Our Volksvegan Adventure

The volksvegan adventure really begins! We left Boise Friday evening and headed to Craters of the Moon National Monument, where we camped for the night. In the morning we went into the park, which is a black moon-like desert created by ancient lava flows. It’s an eerie and yet beautiful landscape, and we did a bit of morning hiking and cave exploring. Then we headed east to Yellowstone National Park.

We visited Yellowstone last summer, but wanted to drive through again and see some things we’d missed. The park is just beautiful, although in July it’s full of tourists. We saw many animals on our drive through, and babies of each species too! We saw elk and deer, lots of bison (the babies are so cute and playful) and even a mama grizzly and her two cubs! You can see photos of our adventures and the wildlife we saw on my flickr page. Driving through Yellowstone was wonderful, and of course we stopped to see Old Faithful, which sprayed high and splashed all over us (everyone around us ran, but we loved the shower, and the water was cold).

As we continued our drive through the park, we noticed that the battery light stayed on when we started the bus. Later on, we lost power and needed a jump start to get going. We ended up camping at Canyon Village campground (thanks to them finding us a spot because we’d broken down) and in the morning we went to a shop that was right near the campground. Apparently the alternator is not charging the battery, and the battery was dead so we replaced it there. Not quite knowing what was wrong, we decided to head to Bozeman, Montana.

Our friend Joe lives in Bozeman, and thankfully we could stay with him and figure out yet another bus problem. We drove into Bozeman with no alternator (so we couldn’t stop the car, and we didn’t use anything electrical) but we made it! On the way out of Yellowstone we saw the grizzlies and enjoyed the scenery from the bus, and when we arrived in Bozeman, Joe showed us around a little. He lives right near the Co-op, which is awesome, complete with a juice bar and little grassy area for dogs. We’ve been walking around and even found a bar Joe’s friend works at to get grease. Sen is working on diagnosing the electrical/alternator problem and will be getting a new alternator put in while we’re here. Stay tuned…

If all goes well, we’ll be doing a backpacking trip around Bozeman with Joe, and then heading up to Glacier National Park to visit our good friend John who works there. Keep your fingers crossed for a speedy solution to our bus problems. It’s been one problem after another with this bus, but we’re remaining optimistic for now. I’ll upload pictures as soon as I can!