Montana – TooBusyForWork

Forgotten end to the Canada Alaska caravan trip

I guess I was sicker than I remembered at the end of the trip, because I forgot to post! I was getting together to put a new one up, and I realized I never finished the trip posts. Oops! Here you go, weeks late. And the photo quality isn’t very good. My camera finally gave up completely, so they are all from my iPhone. The zoomed in quality is particularly bad!

We left Prince George after breakfast on Tuesday, 7 September. We decided we wanted to head home the fastest way possible, so we took the TransCanada Highway to just north of Jasper. We had intended on staying at the Icefields, but with the fires we decided on the Hinton KOA instead, the same place we stayed on the outgoing trip. The campground sites are lovely, but make sure you drive very, very slowly coming in. The campground roads are awful! Huge potholes are too numerous to dodge, so just go slowly. We had some caravan friends staying at the same place, and we all sat around our propane fire pit and relaxed after the rigors of the trip.

The next day we drove down through Jasper and Banff National Parks. The town of Jasper was closed completely as were all the campgrounds, and it was obvious why. Here are a bunch of pictures of the fire and it’s residual smoke.

When we got to Banff we saw mountain goats at the same place we saw them on the outgoing trip. There actually are 5 in this picture, but the baby is tough to spot.

Banff is just outside Calgary, so the road quickly becomes a major one, but the smoke still lingered.

Being a populous area with lots of wildlife, we saw a number of these wildlife crossings.

We spent Kevin’s birthday at Cranbrook KOA. Nice enough place. Not a great place for a 70th birthday though! We were both feeling pretty miserable, so we just had eggs and bacon, using them up before the border. No nice dinner for his birthday!

On 9 September we crossed the border with hardly any wait. Quite different when it is a weekday morning than the middle of a Saturday! We spent the night at one of the prettiest campgrounds we have ever been in – Jim and Mary’s RV Park outside Missoula, MT. The place is a gardener’s paradise with flowers everywhere. We always try to stay here when we are in the area. Since we were both feeling so blah, we would have like to stay 2 nights, but they didn’t have any availability, so we headed to Big Timber KOA west of Bozeman, MT. Nice enough place, but I don’t remember any details. Remember I noted the fuzzy head?

On 10 September we came to the Buffalo, WY KOA, and we finally got to rest a bit. We reserved a fancy patio site next to the river in their newer area. We stayed two nights. Much of the time I just relaxed on the patio, soaking up the sun and mild temps. We both needed a rest. After two nights, we were beginning to feel human again! It helps that the Buffalo and Sheridan areas of the Bighorns are some of our favorite places, though we usually stay up in the mountains or at the lake between the two towns. We wanted relaxing pampering though, so we chose the KOA. I don’t usually spring for patio sites, but this one was well worth it for recharging.

Feeling almost human, we continued east to Belevedere, SD KOA, west of the Badlands. We would normally have spent a couple of days boondocking in the Badlands area or at the park campground, but we were on a mission to get home! And yes, you are seeing a theme of KOAs. We find them standardized enough and close to the highway that we particularly like them on traveling days. After Belevedere, we spent the last night on the road at the Sioux Falls, SD KOA.

We are now almost home, and we booked it out of there on Thursday, 15 September. However a minor disaster struck not far out of Sioux Falls. We used the Blue Beacon Truck Wash there, and discovered the rock guard at the back of the MH had come unattached and we were leaking fluid of some type. We called our local shop in Decorah, IA and they said bring it in though it would get looked at for a few days. I drove the MH there while Kevin drove behind in the Jeep making sure nothing disastrous happened. He did enough debug to discover it was a small oil leak from near the oil filter. We just stopped at every rest area and checked the oil on the way. It was a slow way to travel! When we got to Decorah, we unloaded only the bare necessities (cats, meds, night clothes) and headed home. The cats were thrilled to have all the space, and they spent a lot of times doing zoomies and looking out the windows. The next day we drove back to Decorah and picked up clothes and a few more necessities. The forecast was for sunny weather, so we just left the refrigerator running knowing the batteries and solar would keep it happy. It took a week to get the diagnosis and a part (oil filter loose and a turbo hose leaking, so needed a new one of those), but we finally got the rig to Cedar Falls a week later on Thursday, 23 September.

We parked the rig at a nice local campground, Big Woods County Park. It is only 7 miles from the house and has roomy FHU sites. It makes a handy place to stash the rig while we unpacked and clean up. I admit we weren’t very quick at the cleaning business. We got the important things like like haircuts, grocery runs, and laundry though. We finally got the MH winterized. Kevin also emptied out every storage bay and repacked! I bet we are hundreds of pounds lighter LOL! It is amazing how unneeded junk hides in the back of the bays.

I will summarize our views of caravans in general and the specifics of this caravan in the next post. This one is long enough!

The last of Lewis and Clark plus getting ready for Canada

We moved to Great Falls, MT. The campground has new owners who call it “Great Falls RV Park”, but all the signs still say “Dick’s RV Park”. It isn’t bad – lots of pull through with decent gravel sites and grass between sites. Plenty long enough even for the really big rigs.

This is the last of our Lewis and Clark trail sites on this trip. We had originally planned on doing the Yellowstone River section of their trip, but that all went by the wayside with the Yellowstone floods. We have pretty much done entire trail except for that, though it has been across a few separate years. This time we visited the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center just downstream from the Black Eagle Falls, one of the few parts of the falls still visible. Most of the multiple falls Lewis and Clark experienced are under the waters backed up by dams. It was a standard but very nice experience. We have seen similar exhibits in the other museums and centers along the way, so I didn’t take pictures. I think one of the best sections of exhibits was about Sacajawea and what it meant to be a native woman in her time.

Across the river was the remnants of a huge smelter. Only the mill channel and the foundations were left, but it was impressive.

Black Eagle Smelter ruins with mill race

The falls themselves were still impressive, though only a fraction of their original size. That is some hard rock!

There we’re lots of little islands even with the water at a pretty high level. Gulls had take over most of them. I wish I had taken a video so you could hear them, but I only have this (very poor) iPhone picture. You will have to use very sharp eyes to tell the difference between the rocks and the gulls, but they really are there!

And then I got this adorable picture of Minnie and Luna cuddling again! This little bathroom rug is Minnie’s favorite spot, and Luna decided to check it out too. It was just after I had washed and dried it, so I think they liked the fluffiness of the rug.

Cuddling on the world’s best rug (according to Minnie at least)

We are also doing last minute preparations for the Canada crossing. We filled up the car with fuel, bought groceries, and did some (never-ending) laundry. The Adventure Caravans “Tailgunner” came by to go through a checklist for our motorhome. He checked tires, asked when we had last had full service, status of spares (fuel filters, water separation filter, serpentine belt, DEF), and we passed. It would actually be hard not to pass since they sent us the checklist in advance, but I guess some people do.

We had our first official meeting with our Adventure Caravan crew. There are 19 rigs traveling as guests plus a Wagonmaster (in overall charge, always heads out first, arrives at destination first) and a Tailgunner (last in the group, helps with any issues on the road). We are a diverse group – mostly couples from all over the US plus a couple from Belgium and Venezuela, a few singles, one family of 3, motorhomes of various types and sizes from 45’ to a Class B, fifth wheels, and travel trailers. All seem to be retired which makes sense with the time of year and the length of the trip, but ages range from just under 60 to 80+. I still have some concerns about how much “togetherness” we will be expected to have. I like my privacy too! I am definitely looking forward to the trip.

Now to Wyoming and Montana

We left the Black Hills on Monday, 27 June. We scored a great dry camping spot at De Smet Lake between Buffalo and Sheridan. We spent 3 nights there, sitting right next to the lake. It was a lovely change from all the commercial campgrounds we have been in. It was also the first time we have been without hookups on this entire trip! We did need some generator time for AC on two days, but it was pretty simple except that. Since we are finally in the mountains, we had to have mountain pictures!

See the snow capped mountains? Near Buffalo.

We saw at least 100 pronghorns, but this was the only picture I got. It isn’t very good, still being from a distance and cropped a lot, but at least it does show a pronghorn.

We left De Smet and went to the KOA at Hardin, MT. They had a tornado her not too long ago, and the campground still shows the effects. It wasn’t in great shape before, but the owners have been so busy recovering from the storm that a lot of routine maintenance has been deferred. Still not a bad place to stay the night. It was amazingly quiet.

We took a trip to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area south of Hardin almost to Wyoming. The area is lovely with a large flat area for farming and a canyon where the Bighorn River runs. There is one big dam and a smaller dam, both to supply power. The smaller one also acts as silt control for the blue ribbon fishery on the Bighorn. The impounded river is more like a wide river set into a deep canyon. Next time we come through I want to rent a pontoon boat and drive it up the canyon. It would be a gorgeous trip.

The immediate downriver dam for power and silt control

We are now in the Helena, MT KOA. The trip here was unusually busy, but then again it WAS the Friday before the Independence Day holiday! It seemed like all of Montana was on the move in RVs, cars, and SUVs. There was every type of outdoor gear imaginable – tents, OHVs, boats, etc. We stopped at the rest area in Bozeman, and traffic to get on I-90 was backed up almost a mile! I think people are so excited to get out they are going no matter how bad the fuel gets. As we went through Billings I finally got the motorhome washed. It was past dirty. And then we got 8 miles of gravel an hour later. Sigh. My pretty motorhome looks awful again. An hour past the gravel section our windshield got a big divot from a rock! We were 30 minutes from Helena, but too late for Safelite there. We ended up arranging to have it fixed in Great Falls next week.

As we pulled into the Helena campground, I got this adorable picture of both cats sleeping together. They aren’t usually cuddly with each other even though they are sisters, but this was so cute!

Luna is in Minnie’s favorite travel spot

Luna is normally on Kevin’s lap during travel while Minnie is almost always in this specific chair. She definitely prefers this specific quilt too. The picture is a bit misleading about their relative sizes. Minnie is actually significantly smaller than Luna.

Today we went on a scenic boat tour through Gates of the Mountains, named by Lewis and Clark as they came through on the Missouri. The area is part of the Missouri River dam system now, so the very narrow entrance is partially hidden by water these days. It was a fabulous trip, almost 2 hours long, with a great captain. He gave lots of information about the history, the geology, and the flora and fauna. Here is a picture dump.

A lot of the area around the marina is gently rolling

This boat was built in the 1950s, but we went in the modern version with a roof.

Mostly limestone cliffs with lots of caves and crevasses

An unusual eagle nest on a rock. It was stolen from an osprey a few years previously. See the babies?

Imagine the water 20’ lower. This is the “gate” the explorers saw

I actually took about 80 pictures, but that would have been a bit excessive!

We are finishing up the day with laundry and shopping, all the fascinating stuff of long term living. I admit (again) that I LOVE my stackable washer and dryer. They are smaller than home units, and the dryer takes a long time because it works on 110v. However I love not going to the laundromat and never knowing how hot the washer or dryer is.

The campground looks like Tiffin convention, and we are the small folks! There are numerous Bus and Phaeton models in the park. The folks who pulled in next to us are going on the same caravan we are, and they are headed to Great Falls on 5 July, just like us. I am betting some of the other rigs here are part of the caravan too. Guess we will find out on Tuesday.

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.

Yellowstone – fabulous and smoky

We are back on the road. We left Tuesday after waiting for the Labor Day crowds to go home. We arrived at Baker’s Hole campground around 4:00 and got the next to last spot here. It is a huge site next to the river with a good open exposure. We were really interested in how the solar set up would work, and it is wonderful! We have turned on the generator only long enough to run the expresso machine in the mornings. The solar has brought the battery up to full charge every day. We have run the fans all day, used the satellite television system extensively, and run the heater quite a bit at night and in the mornings. We have been more extravagant with power than we usually are, and it is still lovely.

For the last few years we have concentrated on seeing animals while in the park. This time we decided to concentrate on the thermal features. I always recommend first (or second) time visitors to Yellowstone really spend time at the variety of thermal features. The animals and scenery are spectacular, but there is nowhere else on earth with such an abundance of funeroles, hot springs, paint pots and geysers like YNP. My back is still bothering me, and Kevin’s knee is still a problem, but we did take some short loops to see some of the best spots.

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The basin from a distance on a cool morning

An itty bitty geyser on a ~5 minute cycle

The park is weirdly smoky, though the pollution is still better than at home.

A very smoky sunrise heading into the park

The smoke was intense. Trust me, there are mountains over there.

We were planning on heading to Mammoth Spring campground from here, but the road between Norris and Mammoth is closing for construction on Sunday. The detour is something I do NOT want to do with a trailer, so we decided to go to Gros Ventre in Grand Teton National Park again. Tomorrow we will ride the bikes into West Yellowstone and visit the museum and Visitor Center there. Oddly enough, I haven’t ever been to either of them.