Mark and his dog, Sundanc...
Mark and his dog, Sundance.
It began with a bump in the night.
Early that day we packed up our Itasca Suncruiser, left the KOA in Red Lodge, Montana, and headed for the Beartooth Mountains. We were excited about this day, because it was our first major road trip with an RV.
For the initial climb up the switchbacks we disconnected our toad and drove in tandem as my wife, Leann, followed the motorhome in our Grand Cherokee, while the 8.1L Chevy engine slowly lugged the motorhome up the steep grades of the north face.
Once we crested the summit at Beartooth Pass, we made our way over to Top of the World Store, which rests about 10,000 feet high on the Beartooth Highway. We had made arrangements with Bart, the store’s owner, to stay at one of a handful of campsites that were located in a clearing next to the store. There’s no electrical service on mountain tops so Bart powers his store and home with a small single-cylinder diesel generator that thumped away in a storage shed 24/7. But he has sewer and water hookups and our motorhome had a generator, so we were excited to be able to stay there. The rest of the day was spent touring the side trails and beautiful scenic vistas of the Beartooth Mountains with our Grand Cherokee.
About midnight everything began to rock. Now, I’m a heavy sleeper, so you’ll have to turn the motorhome upside down to wake me up. But Leann is a light sleeper, and she woke me up. Not really wanting to get out of bed, I dismissed it as the kids moving around in the front of the motorhome. But I was overruled when she checked and found they were sound asleep. I then heard noises that were coming from beneath our bedroom and noticed that the RV was being jostled around. Not just any ruckus. It was a gnawing, chewing sound with occasional low-pitched grunts.
A grizzly sow and cub were...
A grizzly sow and cub were photographed from the front door of a motorhome at Yellowstone National Park.
Our coach was parked on uneven rocky alpine terrain, so it was jacked up fairly high on the rear corner to get it somewhat level. It seems that a grizzly cub had gotten underneath the bedroom area and found something of interest. We tried to scare him away by turning lights on and off, making noise, and pounding on the floor, but the noises started up again. I thought about going outside to start the Jeep and to shine the headlights on the motorhome, but it was pitch black outside, and I didn’t know where the cub’s mother was so, I decided to stay inside the safety of the RV.
After a while, a loud pop was heard and our bed, which was on a slide-out, suddenly retracted halfway. That was the end of the noises. Trying to extend the bedroom slide only resulted in spraying red hydraulic fluid onto the ground, so we left it as it was and went back to sleep.
In the morning I found that the bear had chewed through a steel braided hydraulic hose that held hydraulic pressure to extend the bedroom slide-out. At that point all we could do was retract the slide-out and leave it in for the remainder of the trip.
When we finally returned to our dealer, technicians replaced the hydraulic line, which was covered with punctures from the bear’s teeth. Definitely not covered by the warranty.
The steel braid hoses are covered in rubber, and Winnebago used a non-petroleum product to lubricate them so that they would pull through the loom in the frame. It must have been some sort of vegetable-based lubricant because that bear picked up the smell from who knows where, and he sure wasn’t about to give it up just because of us. That’s until he got a big shot of red hydraulic fluid in the face once he bit through the line.
While I probably won’t see that bear again anytime soon, at least I know the real story behind the name Beartooth Mountains.