Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Idaho? Oh, wow, Idaho!

To most of the country, Idaho is associated with one thing: potatoes.   So my expectations were low when we planned a few days here.   What a pleasant surprise!   The scenery has the soothing beauty of northern Wisconsin, combined with the drama and majesty of the best of the Rockies.   Every turn is a new surprise.    Idaho is one of those places that I probably would've never made it to without this  RV adventure.   I'm glad I got a chance to see it.

Canoeing on the highest navigable river in the US

Bike path across the river


Beautiful campground, Heyburn State Park



Thursday, July 14, 2016

Under way again.... oops, delays again... and we're off....

So we finally got out of Hoffman, MN.   From there we drove to a crappy little RV park just outside Bismarck.   The spots were so close together, our slide out went over our neighbors water connection.    The guy there lived there, and had piles of junk, a lawnmower, a tiller, and a couple of old Halloween masks in the pile of junk.   He liked to talk to us through the window of the RV.   I called him "Mr. Level 3".

From Bismarck, it was on to Little Big Horn, where we learned a lot about the famous battle.   This was just one of those tragic marks on our country's history.

Then, we found a place in Billings, MT that could look at our RV and replace the shocks - we thought that would be the end of it.   It turns out, there was a serious problem with one of the wheels, which explained why one of them got so hot and we had a shimmy.   Basically, several of the pieces were out of true, and the wheel couldn't rotate freely.   They had to replace the rotors, but also do several other things to get it back to rolling.   There were a couple other things, but that was most of it.

The good news is, the place we took it was very friendly.  They let us stay in the RV in their yard, to save us from hotel bills.   It wasn't the best view of the trip, but it was still convenient.  There was a Target, a movie theater, a mall, and several restaurants within walking distance.   For day two, they lent us a car and we got a bonus side trip to Beartooth Pass (just north of Yellowstone), which was spectacularly beautiful.

Finally we got back on our way and made it to somewhere near Butte, MT.  It was a cute place with some pretty mountains nearby.   But we mostly just drove in and got on the road the next day.

Then, it finally started to feel like our RV adventure was beginning.   We made it to West Glacier, taking back roads most of the way.   The RV site was buried deep in the trees.   The next day we went to Glacier National Park and took the shuttle for Going-to-the-Sun Road.   It was an overcast day, and we drove up into the clouds.   Heavy clouds.   It was about 40 degrees, windy, and near zero visibility at the top.   So that didn't last long.

Then we moved to a new campsite, more spectacular than anything we'd had so far.   It looked something like this:




Glacier National Park and the surrounding area may be the most beautiful place in the US.   It will be hard to beat, because it has everything: dramatic mountains, thick forests, waterfalls, lazy rivers, beautiful lakes, giant rock formations, and of course glaciers.   How can anyone else compete?