Rest-em-up

We are at a combination weigh station, rest area, and visitor center, adjacent to the Powder River in Broadus, Montana (map). It was a fairly short drive yesterday, owing to something of a late start on account of how nice it was at the last stop, and the fact that we also stopped at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, east of Crow Agency.

The monument is a rather solemn place, and we arrived just in time to listen to the 3pm ranger talk describing the battle. The Park Service has come a long way since the monument was established in the 40s as the Custer Battlefield National Monument, and our ranger was a Crow. She delivered a well-balanced presentation, and the Native American elements added to the memorial starting in the 90s, including the red granite markers where warriors fell, make for a much less one-sided view of this sad chapter in American history.

We ended up spending more time there than we had planned, and it was past 4pm by the time we turned back onto US-212 east. I still wanted to make some progress, and so we stayed on the road till past 6, making this rest area, while not the most pleasant location, our most expeditious option. The scales remained in operation all night, but US-212 is pretty quiet after dark, and we had a pleasant and mostly undisturbed night.

Today we will continue on to Belle Fourche, where we will turn south on South Dakota 34 to Sturgis. After Sturgis we will either continue east to Pierre, or else southeast to the Badlands by way of Rapid City. Now that we've come this far, we have it in our minds to arrive in our new home town of Madison by Monday, so that we have a whole week ahead of us to take care of all the business of moving our lives here.

Photo by rscottjones, used under a Creative Commons license.

Please, Mr. Custer

We are parked on the Bighorn River south of Hardin, Montana (map). We're so close to the river that Odyssey's nose is actually hanging over the bank -- how close I needed to get for the satellite to clear a nearby tree. This is actually a fishing access site, operated by the state, but camping is permitted for up to two nights, and, unlike many of the state fishing access sites, this one is free. It was in the 90s when we arrived, and we were happy to be able to park in the shade.

We are just upstream of the confluence of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn, about eight miles north of us. Just upstream (south) of us is Far West Island, presumably named after the sternwheeler Far West, which navigated the Yellowstone and Bighorn to the confluence with the Little Bighorn, and ultimately transported the wounded as well as the news from The Battle of the Little Bighorn. The battlefield where George Armstrong Custer and his command were annihilated is just a dozen miles to our southeast, and the town of Hardin hosts an annual reenactment -- we passed the reenactment area on our way into town.

These rivers -- the upper Missouri, the Yellowstone, and the Bighorn -- hardly seem navigable today, yet the massive sternwheeler, 190' long and 20' wide, made its way all the way here, a testament to the skill of her master, Grant Marsh. Suffice it to say that we will not be returning here in our own boat; the Far West drew less than two feet of water.

We are actually on the lands of the Crow (Apsáalooke) Nation. Upstream of here the Bighorn is impounded by the Yellowtail Dam, forming Bighorn Lake within the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. The highway that brought us here from Hardin, 313, continues all the way to the recreation area and the town of Fort Smith within it. We're heading a different direction, though, so after crossing the Bighorn on the bridge adjacent to our campsite, we'll head east to Crow Agency on the Crow/St. Xavier Cutoff, and resume our eastward journey on US-212.

I wrote here yesterday that we'd be following our own tracks from Billings to Belle Fourche, but we opted instead to take Old US-87 (aka Hardin Road) out of Billings to Hardin. Thus we stayed off I-90 altogether, although US-87 runs parallel and only a few dozen yards away for a short stretch. We will, however, re-connect with our old path in Crow Agency and stay on it to Belle Fourche. At the moment, the only question is "when?" -- we can stay here one more night if we choose, and it's quite lovely here, with much more pleasant temperatures today. We'll probably decide right after lunch.

Top Billings

We are parked at the Cabela's store in Billings, Montana (map). In addition to well marked extra long RV spaces, Cabela's provides a dump station, fresh water spigot, and even outdoor pet kennels and horse pens. In compliance with Billings ordinance, there is a tiny "No Overnight Parking" sign on one of the lamp posts (more on this in a moment), but asking at the store generally gets permission for one night.

We're here at Cabela's because we desperately needed the water before settling in for the night, and we are in Billings in general because we needed to make a Walmart stop, and Louise needed excellent cell coverage for a Red Cross conference call and web meeting last night. Not wanting to take a chance on spotty coverage along US-12, which would also have deferred our Walmart stop for another couple days, we decided to drop south to Billings on MT-3, making for a slightly longer driving day of just over three hours yesterday.

We had a very nice drive yesterday. From our digs in the Helena forest, we continued east over a low pass to US-89, where we left US-12 to instead head south a short ways before turning east again on MT-294. This short cut chopped six miles off our route, bypassing White Sulphur Springs and rejoining US-12 east of Martinsdale. Montana 294 follows the old grade of the Milwaukee Road, the very same rail line we crossed at the Beverly Bridge back in Washington, and we remained with the old roadbed all the way to Lavina, where we turned south on MT-3.

I confess I did not recognize the line at first. It was very clear we were following a long-abandoned rail grade, and I found it odd that along 294, in the middle of almost nowhere, there stood the also long-abandoned remains of an electric power station, a brick building with all the windows broken out, the aluminum scavenged, and only the wood and ceramic insulators still remaining. It sat between the old rail grade and the highway, and across the highway was a more modern substation. I did not think anything more of it other than that it was odd, but in hindsight I should have recognized it as being there to supply power to the rail line, which would have immediately identified it as the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, aka The Milwaukee Road.



I made this connection, of course, when we later rolled through the town of Harlowton, where right smack in the middle of town is the last of the Milwaukee's General Electric E57-B electric locomotives. Suddenly it all became clear. Long-time readers may know that I am a rail fan from way back in my youth, and even today we enjoy traveling by train. My mentor and teacher back then was Karl R. Zimmermann, who, in addition to being a teacher at my high school and faculty adviser to the railroad club, was also a well-published author in railroad circles. One of his books is the definitive photo-essay on the Milwaukee's electrified sections, The Milwaukee Road Under Wire (Quadrant Press). Published in 1973, about the time I met him, it predated the demise of electrification on the Milwaukee by just a year.

In any case the drive was very scenic and I could imagine just a bit what it must have been like to glide through this territory on the Olympian Hiawatha back in the heyday of first class rail travel. As we turned south at Lavina on MT-3 we began following a still active rail line, the BNSF, all the way to Acton. We turned off 3 at, ironically, Zimmerman Trail, which drops steeply from the rimrock into town. MT-3 itself would have been a gentler slope, but would have taken us into town a good bit east of the Walmart.

We got settled in at Walmart a good fifteen minutes ahead of Louise's web meeting, and I set to work removing the generator starting battery. Regular readers know that, since leaving Infinity eight years ago, we are on our third set of house batteries. We are also on our third set of chassis start batteries. This generator battery, however, was nearly the first thing I bought for Odyssey, and I wrote the installation date on the case: July, 2001. Eleven years is incredible service for a battery, an Everstart Maxx from Walmart (Everstart is Walmart's house label, made by Johnson Controls). Two of those years the battery sat forlorn on Infinity's shelf while the generator was on the sideline.

The generator start battery actually began acting up a few months ago. A couple of times while repriming the set I had to "jump start" the generator using the solenoid and momentary switch we installed for that purpose when we re-wired the generator. And for the last couple months it has taken the auto-start system two or three tries to get the unit running. I'm going to say the battery started acting up somewhere in Texas, and by Las Vegas I knew it needed to be replaced. However, anywhere in the south, or anywhere along the Pacific coast, is the wrong place to buy a car battery.

You would be tempted to think that a Brand-X Model 123 battery from National BigBoxStore would be the same from store to store, but this is often not true. Almost every make and model of battery, no matter whose label is on it, comes in two varieties, "Northern" (N) and "Southern" (S). N-style batteries are beefier, to stand up to hard starting conditions day after day in sub-zero temperatures. Usually, it is difficult for the end consumer to tell whether any given battery is an N or S. Big-box chain stores are also pretty tight-lipped about which stores get the N batteries, so it can be a challenge for those of us who live an itinerant lifestyle. That said, I am pretty certain that every battery sold in Montana is an N, whereas every battery sold in California is an S. If block heaters are common where you live, your local store probably sells N batteries.

And so it is that I waited until Montana to change the generator battery. The genny started right up after I installed it, and I get to check one more project off the list. I also picked up a few other items at the store while we were there. The whole project and shopping experience took about an hour -- getting the battery out and in was a tight squeeze and I had to fight with the decade-old hold-downs, clamps, and terminals. So imagine my surprise when I came back inside to find that Louise's web meeting, while nominally in progress now for an hour, still had not really started.

Apparently there was some technical glitch with the web meeting software or server. After fighting with it for over an hour, they gave up, and rescheduled the meeting for this evening. After making an extra effort to be in a good coverage area last night, we're going to leave tonight's coverage possibilities to chance, as we really need to get out of Billings. After the call ended, we stowed the dish and rolled over to Olive Garden for dinner, thus exiting the Walmart lot before our time limit expired.

Time limit? Indeed. I won't repeat it all here, because you can Google it, but back in the early part of last decade, there was a huge flap in the city of Billings regarding RV overnight parking at Walmart and similar locations. Not only is there a KOA campground in this town, but Billings is also home to KOA's corporate headquarters, and so perhaps unsurprisingly, the city council bowed to political pressure from campground operators and banned overnight parking anywhere in the city except licensed campgrounds, whether on private property or not. The RV community responded with a massive letter-writing campaign accompanied by a boycott, and ultimately the city fathers relented, modifying the ordinance to allow for an overnight safety stop, limited to ten hours.

Cabela's, of course, falls under the same provisions, but it is much less visible than Walmart, and we've been undisturbed since arriving here after dinner last night. But we won't push our luck, and will leave Billings today. I had planned to be in the Custer National Forest tonight, east of Ashland, but we learned today's high there will be 102°, compared with just 91° here. The heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow, so we'll slow down and try to stay just east of Billings tonight, which will hopefully also keep us in cell phone range for Louise's call.

We've been to Billings before, having already taken in most of what the city has to offer. In fact, this was our first "destination" stop after hitting the road. We were here to attend, of all things, the world premier of an opera. One of our dearest friends, Alva Henderson, was the composer, and then-chair of the National Endowment for the Arts and lifelong poet Dana Gioia was the librettist. The opera is entitled Nosferatu, after the 1922 silent film of the same name. As Alva was fond of saying, better to open in Billings while you're still alive than at The Met posthumously, and The Rimrock Opera company obliged. They still have a web page dedicated to the event.

It was a gala opening, and we drove Alva and his partner the few blocks from their hotel to the theater in Odyssey, dressed in our formalwear. The paint had just finished curing on the bus, and we got it washed and waxed here in town just for the occasion -- it has never since looked so nice. After the grand entrance, I parked the bus on the street around the corner and walked back to the theater for the performance.

That was at the end of October, 2004. It hardly seems possible that we have been on the road nearly eight years. We had to hustle here on I-90, because the paint shop ran into the first part of October finishing our painting, and we then returned to Infinity Coach for installation of the final hardware and interior fixtures. We left the shop with just a week to get to Billings in time to get ready for the opening.

By the last week in October, the KOA and every other transient campground in Billings is already closed for the season, and although the overnight parking ban was already in effect, things had not yet blown up into the all-out donnybrook that resulted in the council's reversal in 2006. Nevertheless we were able to park at the Walmarts in town for several nights while we were here (Cabela's was not here back then), leaving each morning for the hotel, theater, or other errands. With shiny paint and a fresh wax job, we got a lot of attention driving around Billings each day, including picking up and dropping off friends and family at the airport.

Our route for the next two days will repeat our tracks from back then, from here to Belle Fourche. After that, we'll try to again cover some new ground. First, though, we will roll over to the Holiday fuel station a few blocks from here for some $3.95 diesel, the lowest we'll see until central South Dakota.

East of the Great Divide

We are at the Skidway Campground in the Helena National Forest (map), just off US-12 east of Townsend, Montana. There are just 13 sites here, but once again we had the entire place to ourselves. Previous occupants had gathered a good deal of firewood, albeit not very high quality, and I was able to grill our steak over wood coals. It was warm enough to dine al fresco on the picnic table, and we had a great view of snow-capped mountains around us including Mt. Edith.

Our guides said this place was difficult to access for large rigs, so we parked at the bottom of the hill along US-12 and I scouted it on the scooter first, as it is two miles up a dirt road, and I did not want to discover there was no place to turn around. As it turned out, though, other than a fairly sharp uphill right-hander into the camping loop, the entire route and campground was easily accessible. Our guide also said there was water here, which we needed, but that turns out to be a hand-pump well, so we ended up pumping five gallons into our collapsible water jug and transferring it to the tank, to ensure we had enough for the night (we use about ten gallons a day aboard Odyssey). The guides had also said this campground was free, but, alas, it is now $10 per night.

Yesterday we traversed the Mullan Pass into Helena, passing through the western section of the Helena National Forest. We stopped at the brake check area on the Continental Divide to let everything cool down before the 8% descent, having lunch in the process. The retarder easily handled the downgrade, however, and we made it to Helena without ever touching the brakes. As state capitals go, Helena is a sleepy little place, and US-12 goes right through it.

Our directory had a couple of stopping options in Helena, but there was really nothing we wanted to see there, so we continued east to Townsend, where our guides listed a free campground near Canyon Ferry Lake, just north of town. The campground was, indeed, free, and had we felt the need to stay near a town it would have been a good option, but it was very nearly full and otherwise rather unappealing. We continued instead to the National Forest.

Our official Forest Service map listed a somewhat more convenient campground a few miles west of here called Deep Creek. Sometime in the decade since that map was published, however, that site has been redesignated as a picnic area for day use only, so we continued here. We're really glad we did, because the view is nice, we had our preferred solitude, and the temperature was pleasant at this elevation. This was also the quietest place we've stayed in recent memory, with no insect sounds at all after dark. The late afternoon and evening, however, were full of birdsong, including grouse thumping.

We've been ruminating about whether to drop south into Yellowstone or not. We had a wonderful visit there four years ago (June, 2008 archive), and we'd been thinking about returning some day, but we also remember the camping as being quite crowded inside the park. The park roads are also congested this time of year, and it's a long way off our route to South Dakota. As breathtaking as it is there, we're going to continue eastward. Although the actual decision point is somewhat east of here, on US-89 north of Ringling, and we've been known to change our minds at the last yawning instant.

Absent that, we should be continuing on US-12 east of Martinsdale until Lavina, where we will likely turn south on MT-3 to Billings. We could, alternatively, continue east on 12 all the way to Selby, SD -- both routes are about the same length and equally interesting, but at some point we will need water, fuel, and a new battery for the genny, so we need to swing through some part of civilization.

Water over the dam

We are parked overlooking the Nevada Creek Reservoir (map), on a large gravel turnout on Montana Highway 141. This spot was listed in Days End, and while we shared it with a handful of fishermen yesterday afternoon and this morning, we had the place to ourselves overnight, enjoying the full moon reflecting off the reservoir.

This is a fairly remote place, and the dam is not under federal control (it is owned by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation), so we were able to walk right out on the 105'-tall dam. Watching the spring flood run over the ogee-crest spillway was rather dramatic, looking so much like a giant water-park ride. We had approached the reservoir from downstream and had noticed the spillway in operation when we first arrived.

When I posted yesterday, I had not figured to be passing this spot, but as we were fueling up in Lolo, Louise pointed out that diverting via MT-200 to MT-141 east of Missoula would allow us to bypass 65 miles of Interstate 90 that we would otherwise have to endure by staying on US-12. It added only a dozen miles to the trip, but was a much more pleasant and interesting drive. We stopped at a Safeway in Missoula to provision first, since we needed some accompaniments for last night's crock-pot Chicken Cacciatore that was already cooking.

Today we will leave the intermountain area, crossing the eastern ridge of the Rockies and the Continental Divide. We will re-join US-12 in Avon before heading across the pass to Helena, and we will remain on US-12 for the next two days. We are very much enjoying this slow-paced drive through this part of the country, and the route beyond the next couple days is still under consideration.

Lolo

We are at the Earl Tennant campground in the Lolo National Forest (map), between Lolo Hot Springs and Lolo, Montana. Earl was the first ranger here when this site became a ranger station early in the last century; the station closed in the sixties, and was used as a fire staging ground for several years thereafter. Two of the buildings are still here, abandoned and forlorn, and one of them is unlocked. It is a testament to how remote this area is that neither has been vandalized in four decades.

There are only a half dozen sites here, and still we had the entire place to ourselves. We took the only spot in a clearing large enough to get the satellite on-line, just grazing the trees at out current look elevation of just 28°. That was good, because there is no cell coverage here whatsoever. I did have to jiggle the bus around in the space a few times.

I'm guessing the camping at this site is fairly new, because it is neither marked on our official Lolo National Forest map, nor listed in our directory of National Forest campgrounds. That may account for why this place is empty, whereas the Lee Creek campground, which we visited on our way down the hill, was already pretty busy on a Friday afternoon, and I am guessing the Lolo Creek campground, which we will pass today, will also have some occupancy. We're glad we bypassed Lee Creek, as we much prefer an empty campground, and it was only $8 here vs. $10 there. The real reason we pressed on, though, was that I could not find enough of a gap in the trees there to shoot the bird.

We knew about this spot from our Days End directory, which has a spotty track record of late. That same directory said we could park overnight at the Lolo Pass visitor center at the very top of the pass, just on the Idaho side of the state line, but the staff there said it was not allowed and never has been. That's unusual; when the directory is wrong it is more often because the status of a particular spot has changed since the listing was added. That spot was not all that appealing anyway, because it was surrounded by parking lot lights, was very exposed, and was a good ten degrees colder than here at the lower elevations.

We had a lovely drive yesterday -- Lolo Pass is rather spectacular.  At one point in the drive, while still on the west side along the Lochsa River, I had to slow down for a bald eagle.  He was perched on something rather low to the ground, unusual for an eagle, on the left side of the road.  It is possible he had a fresh kill there.  In any case, when he saw us approach, he decided to take off and fly to a higher spot, but oddly he chose to do so right in front of us and in our lane, necessitating a quick response on the brakes.  So for a very brief moment, we were following him, his wingspan taking the whole lane, and the stark white of his tail plumage just a few dozen feet ahead of us.  It took him quite a while to get up above us, at which point he immediately turned to the right and landed on a tree a little ways above us.

As lovely as it is right here, we are feeling motivated to move along, and so in a short while we will continue on to Missoula, where I will put enough fuel in to get us across the state before continuing east to Helena. We should be somewhere between Drummond and Helena tonight.

Last day in Montana

We are at the Bolster Dam park and campground in the city of Plentywood, Montana (map). The campground is "free" with a requested donation of $10, and has water and 30-amp electrical service at the ten or so RV sites.

There does not seem to be any stay limit enforced, and the three rigs near us have been unoccupied since we arrived. Some rigs have heat tape on their water hoses, suggesting they are here year-round. It's a bit annoying that people are just storing their rigs here, presumably for use occasionally. They are taking up nice spaces that could be available for visitors. I would also guess that few of these rigs are donating $10 a night for the privilege.

We had a nice drive here Sunday from Glasgow. About 20 miles north of the city, on Montana 24, we were surprised to see what looked to be a residential subdivision appear on the horizon. As we got closer, we realized they were not houses but something higher-density, and as we got closer still, we could tell many were abandoned. We immediately thought: military housing. When we were nearly abreast of the place, we could see that some units were occupied, and, our curiosity piqued, we turned onto the little access road marked "St. Marie."

We drove a little over a mile into the "town," past the perhaps 8-plex residences and a sign that read "Welcome to St. Marie, Home of the Adventurous." We got as far as the gated entrance to the "Montana Aviation Research Company" (MARCO) with its enormous hangars and giant runway. Later research revealed this to be the former Glasgow Air Force Base, decommissioned in 1976, and the "subdivision" we had seen had indeed been base housing some 40 years ago. MARCO turns out to be a small test division of Boeing, and the town of St. Marie is billing itself as a "retirement haven" with the "condos" in the handful of buildings not slowly crumbling selling for anywhere from $15,000-$25,000. To even get gas or a quart of milk requires driving back to Glasgow.

After reaching the bustling metropolis of Opheim just a dozen miles or so from the border, we turned east onto Montana 248, which generally follows an old railroad grade. We could discern the graded roadbed, but there were no rails nor even ties until we reached the town of Scobey, where our guide said there was a free campground. Even here the tracks had been paved over at the lone grade crossing, though the campground was on "Railroad" street.

The campground was unappealing, with spaces cheek-by-jowl and nearly full. Again many folks looked to have been there long-term and we would guess few were making the requested $12 donation across the street at the sheriff's office. The ten spaces did have power and water, and there was a dump station, of which we availed ourselves. And I suppose we could easily have walked to the one or two eating establishments still operating in the tiny town. But "free" or not, this place was everything we detest about "RV parks," and we decided to keep moving.

A couple dozen miles east of Scobey the apparently abandoned railroad tracks started sporting empty rail cars, mostly piggyback carriers and double-stack container carriers. Soon we realized it was a nearly uninterrupted string of excess rolling stock stored here by the BNSF, and it extended for miles and miles. It was single-track line which dead-ended in Scobey, so the cars had to be pushed here in a single file from somewhere east, and the string was carefully broken apart at every grade crossing -- we could just imagine some really weary brakeman or car-knocker who had to walk the whole dozen miles setting brakes and uncoupling cars.

This campground in Plentywood was also in our guide, and being quite a bit further from town in a much more rustic setting, it was much more appealing. We don't have the drive-by lookey-loos here, and there are perhaps only two or three rigs, ours included, actually occupied in the whole park. The spaces are also more spread out to begin with. We had planned only to spend one night, soak our batteries, top up the water, and move along, but it has been so nice here we decided to just stay an extra day.

That gave us time to knock out some projects, including replacing the wireless router on the satellite system (which, I am sorry to say, did not fix our problem), finish the hot tub installation, dismantle the old hot tub pump box, and pack a whole raft of eBay items for shipment. We also got our Red Cross "homework" done -- updating the Disaster Communications training course materials and writing a technology Quick Start Guide for the upcoming season.

This afternoon we have a Red Cross conference call to discuss the updated training materials, after which we will again start rolling east. We should be somewhere along state route 5 in North Dakota this evening.

Satellite tribulations

We are at the Elks lodge in Glasgow, Montana. More precisely, we are in a parking lot across the street from the lodge (map), with which the lodge has some sort of lease. When we arrived, they suggested this might be easier for us to access than the diminutive lot behind the lodge; nevertheless we tried that first, because there was 15 amp power available there. While we would have fit without trouble after just some minor jockeying in tight quarters, as soon as I started backing in Louise noticed that Odyssey's 24 tons were damaging the asphalt, and we abandoned the effort. This lot is solid concrete.

Our UPS package was waiting for us and I was relieved to find the satellite electronics, which are hard to pack and ship, undamaged. It was too late in the day to work on the system, because I knew once I had it installed I would need to call in to tech support, which is only open until 7pm our time. We ended up walking to dinner at local icon Sam's Supper Club across the tracks, where both the walleye and the prime rib were excellent.

Yesterday I decided to tackle the satellite project. I had some concerns because of reports I had read that the newer style electronics I now had in my hand had various compatibility problems with our older dish hardware; I won't bore you with all the gory details of the issues, but the die-hard geeks (or RVers with HughesNet systems) can read about them in this thread I started. The bottom line, though, is that I spent six solid hours working on it, between physically replacing hardware and working with Mobil Satellite on the phone, and our problem is still with us.

At least now the ball is back in play between Mobil Satellite and HughesNet. We purchased and installed this hardware because we were basically told that what we had was so old and obsolete, they would not even troubleshoot the problem further until we upgraded, and now that we have, that excuse can no longer be used. The good news is that I bought this stuff used on eBay and spent a grand total of $85, shipping included, for it (they had wanted to sell me new parts for upwards of $350, plus shipping).

It was past 5:30 when I wrapped up, and even though we had planned to move on yesterday, we decided to just spend another night here. We had to drive back over to the lodge to put water in, and while we were out we swung by the Albertsons for provisions before parking back here. There is a nice restaurant inside the Elks lodge, Durum, open to the public, and we just stumbled over there for dinner, where Louise had walleye for the second night in a row (walleye is really fresh in Montana).

While this is a nice spot, right in the quaint little downtown and near the train station, we don't want to overstay our welcome and will be moving on today. Besides, the mosquitoes here are so big they have to file flight plans with air traffic control. We enjoy the sound, but those who are bothered by loud diesel chimes should probably not stay here; Glasgow appears to be a crew change stop on the Hi-Line, so every freight (and the Empire Builder) stops here. In addition to whistling for the lone grade crossing, they all whistle when they start up, too, just a few hundred feet from us.

Today we will head due north, leaving US-2 and the Hi-Line behind, to cross the rest of the state and much of North Dakota on an even more northerly route, in keeping with our "outermost route" theme that we have now nearly completed. We'd done all of US-2 between here and Minot, ND previously anyway, and it's always good to try a new alternative.

Image uploaded by anna!, used under a Creative Commons license.

Full Nelson

We are parked at a free Bureau of Reclamation camp site on Nelson Reservoir, west of Saco, Montana (map). There are about ten undesignated sites here along the shore line, accessed by a pair of well-graded dirt roads. A bit further from shore are a handful of vault toilets and covered picnic pavilions; all the camp sites and pavilions have picnic tables and grills or fire rings. We have our own private little beach right at our site.

When we arrived Wednesday afternoon after a short half-hour drive from Malta, we had planned for just one night here, since our package was slated to arrive in Glasgow yesterday. But when we arrived and saw how beautiful and uncrowded it was, we decided to make it two. Our package did arrive yesterday, according to UPS, so we'll leave here shortly to retrieve it. Besides, we need water.

Speaking of water, yesterday afternoon's weather was so nice, I decided to spend a few hours working on the new hot tub. I figured to get as far as mounting it, so it wouldn't be kicking around the bay any longer, but it turned out I was also able to get it plumbed in and hooked up, and after a bucket test we decided to deploy the tub and try it out for real. With the lake just a few feet away and actually overfull to the point of some trees being inundated, it only took one hose and one extension cord to pump 250 gallons of lake water to the tub.

The new pumps are stronger and quieter than the old ones, and all the controls work properly now. There seems to be some discrepancy between the controller's idea of the temperature and our spa thermometer's reading, but I would guess we can iron that out. I have a few more finishing touches like rerouting the power cables, connecting the fan, and installing the cover, but it is mostly done. At our next fair-weather stop (it is raining today), I'll disassemble the old box for disposal. We had a nice soak last night, although it feels a bit weird to us to be out there in broad daylight (it's light here till 10pm).

Here a panoramic video of our site. Pretty nice.



Tonight I expect we will be in Glasgow, staying at the Elks lodge. Installing the new satellite hardware will have to wait for clear weather, as most of it goes up on the roof.

The Maltese Truck Stop

We are at the Conoco West Side Truck Stop, in Malta, Montana (map). I was on the fence for today's title between what I chose and "West Side Story."

Yesterday was a busy day. We had conference call at 1pm, so we remained in place at Fresno Reservoir until that was over, then headed east into Havre, the largest town on the Montana Hi-Line, the moniker for the Great Northern (now BNSF) railroad line across the northern edge of the state.

We made four stops in Havre, including Wal-Mart for provisions, the post office to drop a couple of packages in the mail, the Salvation Army to drop off three bags of items we no longer need, and the veterinarian to pick up more special kidney diet for George. Next stop was Chinook, the next town east on the Hi-Line, where we drove south through town to the National Park Service visitor center for the Bear Paw Battlefield, where Chief Joseph famously said "I will fight no more forever." We sat through the 20-minute multimedia presentation, which wrapped up just as the museum was closing at 5pm, but opted not to then drive the 16 miles south to the battlefield.

East of Chinook we rolled onto the Fort Belknap native American reservation, and stopped briefly in the town of Fort Belknap Agency, where there was a rest area adjacent to a casino. The rest area, despite "open 24 hours" signage, was locked, and the casino was too tiny for an overnight stop, so we continued on to Malta, where our guide said there was a city park with overnight camping for $3.

The park, just east of here, is lovely, and we even saw one rig there. Unfortunately, when we rolled in around 6:30 or so, it seemed like the whole town was there, and the entire park was covered with cars. There was some kind of ball game, maybe Little League, at the adjacent ball field, for which half the town had come out, and the other half was at some kind of dinner party affair in one of the pavilions, perhaps the Lions' Club annual dinner or whatever.

In any case, threading Odyssey between all the parked cars to get to what was left of the clear space at the other end of the park would have been quite a challenge, and then there we would be, surrounded by the entire population of Malta. I don't think we could have handled the looky-loo factor.

We had passed this truck stop on our way to the park, and so we rolled back here, just across the river, and parked for the night. We had dinner in their little restaurant, which was passable and quite inexpensive. However, we have no need to linger, and will be leaving shortly for nicer digs east of here.

Photo by ruudb0y, used under a Creative Commons license.

Little stop on the prairie

We are at a free camping area overlooking the Fresno Reservoir, just west of Havre, Montana (map). The campground, provided and operated by the Fresno chapter of Walleyes Unlimited, is really just a dirt parking lot with a handful of picnic tables and grills, plus a vault toilet. Just down a flight of stairs is a pavilion with more tables and a large fireplace, and there are boat ramps on either side.

The reservoir, which impounds the Milk River, is operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, and right now in spring flood is cresting the spillway to a depth of two feet, quite impressive to watch. It has been very relaxing here, quiet and dark at night, with only an occasional neighbor or two, and even the power boats and ATVs during the day have been reasonable. With temperatures in the 60s and 70s, we've enjoyed sitting outside with a coffee or glass of wine, at least when the wind has not been whipping through at 20 knots. The view of the lake is quite serene, and the skies (which I'm told are big here in Montana) have been spectacular.

After we left the truck stop in Shelby, we noticed the coach was riding high on the left, and a quick check of the suspension at our provisioning stop in town confirmed my fears: occasionally, a check valve leading to the left front air bag starts leaking, causing the bag to overfill, even as the ride-height valve desperately tries to empty it. We can compensate for this while driving by setting the height at that wheel a bit lower with the leveling adjustment, but once this starts, the leakage will continue after we park, causing the electric air compressor to run nearly continuously to keep up.

We stopped again in Chester, at the local hardware store, where I picked up a few parts to install the new hot tub controller. Sometimes the leakage just fixes itself as we drive, and I was hoping for the best. No such luck this time, and we proceeded across town to the city park, where our guide said there would be water, which we would need for our stay here. That was a nice level parking spot, where I could try one of the tricks to free the stuck valve, which is to dump all the air out of the suspension, then refill. That did not do the trick either. We made one last stop in town, for diesel, then continued east, hoping more driving might cure it.

Unfortunately the leak was still with us when we arrived here, and so I spent an hour or so Friday evening crouched in the wheel well behind the tire, with all the air out of the system, to remove and rebuild the valve. We've gotten quite good at this, having done it now four or five times, but this time it took me two tries. I don't know how much longer I can keep the 25 year old rubber diaphragm inside the valve working. One of these days, we will need to find some kind of replacement for the three check valves.

I had planned to spend Saturday working on organizing the parts bays, and possibly working on the hot tub, but high winds thwarted my plans. There were white caps on the lake, and we had to batten everything down outside the bus just to keep things from blowing away; even walking the dog was a challenge. We ended up knocking some items off the indoor list, such as whittling down the stack of unfiled junk we retrieved from the storage locker, and giving the area behind the fridge, including the coils, a much-needed cleaning. I had some pork chops to grill, and it was so windy out at supper time that I could not even light the grill, so I ended up pan frying them.

Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous day and I spent most of it cleaning out and reorganizing one parts bay. What a mess. The generator panels are also in that bay, and as long as I was cleaning, I opened them up for inspection and tightened all the connections, having been burned, if you will pardon the pun, by loose connections there previously. We also hauled all the extra junk, most of it destined for eBay, out of the scooter bay.

Today ended up being eBay day, and I managed to get half a dozen items listed. It was a bit too windy most of the day for outside work, so I still have not gotten to the other parts bay or, for that matter, to the hot tub work. Nevertheless, we must move on tomorrow, because we are again out of provisions, having chosen not to get too loaded up until we've worked our way through the mysterious depths of the freezer and pantry.

I mentioned last week that we are having problems with our satellite equipment, and I located replacement hardware on eBay at a good price. It is en route to the Elks lodge in Glasgow, just a day's drive east of here, and scheduled to arrive on Thursday. After we restock the larder tomorrow, we'll try to find at least one intermediate stopover between here and there. I expect we will leave here sometime around midday tomorrow.

Crossroads of the West

We are at the Town Pump truck stop in Shelby, Montana (map), a city which bills itself as the "Crossroads of the West." I personally think that's a bit presumptuous, as the intersection of I-15 and US-2, the only two thoroughfares in town, while certainly a crossroads, hardly qualifies for top honors.

That said, we are thankful there is a truck stop here, which owes its presence to the Interstate. We had a quiet night, as the surrounding trucks uncharacteristically did not idle all night. The truck stop has its own restaurant, the Country Skillet, but we opted to eat next door at Ringside Ribs, which was quite tasty and was able to provide us with wine. We did make a purchase at the c-store, though.

After leaving East Glacier Park yesterday, we drove through the Blackfoot reservation and its central town, Browning, where we discovered in our guide a casino with overnight parking. We did stop there and got parked, and I walked in to the minuscule casino to check our the restaurant and see if we needed a pass or anything. It was a convenient stop and we had a beautiful view of the mountains from our parking spot, but there was no way we could spend any time in the place, including at the restaurant. There were no hard walls, and the entire joint was filled with cigarette smoke, plus the restaurant turned out to be a shabby counter affair with no appeal.

Not wanting to make ourselves at home in the lot of an establishment we could not possibly patronize, we chose to keep moving, believing there was parking at an Elks lodge just a bit further along, in Cut Bank. There was, indeed, a lodge there, but the parking lot was perhaps 40' square, with an iron pipe rail most of the way around it, and accessed from an alley barely 16' wide. After jockeying the bus around for twenty minutes, feeling the whole time like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, we managed to squeeze in caddy-corner and sticking out into the alley an uncomfortable distance.

After all that work, I was nervous we could get blocked in, plus uncomfortable taking up the whole lot, and we decided to continue along. Actually, we were surprised to find no cars there whatsoever on a Thursday evening, when at least the bar should have been busy, and we wonder if that lodge is even still in business (the sign in front was still in place).

We found no other spots in Cut Bank, even though the city park there has a dump station. We did not need the dump, since we took advantage of the one at Apgar campground in Glacier National Park. After we left the park we realized that was the only facility we actually used while we were there, spending $80 for the privilege. Not really, of course -- it was just a matter of chance that our annual America the Beautiful pass had expired just two days before we arrived, and we ended up buying a new one from the ranger at the gate. When we pulled up, though, he had expected to be charging us for a tour bus.

Just east of Cut Bank we found Al's Diesel, an enormous facility with service for, among others, Detroit Diesel and Allison Transmission. It had a large empty dirt lot in front, and we seriously considered spending the night, then buying a gallon of tranny fluid or coolant test strips or something in the morning. We could predict how that might go, though, with a mechanic knocking on our door at 7am, which is the usual starting time for these sorts of places, while we were both still in bed.

With only another half hour to Shelby we just pressed on, knowing there was at least one truck stop here. It was the first thing we hit rolling into town, so we don't know what other options there might have been. While we are further from the beautiful snow-capped mountains here than I had wanted to be, at least it is warm and dry now. Daytime temperatures here are in the upper 60s to low 70s and its dropping just below 50 at night.

Now that we are in more temperate and dry conditions (it is still raining like crazy in the mountains) we are going to slow down and take a few days to catch up on projects. We found two options east of here, including some BLM campgrounds on the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument. Unfortunately these are accessible only by gravel road and, more importantly, the closest one is listed in our guide as having a length limit of 24', even though the satellite image shows it should easily accommodate us.

Closer to our planned route are a couple of Bureau of Reclamation sites on the Fresno Reservoir, west of Havre. They are listed as being free with a 14 night limit and no length restrictions, and even though we are coming into the weekend, I expect them to be uncrowded this early in the season. So we will stop at the supermarket here in town to provision, then head off to the reservoir for a few days of downtime.

Photo of the crossroads by jimmywayne, used under a Creative Commons license.

When fate says "Move along"

We spent the night at what might best be described as a rest area, right at the summit of Marias Pass on the Continental Divide (map). It is actually a Forest Service facility (as opposed to a state-operated rest area, where overnight stays are prohibited) with parking for cars and larger vehicles, a pair of vault toilets, and a 60' obelisk. The obelisk marks the great divide and is a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt; it once stood between the travel lanes of US-2. A few feet away is a statue of Frank Stevens, who "discovered" the pass for the Great Northern Railway, just across the highway from our parking spot.

Immediately adjacent to this rest area is actually a Forest Service campground, fittingly called "Summit." Our directory said it would be open from April onwards, but it was closed by locked gates when we arrived. There was no signage explaining why, but a document buried deep within the Forest's web site said it was closed until June 6th for replacement of the picnic tables. The tables look fine to us when we walked the loops later on.

We had previously stopped about ten miles west of the summit at another Forest Service campground, Devil's Creek, which was open, and empty save for the camp host. After circling the loop, we concluded we'd never get on line there, and the view was not particularly appealing, so we had opted to press on to Summit, not realizing it would be closed. (We'd likely have had trouble getting the dish on-line at the Summit campground, too, due to trees, but had no trouble from the rest area.)

After circling the rest area and reading every sign, none of which prohibited overnight parking, we reasoned we'd be safe just parking for the night. We did have company, with a big rig already there when we arrived (he pulled out at first light this morning), and a travel trailer and a pickup camper joining us later in the evening. We had a spectacular view of the mountains past the monuments and the train tracks.

It did get cold at the summit, and last night the winds picked up to 30kt or so, gusting higher. The NWS actually issued high wind warnings for the whole region which did not expire until just an hour ago. We were cozy in Odyssey, but after she went to bed Louise informed me that the extra 8" of rubber rain gutter molding we had left in place at Infinity was going to either keep us awake or drive us crazy. (The last time we replaced the molding, we cut it "just right," and it shrank over the next few weeks until it was 6" too short, so this time we left extra to account for it.) So I ended up clambering onto the roof in ~35kt winds, in the rain, in the dark, scissors in hand, to trim the rubber.

Yesterday after traversing a new-to-us section of US-2 between Columbia Falls and West Glacier, we turned north into the park to check out the Apgar campground, for a possible night in the park complete with dinner at one of the restaurants in Apgar. The town is just as we remembered it from five years ago, and the campground was open, mostly empty, and would easily accommodate Odyssey, notwithstanding dire warnings on the web site that only 25 (of nearly 200) spaces could fit a 40' rig. But the weather was terrible -- cold and raining -- and the park's main attraction, the Going to the Sun Road, is still closed for the season. Coupled with the fact that we'd never get on-line there and the amenities in Apgar are not National Park Grand Lodge caliber, we opted to continue east.

After our night on the summit we had been debating whether to proceed from there to the Two Medicine campground at the east edge of the park, so we could spend at least another day in the beauty of the mountains before heading to the plains. The forecast, however, is for highs in the mid-50s and lows in the mid-30s for the next several days, with rain on and off the whole time, as well as intermittent winds. In that sort of weather we're unlikely to even leave the bus, let alone take the scooters out and ride the 13 miles back to the Glacier Park Lodge for a nice dinner. At least we'd get on line there, and the lake is supposed to be lovely.

We decided instead to drive down the hill to East Glacier Park in time for a 1pm Red Cross conference call, since neither of our phones had a decent signal on the summit. We found a parking spot in front of an abandoned business here in town, across the tracks from the lodge (map). We deployed the dish and dialed in to our call, which ran over an hour, and then we walked the three blocks to what the road signage indicated would be an RV park, confirmed by a map I downloaded from the lodge.

That, too, turned out to still be closed for the season, not that it was at all appealing even if it had been open. But we'd do it if the price was right, just so we could take the short walk to the lodge for a nice dinner at the Great Northern restaurant. By this time we're thinking that someone is trying to tell us something. After a brief consult with the map, we decided we could have an early dinner here at the lodge, then drive the hour or so to Cut Bank, where there is an Elks lodge with parking. Sunset here is 9:30, so we'd still be making the drive in plenty of daylight.

So we walked over to the lodge to walk the grounds and to see about reservations, since I had not been able to get through on the phone all day. As it turns out, there is a good reason for that: the power went out in East Glacier Park just after 8am this morning, and it does not look good for having it restored before sundown. The lodge is cooking some kind of dinner on a propane grill for its guests; most of the other restaurants here in town simply have "closed due to power outage" on their doors.

We did enjoy very much walking around the hotel, taking in the majestic great room, with many guests huddled around the massive fireplace (with no power, the hotel has no heat). The gift shop was open, courtesy of some flashlights and one of those old-fashioned manual credit-card imprinters, and we bought a souvenir pin and a pair of chocolate-covered huckleberries. But with no reason to believe the dining room would be open for dinner, we've decided to just move along. In a few minutes we will stow the dish and continue to Cut Bank.

A classic western town

We are at the Elks lodge in Kalispell, Montana (map). This lodge has actual back-in RV sites with 30 amp power and water hookups for $18 per night, which also gets you an access card for the athletic facilities, including the indoor hot tub and outdoor heated pool.

Our mail was waiting for us as we arrived; in fact, the mailman was just driving away as we pulled in -- perfect timing. We needed water and a good soak on the batteries, so this was an ideal stop. There was even a great restaurant two blocks away, Scotty's Winchester Steak House, where we walked for dinner. The steaks were great, rivaling many of the classic steak houses in major cities, but at a fraction of the price, and Louise had a $25 coupon from Restaurant.com to boot.

Kalispell is a classic western town, with a thriving old downtown area, which we drove through on our way to the lodge. It's the largest city for miles in any direction, so there are also all of the modern amenities on the outskirts. Louise rode her scooter up to the big-box stores yesterday and reports that there is a giant new Wal-Mart just about to open there. No word on whether overnight parking will be allowed.

In a few minutes we will continue east into Glacier National Park.

Photo of old Flathead County courthouse by jimmywayne, used under a Creative Commons license.

What a difference a day makes

We are at a Forest Service campground on McGregor Lake, off US2 just west of Kalispell, Montana (map). We are the only people here, not counting the camp hosts, whose site is actually over in the day use area.

When we arrived around 5pm yesterday, there were still two sites occupied, apparently by the same group, who were simply late in departing from their holiday outing. The hosts told us the place had been full, but uneventful, with only one ranger call-out. The ranger station is 70 miles away.

It's a lovely spot overlooking a clear blue lake, just a short distance east of the Thompson chain of lakes where we stayed five years ago. We thought we might go all the way to Kalispell yesterday, but stopped here just to check it out. While $12 for dry camping is normally a bit steep for us in such unpopulated territory, the spot was so idyllic we just had to stop. I've been marinating a nice tri-tip since we left the Wal-Mart, and the holiday crowd left so much firewood behind that I was able to grill it up over a nice bed of wood coals in short order.

In a few minutes we will head east to Kalispell, where our mail is due to arrive later today. I expect we will spend tonight there at the Elks lodge.

Final night at Mammoth

We are still at the Mammoth campground in Mammoth Hot Springs. We had actually intended to leave this morning, but when I called Xanterra to see if they could fit us in the Canyon campground tonight, they said no, so we settled for tomorrow instead, and re-upped for another night here.

Tuesday we had a nice hike through the "terraces," the hydrothermal feature which gives this place its name. We also rode around the little community here for a little bit before I had to get ready for my teleconference presentation. My call took us all the way to dinner time and beyond, and we rode back up to the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel for dinner.

Yesterday I had another conference call in the middle of the day, which kind of nixed doing any serious sightseeing. In the afternoon we rode the five miles north to the little town of Gardiner, Montana, where were were able to pick up a few groceries and essentials in a store that was a good deal larger and marginally cheaper than the Xanterra-run stores here in the park, with a somewhat greater selection of items. We also scoped for future dinner options, but decided there was nothing there that warranted another ten-mile round trip.

On the way to Gardiner we passed the spot in the river where a hot spring empties into it, making a nice soaking area. Unfortunately, the area is closed right now due to high water flow and levels, just as Firehole was. The one-way "old Gardiner road," which we had wanted to take on the northbound leg, is also closed as impassable. When dinner time finally rolled around, I made the chicken that we had purchased down in Grant Village.

Today we rode over to Roosevelt and Tower Falls, to see the various sites that we figured to be inaccessible to us when we pass that way in Odyssey. That included the petrified tree and Tower Falls themselves, as well as driving right up to the Roosevelt Lodge, in front of which were parked no fewer than six ranger patrol cars, two with lights ablaze. The rangers appeared to be searching a car item by item, and it looked for all the world like a drug bust. One of our planned diversions was the Blacktail Plateau Drive, but that, too, was closed as impassable. Actually, the sign said "POOR" conditions, but someone had altered the "R" to a "P" and added a "Y."

As long as we were at Tower Falls on the scoots, we looped through the Tower Fall Campground, which is listed in the guide as suitable only for rigs 30' and shorter, and as having a hairpin turn. In fact, no such sign is posted at the campground itself, and we found at least four sites that would fit Odyssey. The hairpin, while perhaps an obstacle for more conventional 39' rigs, would pose no problem for us, either. We've already got non-refundable reservations at Canyon, so it's moot, but, were we to do it over, I would zip over there on the scooter at checkout time and snag a long site before they fill up.

This evening I did the ranger-led walking tour of old Fort Yellowstone before we retired to our third and final dinner in the hotel. Tomorrow we will head down to the Canyon area, where I understand the visitor center is fantastic.

The view from our parking spot at the Havre, MT K-Mart. I love the midwestern skies and rolling grasslands.

One of the few Amtrak trains we have never traveled, the Empire Builder, speeds past us somewhere in Montana. I'm sure it's late.

Yesterday morning we left Spokane by the most direct route, taking I-90 east to Coeur d'Alene, where we picked up US-95 north into Sandpoint, Idaho, where we re-joined US-2. I expect that US-2 west of Sandpoint would have been quite scenic, but we would have had to slog through suburban Spokane on 395, which is not a pleasant drive at all. 95 was actually pretty scenic as well, past lake Pend Oreille and over a long bridge into Sandpoint. 95 and 2 are co-linear into Bonners Ferry, where 2 turns east again into Montana.

From here our route followed the Kootenai river through the national forests. We ended our day in the Thompson chain-of-lakes, at Logan state park, with a nice camp site overlooking Middle Thompson Lake (map). The boat launch was just a few feet from our camp site, and we decided to deploy the inflatable boat that we carry. With much coaxing, we persuaded Opal into the raft with us, and paddled out to the middle of the lake. I'm sorry we did not bring the camera with us -- one of these days we will get a dry-bag for it.

Today US-2 brought us to the edge of Glacier National Park, by way of Kallispell. A brief detour north from Columbia Falls on Montana 486, the last half of which was graded dirt and gravel, brought us along the western edge of the park bounded by the north fork of the Flathead. That allowed us to traverse a small corner of the park on Camas Road, ending up at the visitors center in Apgar. We wanted to drive at least this small bit of the park, since the main route through the park, Going To The Sun Road, is restricted to vehicles under 21' in length and 8' in width. At some point, we will return here and do that road on the motorcycles. We did check out the campground at Apgar, which will accommodate Odyssey with no problem.

We left the park via West Glacier and back onto US-2. Somewhere east of there we crossed the great divide at a very unclimactic 5,300', a marked contrast of our last crossing at over 11,000'. US-2 follows a very meandering path through the mountain ranges, with the low passes almost as a reward for such a circuitous route. In hindsight, Lewis and Clark took the hard way across.

Crossing through East Glacier and into the Blackfoot indian reservation, the mountains very quickly give way to the plains. Shortly after we left the reservation at Cut Bank, we passed Amtrak's wetsbound Empire Builder, a train we hope to ride someday before it passes into oblivion.

After crossing I-15 we found ourselves somewhat behind schedule, between stopping a bit early yesterday and spending time in the park today. After consulting our maps, we decided to press on all the way to Havre tonight, since there seemed to be a number of options for spending the night there, to wit, an Elks lodge and a county fairgrounds and museum complex with municipal camping.

Upon arriving here, however, we discovered that 1. the county fair is in full swing, and their camping is full (and unappealing with the fair in progress) and 2. despite apparent description to the contrary in the Elks guide, the lodge here has no dedicated parking, instead relying on a shared lot right smack in the middle of the town square, which we judged to be just a tad too public for our tastes.

There is no Wal-Mart here, but on our way into town we noticed some rigs in the K-Mart parking lot. With nothing to lose, we asked the manager if we might stay and she said it was not a problem. Apparently, they are used to rigs landing in their lot when the fair is open. There are at least two other coaches here, possibly heading for Minot just like us, and there is a big fiver as well. Any port in a storm, I guess, so here we are at the Havre K-Mart (map).

Lake Logan park is actually on Middle Thompson lake. The park was nearly empty and surprisingly non-buggy.