April 26 - 24, 2017. After leaving Cloud 9 we headed on to Branson Ridge, an OCP property in Branson, Missouri, that we are visiting for the first time. We arrived there on April 4 and stayed until the 24th. The campground was OK, but as other OCP properties are, it is in rough shape. It was purchased through a foreclosure about three years ago, and they are still working on getting it in shape. Most of the sites have concrete pads with gravel next to it and a nice covered gazebo with a picnic table. They do have a walking trail, with long hills and turns that the dogs enjoyed walking. Down one long trail we found a huge field with golf cart tracks down both ends. The grass was pretty long so we did not go down there often, plus the ticks were really, really bad.
We did a few things while in Branson, but did not see any shows or go to any of the major museums. Everything was real expensive, and we did not want to spend the money. The one museum we did go to was on the campus of the Ozarks, a liberal arts college. There were a few other things on the campus to see, but we did not go back. We did go see Table Rock Lake and the visitor center and the fish hatchery. We then hit a wine tasting vineyard and ended up buying a bottle of wine (naturally).
We found a used book store which we frequented a few times and Jim was able to get a few Clive Cussler books, and even finished 2 of them. We used the Best Buy gift card Joe got us for Christmas to buy a new toaster oven – a very nice Cuisinart. We were also able to get a 20% discount that Best Buy had as a special, on top of the $50 from Joe.
Since we spent three weeks in Branson, our next few stops are going to be one night stands. From Branson we stopped in Linn Valley, Kansas at a Coast to Coast spot. From there we drove to Nebraska City, Nebraska, and then South Sioux City, Nebraska. A cold front came down and the temperature is staying in the 40’s and tonight is supposed to get down into the 30’s.
April 30, 2017. Landed in Wall, South Dakota on Friday, April 28 at Sleepy Hollow Campground. We are staying here for three days and on Monday will be heading to Rapid City. We went to the infamous Wall Drug a couple of days and had a 5¢ cup of coffee and a donut. We also took our pictures with some of the statutes and on some of the huge animals in the back yard. Wall Drug is a tourist attraction but does have a lot of clothes, boots, camping supplies, rocks & stones, books, among other things.
Sunday we went to the Minuteman Missile Site National Monument and then drove into Badlands National Park.
May 8, 2017. We arrived in Rapid City at Rushmore Shadows RV Resort on May 1 and stayed there for a week. On May 2 we visited the South Dakota Air and Space Museum which was on the Ellington Air Force Base. That was neat and Jim always enjoys visiting museums with air planes. We also visited the Our Founding Fathers Museum, where Jim was able to shoot an actual musket.
The next day we were going to visit Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore but the truck started missing real bad and Jim decided that we needed to get it worked on. So we started looking for a place to work on it and found Friendly Automotive who told us to come in the next day. We arrived early and sat and waited while John worked on the truck. Said that a coil was going bad and replaced that, the serpentine belt and the fuel filter. On the way home going up a long slow hill the truck started missing again. So we ended up going back and having John look at the truck again. He switched the 6th and 7th coils and now the truck runs good. Very curious.
On May 5 we decided to head to Lead and Deadwood to see what those cities were about. Both cities are pretty much devoted to tourism but in Lead we learned about the mining that brought the city to life. Deadwood was pretty quiet when we got there and we walked up the street, had lunch, and then walked back. All that was there was mostly gift shops and bars. We then drove through Spearfish Canyon which we were told was very beautiful. It was very nice with a lot of beautiful scenery.
May 6 we went to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial, and on May 7 we met up with Linda Clayton and went to Custer State Park. That was a long day as we met her in Keystone at 10am, took an hour just to drive down to the entrance to the park, and then took another 5 hours to drive through the park. We saw some buffalo, mountain goats, and donkeys that came up to our truck to get food. The last part of our drive up Needles Hwy was beautiful with fantastic scenery and geology that was massive and fascinating.
Monday we left Rapid City and arrived in Sundance, Wyoming, the town where the Sundance Kid got his name. Tomorrow we will visit the museum and Devils Tower National Monument.
May 8, 2017. We left Rapid City on May 8 and drove to Sundance, Wyoming. We stayed at Mountain View RV Park from May 8-10. In Sundance we visited the local museum which told about the history of the area, and then went to Devil’s Tower National Monument. We walked around the monument, about 1.3 miles and Jim just about complained the whole way around. I wish I could get him walking more, but he says his legs are always tired. Well, maybe it’s from not walking enough and liver issues could account for it as well. But he made it all around. Then we drove back to Sundance and did quite a few geocaches because the Museum gives Sundance coins to those who find the caches on the Sundance Trail. We did not get all of them as we ran out of daylight, but the guy gave us the coins anyway.
May 13, 2017. On May 10 we made it to Sheridan, Wyoming and then the next day to Columbus, Montana. We only stayed at each place one night before heading south toward Yellowstone. We stayed at Yellowstone Edge RV Park, which was quite expensive - $52 a night. These parks were all Good Sam parks, but all cost us at least $35-38 a night. The parks get more expensive the farther west we go. No Passport America or C-C parks out here.
Saturday, May 13 We drove from Livingston, Montana down Hwy 89 into Yellowstone National Park. If we had known what the road was like, we should have driven to Bozeman and taken Hwy 191 down into West Yellowstone. As it was, there was a lot of construction going on and slow driving. The GPS could not figure out where we were and kept trying to get us to turn around; she kept saying our arrival time was 5pm. But as soon as we got out of the park she was able to figure out where we were, which was around 1pm.
The park we were supposed to stay at was quite dreary and in the middle of town with just rocks and roads all around. The owner was out of town so we had lunch while waiting for him to call me back. Since he had not called before we were done with lunch, we drove down to the Cradleboard and met Jan, our boss, and talked with her and a few other workampers. Jan mentioned there was another spot we might like better and took us over to look at it, and sure enough, we did like it better. It is next to a cabin and we have a small yard with a picnic table. I put the carpet out, moved the picnic table and then put out the awning. Need to do a little more work to make it “home.” The only bad thing is that we cannot get any TV stations – the only one we get is an analog station and it’s hard to view. I guess there are too many mountains in the way. Bozeman is about 63 miles as the crow flies, but we still cannot get anything. There is a cable hookup next to us and we were hoping that there would be cable, but no luck. I’ll call the cable companies on Monday to see if we can get some cable. I do have a lot of movies downloaded, so we might just be watching movies all the time.
We are close to a Jeep Trail so I have a close place to take the girls walking and let them loose.
I did see a lady walk her dog through our space so I went out and mentioned that it was our yard and I hoped she did not let her dog do its business. She said she did not but others in the area bring their dogs over to our space. So, I might just have to keep Hayley out to discourage anyone from coming into our “space.” I hate to be mean about things, but I really do not like dogs popping in our space, especially since our dogs will not.
We decided to take a drive into Yellowstone National Park before we started our summer job. We drove to Old Faithful and along the North Rim Drive.
Jim went out and took a long walk this afternoon, all the way down to the Cradleboard and met with the owners and some other people. I’m glad he went out and got a walk in.
May 19, 2017. Well, yesterday was our first day of work. The Cradleboard has four cash registers inside of a square where we stand to help the customers. They do have the rubber pads all around the area so it helps being on our feet for so long. Started learning the cash register and credit card machine again. Same credit card machine that we used at Yogi Bear and the cash register is similar. They do not like us to use the subtotal, then total to get the change back – they want us to count back change. I told her that I was not good at math and did not feel comfortable doing that; in order to minimize mistakes I use the subtotal so the machine tells me what the change is. By 10pm my brain was getting foggy and I was getting real tired. My back was starting to hurt a little from being on my feet; Jim said his back was really hurting as well as his legs being tired.
Jim is learning the cash register for the first time – he stayed away from it when we worked at Yogi Bear, but now he has to do it. So I, Jen and another workamper, Chris, helped him with the register. He’ll get it eventually and get better at it. Lots of Asians and people from other countries come to Yellowstone; it’s quite interesting.
Tuesday night May 16 we had about 3” of snow fall and the high was about 38. The normal high for June and July is high-70s, which is nice but I like warmer weather. I don’t think I will be wearing shorts this summer at all.
We will be getting satellite service for TV – Jen said she was going to buy the satellite and receiver and we will pay for the monthly service.
June 6, 2017. We worked one week at The Cradleboard evening shift when they switched us to days at the Dancing Moose to help John out as he was there all by himself. Also, Jen’s neighbor’s daughter Madison started working with us. I also told Jennifer that we could not start at 7:30am and could we work from 8:30 to 3:30 and she said fine. When we arrived at work Thursday morning, there was another couple there already working. As there seemed to be overkill on the amount of people working, and sales being very slow, we offered not to work on Thursday, but only Friday to Monday. They were very amenable to that.
We worked our third week Friday to Monday, and then on Monday, June 5 John kept talking about how much sales were down and that he could not afford to keep us, I guess especially since he had Madison working there as well. But, I am sure that he is keeping the other two couples. Anyway, now we are "retired” again. We are going to stay here for another week or so even though Paul told us we needed to leave ASAP.
However, as we did travel up here from Florida specifically to take this job, we are going to stay here until we can figure out what we are going to do next. Jim ordered a recumbent bike, which will be here in three days, but I ordered the dogs Heartgard from Australia, which won’t be here at least a week.
We are trying to sell Jim’s Schwinn bike and have had a few inquiries about it, so we are hoping that sells pretty soon. And now we have to figure out if we want to work again, or just continue on our road. We also have to consider cataract surgery for Jim, as we were hoping to get that done in July once he goes on Medicare.
We arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana on May 13, 2017, the day before Mother's Day. We are sitting next to a cabin so we have our own private yard with a picnic table. We really like this space. The only disadvantage is no antenna TV, but our employer said they will get us satellite TV, so that will help. West Yellowstone is a small, tourist town with the main attraction being Yellowstone National Park. We get quite a few visitors coming into our store, mostly people from Asia, China, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and others. The quality of the jewelry we sell is high, American made, specifically authentic Indian from Arizona.
The workamping community is quite amazing. A young couple we met back in 2012 while working for Amazon are here working again; they have been coming back to West Yellowstone for about three years now. It's crazy how we meet up with fellow workampers that we have met or worked with at some point in the past. There is another couple working here that worked with another couple that we know, who worked with us at Yogi Bear Jellystone. We love this lifestyle!
Our workamping job in West Yellowstone came to an end on June 5, 2017. John, the Manager of Dancing Moose, decided that the companies were not making enough money to warrant keeping us on. So, since they basically laid us off, we decided to continue with our travels instead of looking for another job in the area. We left West Yellowstone on June 16, and will continue to Glacier National Park, then west to Washington and Oregon.
June 11, 2017. We went to visit the Grizzly & Wolf Center the other day. It was neat seeing all the bears forging for food and playing together. The wolves did not do anything except lay around and walk around their pens. They had some raptors as well. All of the animals were either injured and could not survive in the wild, or were born in the facility.
We also visited Hebgen Lake where a massive earthquake occurred in 1959 at midnight when everyone was sleeping. Lots of people died and a lake was formed from the water.
We were able to sell the Schwinn the day after I posted it on the Yellowstone Classifieds, and now Jim is in the process of building an extension onto the bike rack to fit his trike, and hopefully my bike after taking the front wheel off.
We are still waiting for the Heartgard to arrive. Hopefully it will come today or tomorrow as we have a reservation starting Friday at a C-C in White Sulfur Springs. But if I have to change it, I will, but we need to get the heartgard first.
Took Hayley & Lucy to the local vets to get their yearly shots. I asked the Doc about the growths in Hayley’s eye and he said that they will just get worse and should be removed. I was trying to work out a way to get Jim’s cataract surgery done while we were around Seattle, but that is not going to work as the various appointments take several weeks to a month to occur. So, we are going to wait until we get back to Texas. I have revised our journey schedule so that we are back at Tres Rios on October 1 for three weeks, then the one week out at the TT, then back to Tres Rios. After that we will travel down to Houston for the week of Thanksgiving. From there I think we will travel down to Big Bend NP as we have not seen it before.
June 16, 2017. We left West Yellowstone and luckily the girls’ Heartgard arrived the day before. I had made us reservations at a C-C park in White Sulphur Springs, MT where we will stay for 10 days. Contesoga RV Park sat on the out skirts of town close to a gravel road where I found an old cow field where I was able to let them loose. We then walked around town on our morning and afternoon walks. WSS was not a very large town and it was kind of run down. There were a lot of old houses, trailers and RVs sitting all over the place. The mill seemed closed, even though I saw trucks and new materials sitting around them.
We did see a herd of deer that walked all around the town. Most of them were young bucks, with a few doe here and there. I did see one doe with her fawn. A lot of people had horses and we were able to stop and visit with a few horses around town.
We went to lunch at Bar 47 one day and also visited the local brewery (2 Basset Brewery). There was a hot springs at one of the motels that was open to the public, but it smelled of Sulphur and I did not want to go and smell.
One day we drove to Helena to take a tour of the Gates of the Mountains, the trip up the Missouri that Lewis & Clark took when they encountered when exploring the area.
June 26, 2017. We left Conestoga and spent the night at Lake Placid SP in Seeley Lake, MT. The mosquitos were horrible here. In WSS I bought some essential oils of Germanium and Lemongrass, so I put some drops in water and sprayed me and the dogs before our walk. It seemed to help as we were not very bothered by the mosquitos. There was no water here so we had to fill up the tank, plus no dump station so I had the gray water open all night to drip. The weather got pretty hot – high 80s, and in the morning a rain shower came through and cooled everything off.
June 27 – 3, 2017. Drove to Sundance RV Park in Coram, Montana just outside of Glacier National Park. The weather there will be in the low to high 70s, but I have read that the Going-to-the-sun Road through the park is still closed due to snow. I wonder what the elevation is there?
Sundance RV Park was an OK park, only W/E but at least we were across from the bathrooms and laundry. There was a lot of traffic going into Glacier every day and the park was quite crowded as well. Next door to us at Sundance was a couple who were at Green River Lake SP in Campbellsville, Kentucky in 2013 when we were working for Amazon. They suggested we take the long way around the southern end of the park to the eastern entrance and drive back on Going-to-the-Sun Road. That way we don’t drive it twice. That was a long day as it took us two hours to drive around the park. Got there around lunch time and then drove the Road. Got lots of nice pictures.
We left the Glacier area on July 3 and drove to Woodland RV Park in Libby, Montana.
Back to Daily Journal 2017
We did a few things while in Branson, but did not see any shows or go to any of the major museums. Everything was real expensive, and we did not want to spend the money. The one museum we did go to was on the campus of the Ozarks, a liberal arts college. There were a few other things on the campus to see, but we did not go back. We did go see Table Rock Lake and the visitor center and the fish hatchery. We then hit a wine tasting vineyard and ended up buying a bottle of wine (naturally).
We found a used book store which we frequented a few times and Jim was able to get a few Clive Cussler books, and even finished 2 of them. We used the Best Buy gift card Joe got us for Christmas to buy a new toaster oven – a very nice Cuisinart. We were also able to get a 20% discount that Best Buy had as a special, on top of the $50 from Joe.
Since we spent three weeks in Branson, our next few stops are going to be one night stands. From Branson we stopped in Linn Valley, Kansas at a Coast to Coast spot. From there we drove to Nebraska City, Nebraska, and then South Sioux City, Nebraska. A cold front came down and the temperature is staying in the 40’s and tonight is supposed to get down into the 30’s.
April 30, 2017. Landed in Wall, South Dakota on Friday, April 28 at Sleepy Hollow Campground. We are staying here for three days and on Monday will be heading to Rapid City. We went to the infamous Wall Drug a couple of days and had a 5¢ cup of coffee and a donut. We also took our pictures with some of the statutes and on some of the huge animals in the back yard. Wall Drug is a tourist attraction but does have a lot of clothes, boots, camping supplies, rocks & stones, books, among other things.
Sunday we went to the Minuteman Missile Site National Monument and then drove into Badlands National Park.
May 8, 2017. We arrived in Rapid City at Rushmore Shadows RV Resort on May 1 and stayed there for a week. On May 2 we visited the South Dakota Air and Space Museum which was on the Ellington Air Force Base. That was neat and Jim always enjoys visiting museums with air planes. We also visited the Our Founding Fathers Museum, where Jim was able to shoot an actual musket.
The next day we were going to visit Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore but the truck started missing real bad and Jim decided that we needed to get it worked on. So we started looking for a place to work on it and found Friendly Automotive who told us to come in the next day. We arrived early and sat and waited while John worked on the truck. Said that a coil was going bad and replaced that, the serpentine belt and the fuel filter. On the way home going up a long slow hill the truck started missing again. So we ended up going back and having John look at the truck again. He switched the 6th and 7th coils and now the truck runs good. Very curious.
On May 5 we decided to head to Lead and Deadwood to see what those cities were about. Both cities are pretty much devoted to tourism but in Lead we learned about the mining that brought the city to life. Deadwood was pretty quiet when we got there and we walked up the street, had lunch, and then walked back. All that was there was mostly gift shops and bars. We then drove through Spearfish Canyon which we were told was very beautiful. It was very nice with a lot of beautiful scenery.
May 6 we went to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Memorial, and on May 7 we met up with Linda Clayton and went to Custer State Park. That was a long day as we met her in Keystone at 10am, took an hour just to drive down to the entrance to the park, and then took another 5 hours to drive through the park. We saw some buffalo, mountain goats, and donkeys that came up to our truck to get food. The last part of our drive up Needles Hwy was beautiful with fantastic scenery and geology that was massive and fascinating.
Monday we left Rapid City and arrived in Sundance, Wyoming, the town where the Sundance Kid got his name. Tomorrow we will visit the museum and Devils Tower National Monument.
May 8, 2017. We left Rapid City on May 8 and drove to Sundance, Wyoming. We stayed at Mountain View RV Park from May 8-10. In Sundance we visited the local museum which told about the history of the area, and then went to Devil’s Tower National Monument. We walked around the monument, about 1.3 miles and Jim just about complained the whole way around. I wish I could get him walking more, but he says his legs are always tired. Well, maybe it’s from not walking enough and liver issues could account for it as well. But he made it all around. Then we drove back to Sundance and did quite a few geocaches because the Museum gives Sundance coins to those who find the caches on the Sundance Trail. We did not get all of them as we ran out of daylight, but the guy gave us the coins anyway.
May 13, 2017. On May 10 we made it to Sheridan, Wyoming and then the next day to Columbus, Montana. We only stayed at each place one night before heading south toward Yellowstone. We stayed at Yellowstone Edge RV Park, which was quite expensive - $52 a night. These parks were all Good Sam parks, but all cost us at least $35-38 a night. The parks get more expensive the farther west we go. No Passport America or C-C parks out here.
Saturday, May 13 We drove from Livingston, Montana down Hwy 89 into Yellowstone National Park. If we had known what the road was like, we should have driven to Bozeman and taken Hwy 191 down into West Yellowstone. As it was, there was a lot of construction going on and slow driving. The GPS could not figure out where we were and kept trying to get us to turn around; she kept saying our arrival time was 5pm. But as soon as we got out of the park she was able to figure out where we were, which was around 1pm.
The park we were supposed to stay at was quite dreary and in the middle of town with just rocks and roads all around. The owner was out of town so we had lunch while waiting for him to call me back. Since he had not called before we were done with lunch, we drove down to the Cradleboard and met Jan, our boss, and talked with her and a few other workampers. Jan mentioned there was another spot we might like better and took us over to look at it, and sure enough, we did like it better. It is next to a cabin and we have a small yard with a picnic table. I put the carpet out, moved the picnic table and then put out the awning. Need to do a little more work to make it “home.” The only bad thing is that we cannot get any TV stations – the only one we get is an analog station and it’s hard to view. I guess there are too many mountains in the way. Bozeman is about 63 miles as the crow flies, but we still cannot get anything. There is a cable hookup next to us and we were hoping that there would be cable, but no luck. I’ll call the cable companies on Monday to see if we can get some cable. I do have a lot of movies downloaded, so we might just be watching movies all the time.
We are close to a Jeep Trail so I have a close place to take the girls walking and let them loose.
I did see a lady walk her dog through our space so I went out and mentioned that it was our yard and I hoped she did not let her dog do its business. She said she did not but others in the area bring their dogs over to our space. So, I might just have to keep Hayley out to discourage anyone from coming into our “space.” I hate to be mean about things, but I really do not like dogs popping in our space, especially since our dogs will not.
We decided to take a drive into Yellowstone National Park before we started our summer job. We drove to Old Faithful and along the North Rim Drive.
Jim went out and took a long walk this afternoon, all the way down to the Cradleboard and met with the owners and some other people. I’m glad he went out and got a walk in.
May 19, 2017. Well, yesterday was our first day of work. The Cradleboard has four cash registers inside of a square where we stand to help the customers. They do have the rubber pads all around the area so it helps being on our feet for so long. Started learning the cash register and credit card machine again. Same credit card machine that we used at Yogi Bear and the cash register is similar. They do not like us to use the subtotal, then total to get the change back – they want us to count back change. I told her that I was not good at math and did not feel comfortable doing that; in order to minimize mistakes I use the subtotal so the machine tells me what the change is. By 10pm my brain was getting foggy and I was getting real tired. My back was starting to hurt a little from being on my feet; Jim said his back was really hurting as well as his legs being tired.
Jim is learning the cash register for the first time – he stayed away from it when we worked at Yogi Bear, but now he has to do it. So I, Jen and another workamper, Chris, helped him with the register. He’ll get it eventually and get better at it. Lots of Asians and people from other countries come to Yellowstone; it’s quite interesting.
Tuesday night May 16 we had about 3” of snow fall and the high was about 38. The normal high for June and July is high-70s, which is nice but I like warmer weather. I don’t think I will be wearing shorts this summer at all.
We will be getting satellite service for TV – Jen said she was going to buy the satellite and receiver and we will pay for the monthly service.
June 6, 2017. We worked one week at The Cradleboard evening shift when they switched us to days at the Dancing Moose to help John out as he was there all by himself. Also, Jen’s neighbor’s daughter Madison started working with us. I also told Jennifer that we could not start at 7:30am and could we work from 8:30 to 3:30 and she said fine. When we arrived at work Thursday morning, there was another couple there already working. As there seemed to be overkill on the amount of people working, and sales being very slow, we offered not to work on Thursday, but only Friday to Monday. They were very amenable to that.
We worked our third week Friday to Monday, and then on Monday, June 5 John kept talking about how much sales were down and that he could not afford to keep us, I guess especially since he had Madison working there as well. But, I am sure that he is keeping the other two couples. Anyway, now we are "retired” again. We are going to stay here for another week or so even though Paul told us we needed to leave ASAP.
However, as we did travel up here from Florida specifically to take this job, we are going to stay here until we can figure out what we are going to do next. Jim ordered a recumbent bike, which will be here in three days, but I ordered the dogs Heartgard from Australia, which won’t be here at least a week.
We are trying to sell Jim’s Schwinn bike and have had a few inquiries about it, so we are hoping that sells pretty soon. And now we have to figure out if we want to work again, or just continue on our road. We also have to consider cataract surgery for Jim, as we were hoping to get that done in July once he goes on Medicare.
We arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana on May 13, 2017, the day before Mother's Day. We are sitting next to a cabin so we have our own private yard with a picnic table. We really like this space. The only disadvantage is no antenna TV, but our employer said they will get us satellite TV, so that will help. West Yellowstone is a small, tourist town with the main attraction being Yellowstone National Park. We get quite a few visitors coming into our store, mostly people from Asia, China, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and others. The quality of the jewelry we sell is high, American made, specifically authentic Indian from Arizona.
The workamping community is quite amazing. A young couple we met back in 2012 while working for Amazon are here working again; they have been coming back to West Yellowstone for about three years now. It's crazy how we meet up with fellow workampers that we have met or worked with at some point in the past. There is another couple working here that worked with another couple that we know, who worked with us at Yogi Bear Jellystone. We love this lifestyle!
Our workamping job in West Yellowstone came to an end on June 5, 2017. John, the Manager of Dancing Moose, decided that the companies were not making enough money to warrant keeping us on. So, since they basically laid us off, we decided to continue with our travels instead of looking for another job in the area. We left West Yellowstone on June 16, and will continue to Glacier National Park, then west to Washington and Oregon.
June 11, 2017. We went to visit the Grizzly & Wolf Center the other day. It was neat seeing all the bears forging for food and playing together. The wolves did not do anything except lay around and walk around their pens. They had some raptors as well. All of the animals were either injured and could not survive in the wild, or were born in the facility.
We also visited Hebgen Lake where a massive earthquake occurred in 1959 at midnight when everyone was sleeping. Lots of people died and a lake was formed from the water.
We were able to sell the Schwinn the day after I posted it on the Yellowstone Classifieds, and now Jim is in the process of building an extension onto the bike rack to fit his trike, and hopefully my bike after taking the front wheel off.
We are still waiting for the Heartgard to arrive. Hopefully it will come today or tomorrow as we have a reservation starting Friday at a C-C in White Sulfur Springs. But if I have to change it, I will, but we need to get the heartgard first.
Took Hayley & Lucy to the local vets to get their yearly shots. I asked the Doc about the growths in Hayley’s eye and he said that they will just get worse and should be removed. I was trying to work out a way to get Jim’s cataract surgery done while we were around Seattle, but that is not going to work as the various appointments take several weeks to a month to occur. So, we are going to wait until we get back to Texas. I have revised our journey schedule so that we are back at Tres Rios on October 1 for three weeks, then the one week out at the TT, then back to Tres Rios. After that we will travel down to Houston for the week of Thanksgiving. From there I think we will travel down to Big Bend NP as we have not seen it before.
June 16, 2017. We left West Yellowstone and luckily the girls’ Heartgard arrived the day before. I had made us reservations at a C-C park in White Sulphur Springs, MT where we will stay for 10 days. Contesoga RV Park sat on the out skirts of town close to a gravel road where I found an old cow field where I was able to let them loose. We then walked around town on our morning and afternoon walks. WSS was not a very large town and it was kind of run down. There were a lot of old houses, trailers and RVs sitting all over the place. The mill seemed closed, even though I saw trucks and new materials sitting around them.
We did see a herd of deer that walked all around the town. Most of them were young bucks, with a few doe here and there. I did see one doe with her fawn. A lot of people had horses and we were able to stop and visit with a few horses around town.
We went to lunch at Bar 47 one day and also visited the local brewery (2 Basset Brewery). There was a hot springs at one of the motels that was open to the public, but it smelled of Sulphur and I did not want to go and smell.
One day we drove to Helena to take a tour of the Gates of the Mountains, the trip up the Missouri that Lewis & Clark took when they encountered when exploring the area.
June 26, 2017. We left Conestoga and spent the night at Lake Placid SP in Seeley Lake, MT. The mosquitos were horrible here. In WSS I bought some essential oils of Germanium and Lemongrass, so I put some drops in water and sprayed me and the dogs before our walk. It seemed to help as we were not very bothered by the mosquitos. There was no water here so we had to fill up the tank, plus no dump station so I had the gray water open all night to drip. The weather got pretty hot – high 80s, and in the morning a rain shower came through and cooled everything off.
June 27 – 3, 2017. Drove to Sundance RV Park in Coram, Montana just outside of Glacier National Park. The weather there will be in the low to high 70s, but I have read that the Going-to-the-sun Road through the park is still closed due to snow. I wonder what the elevation is there?
Sundance RV Park was an OK park, only W/E but at least we were across from the bathrooms and laundry. There was a lot of traffic going into Glacier every day and the park was quite crowded as well. Next door to us at Sundance was a couple who were at Green River Lake SP in Campbellsville, Kentucky in 2013 when we were working for Amazon. They suggested we take the long way around the southern end of the park to the eastern entrance and drive back on Going-to-the-Sun Road. That way we don’t drive it twice. That was a long day as it took us two hours to drive around the park. Got there around lunch time and then drove the Road. Got lots of nice pictures.
We left the Glacier area on July 3 and drove to Woodland RV Park in Libby, Montana.
Back to Daily Journal 2017