We got to sleep in, then wake up and had a homemade delicious breakfast with family thanks to Ryan’s sister! She was amazing for driving all the way to Cedar City and back to pick us up for the night the night before, and by the end of the day, she would do the same trip again. Thank you, Jen! You really made an unfortunate situation soo sooo much better!
After breakfast, the kids enjoyed throwing rocks into the pond, playing guitar with Uncle Brian, then Auntie Jen told us about the splash pad, so… we got the kids swimming gear together (that is one of the things I packed when we knew we may be without the RV for the whole weekend) and headed out to the splash pad. There were playgrounds there too! If you are ever in Alpine, Utah and looking for a cool place for the family to hang out, you should check out Alpine Splash Pad. While we were at the splash pad, we got 1 call from Amen diesel saying the replaced the clamps on the hose where the coolant had been shooting out. They were going to take it for a test drive, then let us know if that fixed it. A couple hours later, they told us it was ready.
I had Ryan leave me and the kids at the house, so that he could make the 3 hour drive back to Cedar City with his sis to get the RV, drive it back 3 hours, then pick us up so we could continue on to Idaho. I didn’t think the kids would do well with 10 hours of driving in a day when they could just have a 3.5 hour trip. We had reservations for the night in Montpelier, Idaho, it was the closest place we could find to Yellowstone that had vacancies. Apparently, you need to book in January if you want to stay in Yellowstone, and since I was booking our sites in May and June… I had to take whatever we could get. If we stayed one extra night in Utah, Old Faithful would have been an 8 hour drive away, which easily turns into 10 hours with gas stops… and then we had another almost 3 hour drive to Cody, Wyoming where we planned to stay the next night. So I stayed in Alpine with the kids, did a couple loads of laundry, helped the kids shower, which meant I got completely soaked, but they all got clean, then I turned on The Greatest Showman on the tablet for them to watch while I showered, and they were all asleep before Ryan got back.
I packed up and waited up… he arrived around 11:45 pm, we loaded the kids, laying down, drank our Active, then hit the road. It was really dark… and we were driving through a lot of trees, with those signs that say watch out for wildlife… but thankfully we didn’t have any animals dart out in front of us.
Tips for Day 3:
- If you plan to visit Yellowstone in the summer, and want to stay there… make sure you make your reservations really early or you’ll be stuck staying further away. We tried to stay in Alpine, Wyoming, but that was booked too. Montpelier, Idaho has a great KOA and it’s only a couple hours away from Jackson, Wyoming.
- Speaking of trip planning… you MUST get the RV Parky App. I originally tried to plan our trip on RoadTrippers, but before we could even start our trip, they started charging and limiting the number of stops you could add to your trip for the free version. However… RV Parky lets you add unlimited stops. And I love that you could add your destination, then search around there for places to stay. The places to stay included reviews, so you could know ahead of time if it was a good option for you. We were in a really big RV, so some of the reviews helped me decide that we likely would have trouble getting in and out. And while I only planned to stay at Walmart 1 time, we ended up staying at at least 3 Walmarts in our 21 days.
- Allow for more time. I booked our trip solid. The purpose of the trip was to go to my sister’s wedding in Michigan, and while I planned for about 6 hours of driving a day, it took way longer than that, most days. So, we had to rush to see what we were going to see then keep on moving so we wouldn’t get behind schedule.