton.


to be continued.....
 

angiebaby

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Can't go wrong with the Flathead. Hope the fires and smoke didn't ruin it all for you.
 

pwerwagn

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Ok here we go again...
We left new mexico and drove to amarillo. For some reason my kids love amarillo. We stayed at the big texan, took the limo from the rv park to the restaurant. It was one of my kids bday's and they wanted to go to a Sodpoodles game, so we did that after dinner.
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pwerwagn

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The next morning we decided to drive to Oklahoma City. We had never spent any time there, so we planned for 2 nights. We went down town, had some good food at bricktown brewery, went to the water park, etc. OK city was the most humid part of our trip, but we had a ton of fun there. We left OK city to meet up with friends in Joplin, and follow them to LOTO for a few days.
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pwerwagn

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We got to LOTO on a sunday evening. Some good friends of our went out there and took 2 boats with them. They rented a house, so we started off parking the Motorhome in the driveway, which ended up being super tight. We moved it on tuesday night to a small rv park 2 miles away and stayed there the rest of the week. LOTO was amazing, we had a blast. We went to margaritaville, cruised a lot of the lake. We were staying around MM8, so it was ~20 miles south to margaritaville. It was awesome in the middle of the week, we will definitely go back and take one of our boats!
We stopped at some Castle along the way before we got to the house.
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The kids did a lot of fishing, caught a few.
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It was my wifes bday, so we had some chicharonne table nachos.

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pwerwagn

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We stayed at LOTO for a week, left on Friday to go meet up with a friend that lives in Iowa. We had never been to iowa, so while we were there we took a little offshoot to Chicago. My wife has always wanted to go to field museum to see the Lions of Tsavo from the Ghost in the Darkness movie. We also did the Navy pier.

We camped right on the Mississippi River in Buffalo, IA. The Iowa 80 truckstup on I80 is awesome, the museum in back is worth going to. They have tons of cool trucks.


Our camp spot on the mississippi.
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My son did some fly fishing in the mississippi.
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Ferris Bueller impersonation...
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Lake Michigan.
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Margaritaville on the Navy pier.
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pwerwagn

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Ok, lets see where we left off here. We left chicago and headed back to Davenport for another night with some friends. We got up early the next morning and headed west. We stopped at a few places along the way, with our end destination being Sioux Falls or Sioux City, I actually dont remember where we stayed now haha. Along the way we stopped at a bass pro shop in Altoona IA, and made a few other random stops.

We ended up in this amazing little state park campground with super small spaces. The park ranger told me we couldnt fit, but fortunately our supernova is high enough off the ground I was able to back into the space and past the space, letting us fit 37' into a 32' space. The kids found a blackberry bush of some sort, so we cooked with them a few times. The blackberry pancakes were fantastic. We only stayed here 1 night on the way to our next destination.
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Next stop...Rapid City, South Dakota.
 
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pwerwagn

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Next up, we stayed at an RV park in Rapid City, SD. It was a nice park, but we prefer camping in more remote campground, or no campgrounds at all. We are accustomed to being dry campers with lots of space, not squeezed into a spot with hookups.

We had never been to Mt Rushmore before, and it was super cool. We spent a few days in rapid city, went to mt rushmore a few times, etc. The night lighting of mt rushmore is really awesome.

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pwerwagn

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So that takes us about halfway thru the trip. After we left South Dakota, we went to visit friends in Montana. They recently bought a house on Flathead Lake.

We stayed in someone's yard next to a Mission Creek in St Ignatius, MT. It was a pretty cool spot to camp, I think we stayed there ~3 or 4 nights. The kids fly fished in Mission Reservoir, a little mountain lake. We went to 5 or 6 lakes in the area. Fishing in MT is EXPENSIVE. Between fishing licenses, reservation conservation permits, etc I think we spent well over 200$ for 2 days worth of fishing licenses.

Our friends had just purchased a new Malibu, so we did some surfing on Flathead. It is an absolutely gorgeous lake, and the water wasnt as cold as I had expected. The house they live in is really cool. They are right on flathead, with a lot of waterfront property. Their views are amazing.

We spent the whole day of the 4th of July boating on Flathead lake, and didnt see ~10 other boats. We saw more planes than boats.

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gqchris

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Someday............! I keep saying that also and something always gets in the way of taking a trip like this.

Awesome post, thanks for sharing with us!!! I am following along for ideas!
 

RiverDave

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The pics are awesome so far! Let’s see the rest of the trip!
 

pwerwagn

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Ok, lets contine with the rest. I think when we left Montana we were about 3 weeks into the trip or so. We rolled out of Montana July 5th, did some exploring of Missoula and then headed to Bozeman. We figured we would stay in Bozeman, but after spending a little time there, it wasnt our cup of tea. Maybe it was all the tourists, or college kids, but the locals were pretty smug and unfriendly. So, after spending half a day there or so, we changed our minds about staying and headed east. We stayed the night in a truck stop in columbus MT, which would get us to our next stop quicker, Cody, WY. We did manage to find a good green chile cheeseburger in Bozeman, but otherwise Bozeman was a bust.
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pwerwagn

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We arrived in Cody WY, on ~July 6th. We got into town before we could check in at our campground (this was the only campground we reserved before the trip, all the rest were done while driving). We parked the moho at walmart until we could check in, and went to the Museum in Cody.

This is a pretty fantastic museum. The firearms portion is a full days experience if you like guns. The rest of it is also pretty cool as far as museums go.
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pwerwagn

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We went to the Cody rodeo, which is well worth the money. The next 2 days we spent in Yellowstone, old faithful and all that stuff. We spent a few days in Cody/Yellowstone before heading south. This part of our trip was unplanned. We discussed going thru denver, and a few other ideas. However, my wifes grandpa (97 yrs old) passed away right around that time, so we decided to replan our trip a bit after yellowstone.
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pwerwagn

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We made a decision to forgo the norther colo portion of our trip, and left Cody WY early one morning and drove all the way to Silverton, CO. My mom, sister/brother in law, nieces and nephews were camped in Eureka, and had quite a bit of room. We have spent a week in silverton every summer since I was a kid, but did not get to last year because of my dads passing. We made it to silverton about 6pm and set up camp. I didnt take many pics of this silverton trip, just because it was sorta intimate with the family and a lot of reminiscing. Typically our summer trips there involve ~40+ people and 10 days of wheelin. Needless to say, it was different this summer. We spent a few days there, then the kids said "we should go home early and get the boat and spend a few days at the lake". So, we left silverton after a few days.
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pwerwagn

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On this trip, instead of buying random t shirts and crap I will never wear, I bought beer at every place we stopped. Ended up filling 1 full compartment of the motorhome with random 6 packs of stouts, sours, etc that I found at cool little places around the country. Wound up bringing home ~60 or so 6 packs of randomness.

We got home for a day or two, regrouped, and then went and spent the rest of our vacation at the lake (elephant butte).

All in all it was a blast! I think we ended up spending ~4 weeks or so on the road. I think we put 4,360 miles on the moho and 1,8xx on the Jeep. The motorhome averaged 7.6mpg over the entire trip, almost identical to what the old 8.1 gas moho would average loaded that heavy.
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And that sums it up!!! Few days at the end at our favorite place in the world boating to put an end to our trip!!!

--Jeff
 

angiebaby

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We arrived in Cody WY, on ~July 6th. We got into town before we could check in at our campground (this was the only campground we reserved before the trip, all the rest were done while driving). We parked the moho at walmart until we could check in, and went to the Museum in Cody.

This is a pretty fantastic museum. The firearms portion is a full days experience if you like guns. The rest of it is also pretty cool as far as museums go.
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I'm a member of that museum. :rolleyes: Historians, LOL
 

DILLIGAF

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Very nice trip with lots of memories.....I loved hanging out in IA as I found a few gems to stay at.

Well done
 

pwerwagn

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Someday............! I keep saying that also and something always gets in the way of taking a trip like this.

Awesome post, thanks for sharing with us!!! I am following along for ideas!

I kept it kinda short, but if anyone wants any more details on exactly where we stayed in certain places, etc I can elaborate!! I didnt want to bore everyone with the mudane details haha.
 

vivaweed

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The next morning we decided to drive to Oklahoma City. We had never spent any time there, so we planned for 2 nights. We went down town, had some good food at bricktown brewery, went to the water park, etc. OK city was the most humid part of our trip, but we had a ton of fun there. We left OK city to meet up with friends in Joplin, and follow them to LOTO for a few days.
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I love going up through Oklahoma; beautiful city.
 
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