Before we left on our vacation to Yellowstone Derrick reminded me to say a prayer. I prayed that our car would work properly on the way to Yellowstone and the way home. I figured that covered all our bases. But I did have the thought, "What about while we are in Yellowstone? Will the car work property DURING our trip?"
Turns out I probably should have been a little more specific with that prayer.
The car did work great on our way to Yellowstone. And during all the driving we'd done on Friday. And most of Saturday. The van may be old, but it's reliable and so I wasn't really thinking much about it as we drove all over the park.
When we reached the canyon area Brandon was driving toward Artist Point overlooking the Lower Falls. We heard the car go "KACHUNK." The engine seemed to have trouble shifting gears for a moment. That was very out of character for this car. I thought it was something Brandon did so I was like, "Don't mess with my car." He was like, "I didn't do that."
When we got to Artist Point he dug his tools out of the storage under the floorboards and pulled out his multimeter. He opened the hood and tested the battery. But everything seemed fine. So he put away the tools and we went to look at the waterfall.
My biggest concern was whether or not we'd do any hiking this evening. We'd already done a lot of walking over two days so I wasn't sure if we were up to the hike down to the Brink of the Lower Falls. But I knew some of the kids wanted to try it.
Veronica wasn't feeling like hiking. She barely wanted to get out of the car to see the falls from Artist Point. I was trying to motivate her to keep going for the evening. She said she wasn't feeling well so I told her she could sit in the front seat while we drove over to the next view point.
So I got in the drivers seat and Veronica sat next to me. Brandon was in the back with the other kids. I turned on the car and put it in reverse. But when I tried to reverse I didn't feel any power from the engine. I was able to back up a tiny bit, but not very far.
Brandon got into the front seat to get a feel for what I was telling him was happening. Then he popped the hood and got out the multimeter again. He tested the battery and it had dropped in power. He was like, "That's not good. Something is wrong with the alternator if the battery isn't charging when the car is on."
I was like, "Crap!" But part of me was like, "Oh thank goodness it's the alternator and not the transmission." I'd been really worried it was the transmission.
All things considered, an alternator is an easy fix. Brandon had replaced one on our Honda Pilot back in 2020 (after we'd driven home on battery power.) And I vaguely remembered him maybe already fixing it on this van. (I looked it up on this blog later and YES he did replace the alternator on the van in January of 2023.)
But there was still the little problem of being in the middle of a national park at like 7:30 at night without a working car.
What were we going to do?
One thing was certain, we couldn't stay at Artist Point. I'd briefly considered if we could sleep in the van and figure it out tomorrow. But we didn't have any of our blankets other than the small travel blankets. We would freeze.
We needed to get the van moved. I told Brandon we needed to call the tow truck. We still had the little park newspaper/directory we'd been handed when we entered the park. We pulled that out and found the number for the Canyon Village "Wrecker." (Wrecker is the very scary sounding name for the tow trucks.) I knew there was a repair shop at Canyon Village because I'd walked by it all the time on my way to work when I'd been at the Canyon Village Cash office.
Brandon called the number and the dispatch person said they'd have someone out there in about 15 minutes.
My brain started to run through the scenarios of what to do next. Veronica was starting to cry and panic a little so I calmed her down by talking about the different scenarios for what we could do.
1. We could somehow get over to the lodges at Canyon village and book a room.
2. We could sweet talk out way into the employee dorms. Xanterra had extra dorm rooms that friends and family members could stay in. My inlaws had stayed in one for like $15 a night. I wondered if there was a way we could get access to one of those rooms.
I told Veronica that I wasn't sure what we were going to do, but we had lots of options.
There was a more pressing issue that needed to be solved. One of the kids needed to go to the bathroom. Artist Point used to have the most disgusting pit toilets EVER. They were awful. We did everything we could to avoid them. But now I was looking around for them and not seeing them anywhere. The whole parking lot had been redone sometime in the last 7 years. Someone must have decided that it was best to just take out those bathrooms since they were always so gross.
But where were we supposed to go to the bathroom now? I ended up taking the kid back to the Artist Point viewpoint area and then down the canyon rim trail toward Point Sublime. Then the kid just went a little off the trail and used the bathroom.
It was kind of funny because I was like, "I don't remember ever going to Point Sublime. And then as soon as I saw the trail I was like, "Oh I remember this!" It was one of the first hikes we did during our summer in Yellowstone.
When I got back to the car the tow truck driver had shown up. His name was Caleb and he and Brandon were talking about what was going on. Another two truck showed up soon after. There was a guy and a girl in there. They were like what's the problem. Caleb says, "It's the alternator." The other driver was like, "Are you sure?" And Caleb said, "this guy has a multimeter and checked the battery it's losing power when the engine is on." And everyone was like, "Yep, alternator."
By this point things were feeling a little bleak. The sky was dark and a little bit of rain was falling. The battery in the car was completely dead and so we couldn't even roll the windows back up.
And even through everyone knew what the problem was - we weren't exactly sure how to solve it.
Obviously we needed a new alternator, but getting one was going to be a problem. The repair shop was closed for the night and they didn't have an alternator even if they were open. Their supplier was Napa Auto parts in West Yellowstone - which was also closed. It would be closed on Sunday. And no one was sure if it would be open on Monday which was Memorial Day.
It was looking like the soonest the Canyon Repair shop could get our van fixed was going to be Tuesday. And our campground reservations ended Monday morning.
We considered our options and came up with a plan.
The other tow truck was going to pull around and then charge our car's battery with it's super long jumper cables. That would allow us to at least roll up the windows and put the car in gear enough to get it onto Caleb's truck.
We decided to have the van towed into West Yellowstone. We would be able to get a hotel and a rental car and hopefully find a mechanic that could fix it - or at least give us the part.
I told the kids we were getting out of the van and we all started grabbing stuff like we were refugees. I packed a bag full of food. The kids were grabbing their stuff.
The kids and I got into the cab of the tow truck. We put Lydia in the front seat because she's the smallest. She could fit between Caleb and Brandon. Charlotte, Derrick. Veronica, and me were in the back seat.
We sat in there and watched as Brandon and Caleb worked to get the van onto the back of the truck.
Here's the van when it was finally behind us.
Caleb drove us over to the gas station in Canyon Village. Some of the kids used the bathroom there while he went to get something from the repair shop. I had a strong wifi signal here so I got onto Hotels.com and started to look for something in West.
But I quickly realized this was a terrible plan. The only rooms available were like $400 a night for two queen beds and I couldn't tell how close to West Yellowstone they were. I had the sense that if we went to West we'd be just as stranded as we were at Artist Point. We'd have no where to sleep, we'd have no working car, and we'd be stuck wearing the same clothes we'd been wearing all day.
Brandon and I talked real quick and decided that the best thing to do was to get the van towed to the campsite. That way we'd all be together, we'd have somewhere to sleep, and we'd have all our stuff. We could figure out how to get the van fixed from there.
The downside was that our campsite was at Madison Campground - and Madison had no cell phone or internet service. It would be like trying to problem solve from 1993.
But the pros outweighed the cons. So we decided to go to Madison for the night and figure out a solution in the morning. Caleb was like, "I'll drive you anywhere so that works."
Caleb was a pretty cool guy. This was his third summer in Yellowstone. He said that Brandon was super nice and he was happy that we weren't angry. He deals with a lot of car accidents and broken down cars so he doesn't see people who are having happy vacations.
We were stressed, but also pretty chill - a busted alternator is nothing compared to a totaled car.
I joked that this was the most exclusive excursion in the park.
The drive over to Madison from Canyon Village was pretty uneventful. We actually drove away from the rain so by the time we got to Madison the sky was sunny and light again. That helped my mood.
I'd been trying to be positive for the kids, but my brain was running through so many scenarios and trying to figure out what we were going to do. It was a lot to process.
Riding into the campground in a tow truck that was carrying our van was an experience. Campgrounds can be very boring places so EVERYONE we passed was looking up and staring at us as we drove by. The kids were so embarrassed.
Caleb took us directly to our campspot and dropped the car off in the pull through parking. Some of our neighbors came over later to find out what was going on.
Brandon filled out lots of paperwork and then paid Caleb over $600 for the tow. Our insurance would reimburse us so that was okay, but I started to panic a little as I was mentally trying to figure out the balance of our bank account. I'd put a few hundred dollars into our checking account before we left on vacation and we had a $500 line of credit to prevent overdraft fees. But I wasn't sure exactly where we were on the account balance before Brandon did that $600+ payment. I was mentally kicking myself for not transferring money when we were in Canyon Village with wifi. Now we were in Madison and it was like being in a black box.
I told myself it would all be okay. It was Saturday night after all, the bank wouldn't process anything until Monday. And Monday was a holiday. So we had some time to get the bank balance straightened out before over draft fees kicked in. And even if we did get the fees I might be able to call and get them waived.
Caleb drove off and we were once again asking ourselves, "What we were going to do?"
Brandon started trying to take out the alternator. I knew it was going to have to come out eventually, but I felt like this was a bad time to try to take it out. We only had about 15 more minutes of daylight. But that's how Brandon was coping with the situation.
The kids and I got ready for bed. I was really grateful we'd decided to come back to the campsite. It was nice to have our tooth brushes and pajamas. Our air mattresses and sleeping bags were all ready for us to climb into them.
Brandon came to bed after a while. I know that he and I slept, but we also spent a lot of time just staring into the dark and wondering what we were going to do.
The next morning was Sunday morning. This was Day Three of the trip. Our plan for the day had been to drive down to the Fairy Falls trailhead and hike to the Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook, Fairy Falls, and Imperial Geyser. Then we would have come back to came and relaxed until the evening when we might have gone up to Mammoth Hot Springs. (On my list of Top 5 things to see in Yellowstone Mammoth comes in at Number 6.)
But obviously none of that was happening.
We had cereal, oatmeal, and yogurt for breakfast. We also had hot chocolate. On the one hand things were not so great. We were stranded at a campsite. But on the other hand, we were stranded at a campsite. There were a lot worse places to need to figure out car issues. There were trees, and lots of shade, and it was beautiful.
I kept thinking about a blog post I wrote for East Idaho Moms a few years ago. I talked about how we think of experience gifts as things like a trip to a museum or the zoo. But there are other experience gifts. In that post I talked about how I'd locked my keys in the car on a trip to Idaho Falls with the kids. The kids were able to see me call a lock smith and watch him open the car. I'd realized that showing them how to solve certain problems was a big gift itself. I knew that even though being stranded with a broken care TOTALLY sucked in the moment, it was actually a really good teaching opportunity for the kids. They would see me and Brandon solve this problem. And hopefully we would pass on some good skills for when they had their own problems in the future.
I made a few lists to organize my thoughts. The first thing I wrote was our three main problems.
1. Need a new alternator
2. Stores are closed Sunday and possibly Monday
3. No cell service - no phone calls or internet.
Then I made a list of all the things that I needed to figure out
First up was that I needed to talk to the rangers about extending our stay at the campground if we were stuck there until Tuesday. So I walked up to the campground office with some of the kids. And it was quite a walk. We were in loop G of a campground that had something like 300 campsites. So it was at least a 10 minute walk to the campground office.
When I got there and explained our situation, the lady at the window was like, "Um it's only my second shift. Let me get someone to help me figure out if there are any vacant spots." A guy came over and showed her how to look up campsites. He said something like "Push the F4 key." I was like, "WAIT, You guys are STILL using that DOS program?" I explained that I'd worked in the park 8 years earlier and I'd been surprised that a DOS program was still in use back in 2017. I'd assumed they had upgraded by now. But no, they were still using it. (Actually I don't know if they will ever upgrade because it's a program that uses a low bandwidth and that is important when you are in the middle of no where.)
Anyway, they didn't have anything available for Monday night. But they encouraged me to come up tto the office right away on Monday morning. If someone with a Sunday and Monday reservation hadn't shown up Sunday night they might be able to give me their reservation for Monday night.
They also told me that the curtesy phone on the campground bulletin board could call ANY phone. I'd assumed that it could only call 911 and extensions for locations within the park. But they said it could call anyone. That was really good information to have.
So I walked back down to the camp ground and explained what I'd found out.
Next up on my list of things to do was to buy some firewood. We were going to have a fire after our hike anyway so this wasn't too far off the plan. I knew that Derrick would like to still have a fire. So Derrick, Lydia, and I walked to the little General Store that was about halfway between our campsite and the office.
Before we bought the firewood I scoped out the store for dinner options. We had enough food to get us to Monday morning - maybe afternoon. But we didn't have anything for dinner on Monday. So I was happy to see they had cans of chili and stew. That was good to know in case we ended up at the campsite through Tuesday.
Then we bought firewood and took turns carrying the box back to our campsite. I wished I could take a picture of Derrick and Lydia carrying the firewood, but my phone was charging in the campground bathroom.
This whole time Brandon was working on getting the alternator out of the van. He got it out and started cleaning it and taking it apart. He was hoping that maybe there was just some sort of wire that was loose that he could replace.
I wasn't so sure. I found the phone number for the Napa Autoparts in West and went up to the courtesy phone to call them. I knew they were closed today, but I was hoping that they had some sort of answering machine message that said if they were open or closed on Memorial Day.
They didn't. The phone just rang and rang. That made me worry that we couldn't really call any number with this phone. So I tested calling my own cell phone and that went to voicemail. So I knew that we really could call anywhere.
Brandon determined that he couldn't fix the alternator. So we really did have to buy a new one. But how?
I was still making my lists. I had a list of everything we had learned so far.
Derrick and I put this one together so he could feel like there was a plan for the day.
I was also making a list of things we needed to do when we had internet or the ability to make phone calls again. If we really were stuck in the park until Tuesday we would need to cancel a lot of our plans for Tuesday.
Brandon and I talked over our options and decided we needed to go back to the phone and make some more calls. He wanted to try to talk to the main Napa line and find out if they were open on Memorial Day. I wanted him to call his parents. I was like, "Brandon, when they find out about this later they are going to be like, "why didn't you call us?" We need to call them."
I was thinking if we couldn't come up with any other options maybe Brandon's dad could buy the part in Utah and drive it up to us. He'd be able to help get it installed and we'd be on our way again without having to stay until Tuesday. But that felt like a big ask.
Honestly, it felt like a big ask to call anyone. I could think of several people in Idaho Falls who I might be comfortable texting and asking for help. But calling? From an unfamiliar number? That just felt like too much of an imposition.
Brandon called NAPA but they couldn't tell him if specific stores were open. Then he called his work like and left a message saying he may not be at work on Tuesday. And then he called his parents.
Their phones didn't seem to accept the phone call so he couldn't get through. I suggested he call his brother in law Justin and tell Justin to tell his parents to answer their phones. Justin answered and Brandon's parents happened to be visiting his house. So Justin put them on speaker phone and Brandon explained what was going on.
He told them our biggest problem was that we couldn't google anything. We didn't know if there were rental car places open on Sunday in West. We didn't know how far away an open parts store was. We just didn't know enough.
They said they'd start looking into things for us. Brandon said he'd call them back again in about 90 minutes.
So we went back to camp feeling a little better about things.
I took care of washing some underwear and shorts in a bowl so that we could have clean clothes if we were stuck until Tuesday.
Then the kids and I walked around looking for more firewood at the campsites where people had checked out, but no one had checked in yet for the day.
We also had lunch.
When Brandon went to make the phone call to his parents at 1:00 I was pretty sick of walking back and forth from our campsite to the office. So I stayed at the campground and took a little nap.
Brandon came back about 20 minutes later. He woke me up and said, "We have a PLAN!"
He was going to hitch hike into West. (This had always been a possible plan. It just hadn't seemed like a good idea if we didn't know what options he had once he got there.)
Then he'd rent a car at one of the two rental places that was open on Sunday. Then he'd drive down to St Anthony where a car parts store was open. He'd buy the alternator, and then drive back to Yellowstone and fix the car. With any luck the car would be fixed in time for us to check out of the campsite on time on Monday morning.
I immediately perked up. It felt so good to have a plan!
I told Brandon to take one of the twins with him so he didn't look as much like a murderer and people would be more willing to pick him up. Lydia volunteered as tribute. Charlotte wanted to go too, but three people was a lot to try to hitchhike.
They packed backpacks with water, food, and money. I sent Brandon with all the emergency cash we keep in the car "just in case." I also gave him instructions on which accounts he could pull money from when he got service and could get into our bank account.
Here are Brandon and Lydia leaving on their adventure. This was at about 1:45
Soon after they left Derrick and I went on our own adventure. We went on a little hike on a trail that was near the campground.
Here I am.
Brandon and I took a picture in front of this mountain on our first trip to Yellowstone. I'd been hoping to recreate it with all the kids in the picture too. But that didn't happen.
Derrick and I had snacks. I'm not sure what is up with his face in this picture. He was in a really good mood.
Then we went back another way - that involved walking on the side of the main road for about 500 feet. Sometimes I think we might be too comfortable with this park.
We spent a lot of the afternoon just hanging around the campsite. Charlotte found a stick and had fun carving it. We listened to some episodes of the Big Flop. Derrick and Veronica played in the car.
Around 5:00 I made noodles and sauce for dinner. This is one of our camping staples because it's easy and none of the ingredients have to be refrigerated.
Here are the kids playing with branches they found.
We'd burned through the first box of firewood so Derrick and I went to buy another one. The lady who had been at the campground office in the morning was now working in the store. She asked if we'd figured anything out. I told her, "Yes, and if everything goes right my husband should be back with the part in about 15 minutes."
I'd been doing the math all day. If everything went without a hitch Brandon could have been back as early as 5:30. But with allowances for extra time he could be back around 7:30.
As 7:00 came and went we were watching every car that pulled into our loop really carefully. I told the kids, "It will probably be a small car. And it won't have a campground site paper in the corner of the windshield."
And sure enough around 7:30 a Toyota Prius pulled up and parked behind the van. It was Brandon and Lydia back from their adventure!
They'd been picked up on the road about 15 minutes after leaving our campsite. The people who picked them up were in a truck and let them ride in the bed of the truck. Lydia said that was so cool. They took them the 16 ish miles into West and dropped them off at the first car rental place.
Unfortunatley they only rented cars to people going into the park. So Brandon and Lydia had started walking to the other rental place which was at the airport. (I didn't even know there was an airport in West.) Another person stopped and gave them a ride to the airport.
When Brandon told the car rental people who he was they said, "It's the guy who needs the car part." They got him all hooked up with the rental.
Then Brandon and Lydia drove the 60 minutes to St Anthony and bought the Alternator. And then they drove back to the park.
All in all it was a really simple solution once we figured out what to do.
Brandon went to work replacing the alternator. He told me to take the kids and the rental car and go do some sight seeing. That sounded AMAZING after being stuck at the campsite all day.
I'll put all those pictures up in the next post.
But just to give you all some closure - he did get the alternator replaced and the car worked again. We made it home and the van hasn't given me any issues in the two weeks since.
After all this was over I thought about the line from the first Iron Man movie. The guy says, "Tony
Stark was able to build this in a cave - with scraps."
I keep thinking of reworking it to something like, "Brandon Illguth was able to fix this in a campsite - without the internet."
As if there was any doubt - this just further proves that Brandon is a freaking genius.
There's a paved walkway that leads to a viewpoint for the falls. 
And then we could look over the rock wall and see the falls. 
They looked really cool. This was definitely worth the little stop. 
I always like pictures like this. 
It was much cuter before I asked them to turn around and smile for the camera. 
This was incredible. I've only ever seen a few elk together at a time. So to see at least 20 of them was amazing. 
It was almost like Yellowstone was saying, "Sorry you missed out on so much. Let's make it up to you."
We admired the elk for awhile and then kept driving. Before we got to the Canyon intersection I pulled down a little non-descript road. Derrick was like, "why are we going this way?" I told him, "this is the way to our campground." And soon we were driving past our old spot. 
Then we drove over to the road the runs along the Canyon's North rim. We didn't have time to do the trail down to the Brink of the Lower Falls so we skipped that spot and just went to Lookout Point. 
This is one of those views that never gets old. 
The road looped back around to the visitor center area. The actual visitor center closed at 6:00 and it was like 8:30 at this point so we'd completely missed that, but the bathroom area was open. 
Then we drove back down to the South Rim of the Canyon. We'd already been on this road the day before. But we weren't interested in seeing Artist point again. This time we stopped in the parking lot for the Upper Falls view point. This area was under construction the WHOLE summer of 2017 so we never were able to go over here when we lived in the park. We had been here in 2021, but I wanted to come again. 
I started out just trying to take a selfie, but Charlotte and wanted in. And Veronica jumped in at the last minute. 
So then we took a real one with Veronica. 
And then Derrick jumped in too. We called this "The Survivors" because we were the ones stuck at camp all day. 
Then we went back to the car. This parking lot was put in during 2017 and it is HUGE. When we were here in 2021 it was nearly full. But now, at 9:00 PM we were the only car there. 
See no body this direction either. 
We started driving back to Madison Campground. Somewhere between Norris and Madison we had to stop because there were bison on the road. 
They are hard to see, but they are there. 
You can kind of see the one in the road in this picture. There was another one walking in the front of the line of cars. People would try to sneak past our line of cars, but then get stuck by the one that was on this side of the road. 
We were in no hurry so I thought this was great. It was even cooler when a Bison walked right in front of our car. 
Yep, it really was like Yellowstone was trying to make up for our lost sightseeing day. 
We got back to camp and saw Brandon lounging on the picnic bench. He'd replaced the alternator and got everything back together. It was good to know that we'd be leaving right on schedule on Monday. 
Look at all that!
Charlotte was sad she couldn't bring her stick. So I took a picture of it. (And she found a replacement at our ward campout so she's fine.)
That little crate is basically what's left of our food supply. It's sitting on top of the cooler which was wedged between the seats. The kids had to climb over that every time we stopped, but we didn't stop much. 
I think we pulled out of the campsite around 9:00. That might be one of our quickest clean ups yet. Brandon drove the rental car with Charlotte and Lydia. I drove the van with Derrick and Veronica. 
I'm not sure if you are supposed to like a bathroom floor, but I REALLY liked the bathroom floor. 
We got the car returned and everyone piled into the van for the first time since Saturday night. We started driving home. We finished listening to "Harris and Me" by Gary Paulsen. Charlotte had read this in 7th grade and had been saying we needed to listen to it. It was a fun book, but I'd kind of wondered why Charlotte liked it so much. And then we got to a really funny chapter and we were all laughing really hard and I was like, "Ohhhhhhhhhh, that's why."
They were really good. I always order a Dave's Single because Baconsale talked really highly of it when they did their "We ate everything at Wendy's episode" back in like 2021. Baconsale actually released their 500th episode that day. They have been doing shows since 2015 and I've listened to every single one. The 500th episode was recorded live in Utah. I would have loved to go to the recording, but it was on May 17th - which was my wedding anniversary and we already had plans. 
