vlog 11: Summer Stay at North Platte River, WY

Since I’ve fallen behind on a couple of posts, I’m going to combine my travel update and my weekly #Sundaystills photo challenge posts this week. The photo challenge theme is Summer, so why not use my new travel post showing off our stay along the North Platte River in Wyoming. We have many summery elements captured: sun, summer storm clouds, glowing skies, water, and heat!

Leaving the Mountains for the River

It is time to move on. After 6 days we are leaving our Louis Lake campsite for the next lucky camper to enjoy.

We head to the North Platte River east of our location.

This area will become a regular visit as we do our WY travels. We enjoyed it very much both times we’ve been here. Here are links to 2021’s posts on our time visiting and kayaking on this river:

• Miracle Mile Recreation Area
• Trappers Route Recreation Area

The drive is under 4 hours and it’s a familiar drive. That means it’ll be easy to just let Google Maps do the navigation and maybe I’ll take a nap.

Unfortunately, not actively navigating didn’t work out very well. Not too far from our Alcova turnoff, we were surprised to see a detour sign. Steve saw it, I wasn’t paying attention; after all it was suppose to be an easy drive. The road south of Alcova had construction closures and we needed to turn south very soon; soon, as in less than a mile or a 1/2 mile by the time I figured it out. Yikes.

A quick check on my maps (and I still had cell signal) showed the detour should get us back on our main route, but it also looked very curvy and had steep grades as it wound into an unfamiliar canyon.

We took the turn and proceeded south on what we now know is Fremont Canyon Road. The road takes you to the northern tip of Pathfinder Reservoir. At the first fork in the road, turning west would’ve landed us at the marina.

We took the east fork and proceeded down towards the canyon. A a few steep grades climbing down were a surprise as was a view of the canyon and the bridge.

Once the detour ended, we had only an hour to our mapped destination, the miracle mile bridge area. I wasn’t actually going to the bridge, but before the bridge there is are roads right and left folliwing the river. The roads have many spurs to camping areas. That’s when the campsite hunt begins!

Finding Camp

We already knew where we were headed or so we thought. From memory, we headed to the same area we camped out last summer.

Unfortunately, getting level was a challenge. I don’t know how we did it last year, but this time, we aborted and hunted for another site. The goal is to be able to find a spot to use as a take out spot for kayaking.

We enjoyed a couple interesting evenings of clouds, sprinkles, and rainbows. Loved the golden hour as the sun set. In the morning, the sun rise would light up the cliff across the water as the birds started their morning fishing.

Puggles are not water dogs! Cooper will follow me anywhere except into water. One morning I got up early to capture the morning light. He enjoys being out and wandering. As he’s aged, he’s usually not far from me and as I went down to the water he came along. But, it’s obvious is so uncomfortable being close to so much water.

The interesting summer storm rolling through our sunset entertained us with a colorful rainbow.

Kayaking turned out to be easy peasy. We drove the jeep and gear back up to the main bridge, setup the kayak and launched. We do this on our last day and pick up the jeep on our way out.

Well, it was easy peasy until I launched and flew our drone while we’re floating on the river. Suffice it to say, I need more practice managing a flying drone while I’m in motion. The drone lost connection. When it does that, it auto starts a return-to-home routine. When it sounded that return to home was starting, my blood pressure soared. Home for the drone was behind us in the water. Panic set in. Even with panic and blood pressure soaring, I successfully got the drone back in range, under my control and over land. All while still floating on the river. With the drone now over land, my only goal was to land the sucker. Land it anywhere and we could recover it! Just as we approached the rocks near camp, I had the drone in position to make a beeline to the camper. Got it landed it right next to the truck’s front end. Whew.

I’ll add that experience to another reason why I love the tandem kayak. Steve had it under control and I wasn’t floating aimlessly in my own kayak.

Video

With the heat hitting us hard while we were in Wyoming, the A/C got put to task. We finally had an opportunity to see how well (and how long) our solar could power the A/C without using up battery power. It was amazing to be able to shut the doors, block out the heat, and keep insects away during the hot afternoons.

This video shows not only the driving route, the river and kayaking but also has a Steve “shop” talk reviewing the power profile of using our mini-split A/C effectively in Maximus.

About the Photo Challenge

A weekly themed photo challenge hosted by Terri. Check out her Blog and come back and visit for more SundayStills and traveling posts!

More Sunday Still Posts

Thanks for visiting our travel blog and I hope you enjoyed finding the #SundayStills Challenge. You can join the weekly challenge by visiting our hosts blog Second Wind Leisure. Terri’s amazing post for this week is Sum Sum Summertime.