After another long day dealing with the coolant leak, we managed to continue on our trek home, and made it into Soldier Creek Campground.
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When we were going downhill right before the turn into the campground, we used the exhaust brake, and we finally determined there was more to the story than just a cycle of overfilling/losing coolant that we thought we’d been dealing with. During the usage of the exhaust brake, we finally noticed that you could hear a bubbling noise coming from the right front of the truck.
So, exhaust brake on = bubbling coolant. All signs point to things being worse than we thought.
I am glad we decided to break up our trip into pieces, and stay somewhere every few hundred miles instead of making one trek to Colorado Springs and back.
When we arrived at Soldier Creek, it was about half full, and the campground hosts were on the ball. They met us when we rolled in, confirmed our reservations, and asked us if we needed anything. It was great to know they cared about the camp. They mentioned this spring they had to spend several weeks cleaning up the place before they could open it, because of downed trees and messes left by snow mobile-rs who drive over the fences when the snow is deep.
We watched throughout the evening as the campground filled up with families looking to spend the weekend outside. Since this campground is above 7000 feet, it stays cooler, so it was great to be outside.
There are several partitions to this campground, and if we come again, we’ll stay in another section with a little more space between sites. Personally, I’d love to come back here and spend more time if we can. It is a very nice place. Strawberry Reservoir was very accessible, and it had decent cell phone coverage.
The plan after Solder Creek was to just head back to Boise from there. But, I’m glad we gave ourselves more time then we needed, just in case.
Pictures from Soldier Creek.
