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Yakima, Mount Rainer, and living on Pacific time

We tried to get a nice dinner in Missoula, but places either were closed Labor Day or had long waits. We ended up at Famous Dave’s BBQ, and it was its normal decent food. Tuesday we headed west again, and we spent the night in the Cabela’s parking lot in Post Falls, ID. It is located one miles from Washington, and on Pacific time. We decided to go out to dinner, and we had an absolutely fantastic experience at The Oval Office Martini Bar and Bistro, a small casual restaurant with a great chef and lots of local sourcing. I had leg of lamb and Kevin had a steak, and both were outstanding! This is absolutely some of the best food I have had in ages. If you are ever nearby, you should stop by.

Wednesday found us in Yakima, WA at SunTides RV park. Nice enough place with lots of grass and a small shade tree. We had hoped Yakima had some historic sites to visit, but it seems quite happy to be a major produce production town and not much else. We did pick up some wonderful peaches from a local stand, and I made a peach cobbler. Yum.

Of course the reason we are here is Mount Ranger National Park, we we took our first tour today. The first view of the namesake mountain was well outside the park at a scenic overview in the National Forest.

It looks almost like a painting, but I did no post processing on the picture. We kept getting closer and closer. Sadly some haze/clouds crept in, but not too bad.

There are more glaciers on Mt. Rainier than I have ever seen at Glacier National Park. They are mostly still good sized, though they are shrinking like all the glaciers. The surrounding forest was nice too.

Still quite a few wildflowers in the Paradise area

The hillsides were just starting to change colors

Wish I knew what plant was providing the early color

Louise Lake was next door to Reflecting Lakes, but much more reflective!

Huge basalt palisades were most impressive

Even this time of year there were some waterfalls fed by glaciers that were decent. On this one, I took a picture of Kevin about halfway down the 168’ waterfall while he was taking pictures of the bottom half.

See that little tiny person at the corner of the fences?

From Kevin’s view part way down the big drop

The park also has some fabulous trees. These pictures were taken in a grove they called Hall of the Patriarchs. Fitting name.

Wish I had thought to put something against this for scale

We were surprised at how little wildlife we saw. We visited the Longmire area first, had lunch at the National Park Inn, then drove to the Paradise section which was newer and much more crowded. As we were leaving the Paradise area, there was a rental motorhome pretty much parked in the middle of the road. Guess they had a good reason, because we saw this.

What’s that black dot in the meadow (on a bit of a zoom already)?

Other than the bear, the only wildlife we saw was a couple of ground squirrels and a few birds. Climax forests just don’t have a lot of wildlife I guess.

Tomorrow we visit the northern part of the park.

Logo Pass, Lola Motorway, and Garnet Ghost Town

We are definitely playing tourist here in Missoula. Saturday we went up Lolo Pass (Highway 12). It is a gorgeous road, and there is an informative Visitor Center at the border between Montana and Idaho. It was the wrong time of the day for a good picture, but you get the idea.

We were lucky to see a special guest they had talking about the fur trade. He was dressed in traditional Voyageur gear, and had some good skins with him. We talked a bit about how our trip had really started at Grand Portage.

We then drove part of the CCC road known as the “Lolo Motorway”, an old term for road. Of course we wouldn’t call it a road today! It is basically a rough rocky one lane track dug with a bull dozer and willing hands that follows closely the track Lewis and Clark took through the Bigroot Mountains westward in 1805 and eastwards in 1806. It was fascinating to know we were driving on the same rocks that the Corps of Discovery had ridden their horses across! It was slow going though; we probably averaged only 10 mph. We drove about an hour and a half, then turned around since it was getting late.

These mountains are rough! The journals talked about how disappointed the Corps of Discovery members were when they encountered ridge after ridge of mountains when they had been hoping for an easy path down from the Missouri headwaters to the Pacific. It took them 9 days to cross the mountains heading west, but only five days coming east. They were intelligent enough to use Indian guides, or they would never had found their way across before starving. As it was, they had major malnutrition when they encountered friendly Nez Perce on the westward journey. The skies were filled with a haze from forest fires somewhere, so the pictures really don’t do it justice. It was amazing.

Old fires are providing a bed for new growth

It is hard to see the rows of mountains, but look carefully by the two tall trees

The shaggy bark shows just how old this tree is

Today we went to the Garnet ghost town. It is advertised as the most complete ghost town in Montana, and I believe it. The town was part of the gold rush in 1898, and it participated in some of the waves of mining off and on until the 1940s.

An ice room was attached to the back of the store. See the chute for the ice?

Fun facts about the hotel: The first floor had a ladies parlor, office, and very fancy dining room. Second floor had guest rooms, and the third floor rented floor space to the miners! There were lines marked on the floor, and a miner could layout his bedroll there. Rather a different view of housing.

We have our anniversary tomorrow, and we have reservations for a boat tour on Flathead Reservoir followed by dinner. Tuesday we head west again. No posts until then.

Beartooth Scenic Byway

On Thursday we decided to drive the Beartooth Highway. It was, as usual, incredible. This road from Cooke City to Red Lodge is considered the most scenic in the U.S. by many people. I think the only way to describe it is through the pictures.

That hole actually has a marmot living in it! See the dirt they threw out? It wasn’t there when we drove past it the first time

As I said, this is one of the most beautiful roads I have ever been on. We had lunch in Red Lodge, then drove back, so the pictures were from both up and down.

On Thursday we drove to the KOA in Butte. Nice enough spot for an overnight, but it had some road noise like many highway campgrounds. The site was nice and long though. We drove into Jim and Mary’s Campground in Missoula tonight, and it is a lovely place. Amazingly it is both lovely and quiet! Our site is long and level, and there are flowers everywhere.

I guess the picture isn’t very good since you can’t see the flowers growing in profusion by the picket fence panel.

We did get by a quilt store today to get some material for my next project, an appliqué of birch trees on a background of blue sky and stars. Oh, and I even got my new shingles shot when we went grocery shopping! Tomorrow will be sightseeing.

Yellowstone, Day 2

On Monday we moved from our fancy RV park to a private dry camping site about 10 miles north of Gardiner. It is called “Yellowstone Destinations.” I like it a lot better than the less expensive BLM and FS sites nearby. They are dreadfully crowded! This one is almost empty, and we look at the Yellowstone River through our big motorhome windshield – nice view. We have room to put out the grill and tables, plus there is a nice fire ring.

We decided to stay on the east side of the park today. We generally stay west and north, so this is a part we aren’t as familiar with. It was a nice change of pace. Obviously there were bison.

This guy owned the road. Vehicles were backed up a long way.

After all, when the bison decide it is time to get a drink, they just go to the valley and get one. Who cares about the silly tourists anyway?

The views were as expected – spectacular.

I love this (very zoomed) view of the Grand Tetons from the northeast side of Jackson Lake.

We also drove to the top of Mount Washington. It was too crowded to park, but I got these pictures of the surroundings.

We traveled along the Yellowstone for the most part.

The water is so clear in the Yellowstone.

We did stop by one thermal area. I know I can’t embed videos very well, but I will try this one.

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Today we took it easy. We went into Livingston and Bozeman to do some shopping. We also treated ourselves to lunch at Sweet Chili Asian Bistro in Bozeman. One of my sons lived in Bozeman for quite a few years, and this was one of our favorite places. The Basil Chicken lunch was lovely.

Tomorrow we get up early to drive through the Lamar Valley and then off to the Beartooth Highway.

Day 1 in Yellowstone

We spent last night in a Cabela’s in Billings, MT. It would have been fine if two truckers hadn’t started a f-word festival at 11:00 at night! There was some altercation about parking, but it finally resolved itself.

Today we arrived in Gardiner, MT. We had intended to stay at a riverside free campground, but it was crowded. We decided to stay at Rocky Mountain campground in town. Beautiful site overlooking the town and then into the park, but it was expensive. Oh well, it is Yellowstone in the summer, and we were actually lucky to get this site.

After we arrived we drove into the park of course. It is the birthday of the National Park Service, so entry was free and it was crowded! Mammoth Hot Springs was tremendous as usual.

However we did see quite a few animals. Bison by the hundreds were roaming around. This guy decided to go for a silhouette.

Elk were found in the Mammoth Springs area as usual.

This elk was found crossing the road just outside Gardiner. She was in no rush to cross the road to the rest of her band.

I also saw pronghorn but too far for a picture.

A serious incident took place as we were driving back to Gardiner from the Lamar Valley. As we came around a corner, we saw a big motorcycle down and people just pulling off the road to help. Turns out a bison had run across the road right in front of the rider, and he had to lay the cycle down to keep from hitting it! The rider said he was fine, spoke quite calmly, and was with friends, so we left after asking if there was anything we could do. Luckily someone was thinking clearly and went to the Roosevelt Ranger station and told them; there was no cell service. We saw two Ranger vehicles heading that way with lights and sirens, and I knew the guy would be in good hands. Pretty scary though.

We did eat in the Mammoth Dining Room. I love NPS dining facilities. They are almost always filled with locally sourced, innovative ingredients, and this was no exception. Not inexpensive, but worth it.

We have found a camping site for the next 3 or 4 nights. It is on the Yellowstone about 10 miles north of Gardiner. It is a private dry camping facility for $25 a night, but it will be quiet and fairly roomy so worth it, especially compared to the $71 we are spending tonight! I have my own water, good solar, and tanks quite capable of dealing with dry camping for a few days.

Medora and Theodore Roosevelt National Park

We spent the nights of 21-23 August (Wednesday through Friday) at Medora Campground in Medora, ND. It gave us two full days to see the sights. The campground itself is fair to good. Sites were decently sized, and there was some grass plus lots of trees. In facet there were so many trees we couldn’t get the satellite antenna to track. It was ok since I had a few seasons of “Endeavor” to catch up on. It is the prequel to the Morse series that I originally saw on PBS.

We didn’t do much on Wednesday, but we wandered around the town a bit. There is a state historic site in town, the Chateau de Mores. It was the summer hunting “cabin” of a French Marquis and his wife Medora, the town’s namesake. The Marquis tried raising beef and cold shipping the meat to the east, but lost a huge amount of money doing it. The house is quite fancy for the time period, and it contains a veritable goldmine of original furnishings, both the mundane (utensils and cooking supplies) and the ornate (beds with mosquito netting hangings and a huge piano). The family owned the 22 room house from the 1880s when they built it until they sold it to the state in the 1930s. I didn’t remember to take a picture of the outside, but it was a tall, two story house with big verandas on the very top of the hill.

Mundane items like the grinder are orignals

The parlor is also almost all original with the exception of the wall paper, a copy of the original

Another fun thing was seeing the Colorado Model A club in town!

My second favorite. I think that is a water container in front of the rear wheel.

There were lots to choose from, at least 14

Thursday evening we really played tourist and went to the Pitchfork Steak Fondue. Their claim to fame is spearing the steaks on pitch forks then cooking them. They also had the normal “fixins” at a cowboy-style event.

Steak (notice the pitchfork holes), coleslaw, great beans, potatoe, Texas toast, fruit and brownies. They had some fresh veggies too, but I didn’t get any.

We then went to the “Medora Musical.” I was expecting a play with music, but it was a musical variety show. I was surprised, but not disappointed. Two MCs, one who sang and the other was more a comedian, a nice band, 12 college aged singers, horse riders, and even fireworks at the end. There was also a nationally known comedian just after intermission. He was good, but the spectacle was the musical acts. Lots of costume changes.

Note the horses to the right of the stage

Lots of flag-waving patriotism with a mixture of country, rock, and gospel songs.

Friday we headed to the National Park. We went to the south unit this time (we did the north unit when we were at Lewis and Clark State Park). The scenery was more “badlands” in the north unit, but the south had some great views too.

There were also animals. The bison was walking at the edge of the road, away from the nursery herd. The main attraction of the south unit are the wild horses, and we did see this one band. I also got a hilarious video of a territorial prairie dog. Click on the link to see it. He or she is really getting after a territorial rival!

Rather ratty looking fellow at this time of uear

Umm. Video doesn’t work, so I will work on it later.

In the middle of all of this “touristing”, I also finished a sewing project. It is a washable throw rug made with quilt batting and a jelly roll of fabric (2 1/2” strips). I was quite pleased with it, and it fits fairly well in front of my sink. Hopefully it will keep the carpet there cleaner! It is actually isn’t as oddly shaped as it seems in the picture! I must admit I really like my new sewing machine and the sewing table I bought for it.

Tonight we are staying in a Cabela’s parking lot in Billings, MT. We have decided to head toward Yellowstone instead of Great Falls, so we are hoping to get a Fish and Game campsite north of Gardiner tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes.

Oil and lots of fur trade history

We spent Monday, 19 August, seeing some sites around Williston. Williston itself is a heavily industrialized oil field town in the Bakken oil field area. I grew up in Oklahoma and have been through the Permian Basin in Texas, but I have never seen so much oil development as I did in this area of North Dakota. Most sites had only 2-4 pump jacks, but the largest we saw had 24 pump jacks in three gangs of eight. These were the big ones too, not the little ones seen most frequently in Oklahoma. It was still pretty clean with the rig sites being contained. Of course occasionally I would get a whiff of petroleum due to the numerous gas flares that burned, but it wasn’t as bad as Texas. I am guess it is because the Bakken field was developed more recently with stronger environmental policies. It was pretty amazing.

We first visited the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Center. Besides the obligatory Lewis and Clark exhibits, there was also a surprising display about rural electrification and the growth of electric co-ops. It was an entire room, and it was remarkably interesting showing the electric and non-electric versions of all kinds of conveniences such as irons and washing machines. Of course I forgot to take any pictures, but the river was not very close anymore.

We then went to the nearby Fort Buford site with a few rebuilt buildings from post civil war era. We weren’t as interested in that era, so we just looked around a bit. I did take pictures this time though!

We then headed to Fort Union, a much more interesting location to me. It was from the fur trade era, and is a National Historic Site (the two previous sites were ND State Historical Sites). I have never been to a bad NHS, and this one didn’t disappoint either.

It sits on a lovely hill overlooking the Missouri

Might as well post the first information sign for details.

The fort was the most important trading center along the Upper Missouri from 1828 – 1867. They have rebuilt much of the main fort including the palisades and some of the working rooms.

Looking at the gate and wall from the inside.

The crown jewel of the fort was the main building. It had a well documented exterior, and was rebuilt very faithfully to the 1850s view. Fabulous place, though no documentation of the interior was available.

While we were there two men who were retracing the route taken by General Ashley in the early 1820s. They had come the Columbia River drainage across South Pass using horses and mules. They had just arrived in pirogues and bull boats after a trip of hundreds of miles on the Missouri! They were dressed in period clothing, one as a French Canadian trader and one as Indian complete with only a breach cloth and shirt. I wanted to get a picture of them, but I was too shy to bother them. They were coordinating with the NPS about their journey.

We also decided to visit the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, about an hour from Fort Union. Gorgeous place.

Obligatory buffalo picture. Notice the tracking color.

It was hazy and I was shooting into the sun.

The Little Missouri carved the badlands of the park.

The colors are muted by the sun angle, but even better in real life

One of the more unique features of this part of the park are these odd cannonball secretions. They are just big circular rocks resulting from some sort of secretion, but no one knows exactly how they were formed.

Some not quite so round, but interesting.

We didn’t get back until late, and we were tired. We decided to just take Tuesday off, relaxing, sewing (me), and bike riding. We also caught up on the mundane chores of laundry and grocery shopping. We arrived Wednesday afternoon at Medora campground, the subject of the next posts.

FMCA rally in Minot, ND

We arrived by 11:00 or so, and we didn’t wait in line much for parking. While the parking crew was getting us ready, I heard them saying they were short volunteers, so Kevin said he’d help out. That turned into three long days! They really did need the help though. FMCA is an organization for RVers, and they are run by volunteers. Yes, there is a fairly small paid staff, but all the heavy lifting is by volunteers. The parking crew had to help more than 1600 RVs (mostly motorhomes) get through crowded interior roads and park in a spot that matched what they had requested at signup – 30 amp electric, 50 amp electric, dry camping (generators allow), handicapped, etc. It was a lot of work, but he seemed to enjoy it.

My volunteer job was driving a golf cart that picked people up and took them wherever they wanted to go in the grounds. There were also trams that went on defined routes, but most people preferred us since we went point to point. Kevin also drove a golf cart when his parking duties were done after the third day.

As for the FMCA rally itself, it was informative, wet, muddy, enjoyable meeting friends again, and the entertainment was quite good. The problem was that the headliner entertainment was in an arena with miserable accoustics! We heard Captain Sullenberger (Miracle on the Hudson) gave an outstanding talk about integrity and leadership. There was no mention of the current president, but one could see that Sully wasn’t a fan. He really demonstrated the best that our military academies produce. Sully for a President! (I wish). Like nearly all membership organizations, FMCA is going through a membership decline. They are trying to address an aging membership by adding some younger entertainers, and those were very good. Mostly they were local country or bluegrass batsman and I liked them all. The headliners were two dance bands playing mostly older music and the Spinners who would have been great fun if not for the lousy sound.

Since we had heard some of the seminars before, I did get a bunch of sewing done. I finished the individual strips for my planned kitchen rug, and it is now ready to be assembled. I hopefully will get that started soon.

We left this morning, and I was ready for something other than 10’ between motorhomes! We found it at Lewis and Clark State Park on Sakakawea Lake, but far up river from our Corps of Engineers spot from just before the river. It is lovely.

Note I didn’t take a picture of the FMCA spot – it was just gravel in a parking lot.

We are heading to Williston tomorrow to do more Lewis and Clark stuff, so more to come then.

Lake Sakakwea, Lewis and Clark, and Mandans

We are spending three nights at the Corps of Engineers campground at Lake Sakakwea, 80-ish miles south of Minot, ND. It is an absolutely gorgeous campground with huge sites, asphalt and concrete sites, lots of grass and trees.

We arrived on Thursday, and went spent time Friday and Saturday seeing historic sites nearby. We started at the North Dakota Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center outside of Washburn, ND. Very, very nice historical presentation and some replicas of outstanding art, both modern and 1800s.

Sculpture in front of the Lewis and Clark Interprative Center

Once we got ourselves oriented, we went to Fort Mandan, a recreation of the fort the expedition stayed in during the winter of 1804\1805. There was a charge for the interpretive tour, but the guide was really, really good.

The fort had had a lot of furnishings to show how they lived.

Eight enlisted men lived in each of these small rooms plus the attic

We then went to the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site a few miles away. This is the same group of Indians whose dirt/log buildings we saw recreated at Fort Abraham Lincoln a few days before. This recreated building had a number of furnishings in it and was slightly larger.

The original inhabitants built caches for food both inside and outside the lodges

Historically accurate artifacts were all around

Definitely bigger than the others we saw

It was a foggy, dreary morning. We noticed how many boats were fishing the outlet of the spillway, and we drove down it a little to see.

There was a LOT of water coming over the spillway with 4 big gates open

Today we went back to Washburn for a late breakfast and tried to see the local county museum. Silly us didn’t check the times though, and it wasn’t open. Then we decided to go to the “ big town” of Garrison to get some groceries before heading to the FMCA rally in Minot. We had a fascinating detour through the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge. The building itself was officially closed, but the cleaner let us in. I didn’t want to spend too much time inside, but we did do the Auto Tour. It was gorgeous, and I saw this huge hawk. I am not sure what kind it is, but it was so big I thought it might be a a juvenile eagle. This is a picture I took at as big of a zoom as I possibly could manage.

I will put the name of I find out what it is!

We had pork chops in the sous vide along with potatoes mixed with onions and mushrooms. Lovely. Tomorrow we head to the rally pretty early so we don’t get caught into the line here for the dump station. They only have 2 dumps for the 90 or so campsites here!

Bismarck, ND

We moved yesterday to the Bismarck KOA. Nice place where we are going to stay for two nights before heading to a Corps of Engineers park at Lake Sakakwea (yes, it is really spelled like that). What a surprise! Shady sites which means no satellite, but we get decent OTA channels.

Unusual to have a pull through shady site with full hooks

Today we went to Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Great place with lovely views and interesting history. First the scenery along the Missouri River.

The park is set on a small hill overlooking the Missouri. The first settlements known were Mandan. They lived here in a town of up to 1500 people known as Slant. Sadly their numbers were decimated by small pox brought by Comanches in the mid 1700s and the site was abandoned by the time Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805. A few of their earthen lodges have been recreated.

A bit closer via the path from the Visitor Center

I think the thick earth walls would make this a much more comfortable place to live in the hot summers and the cold winters.

The next people to settle were American infantry soldiers who were to protect settlers and rail readers. Not a very intelligent move to send infantry to protect against some of the finest horsemen ever known! Fort McKeen was built in 1872 on a tall site overlooking the river.

One of the reconstructed infantry blockhouses

When the US decided to send cavalry, the fort was moved closer to the river and renamed to Fort Abraham Lincoln. The first commander of the expanded fort was George Custer (until he went to the Little Bighorn). A number of buildings have been reconstructed.

One of the many horse barns. This was the only one reconstructed since the river took the foundations of many of the others

Even the old post cemetery was still there

A distant view showing some barracks and Custer’s house, tucked next to the barracks on the far left

The fort was abandoned in the 1891. As usual it was the CCC who built the park visitor center (a lovely stone building), shelters, and roads. They also built the Ft. McKeen blockhouses and the Mandan village. The other buildings were built by a combination of park employees, volunteers, and the ND National Guard.

Oh, and we went by Scheel’s to buy me a new pair of walking shoes. Woah! Those things are expensive, but hopefully they help me walk more.