August 7, 2015 by malcolmtalley

Most of the way Through Montana

Current Location: Indian Creek RV Park, Deer Lodge, Montana

We were up and moving early this morning. That, coupled with today being a short driving day (223 miles) allowed us to arrive here in Deer Lodge right around noon. We got set up in a campsite then headed downtown to find some lunch. We found a nice place called Muriah’s of Montana. It was touted as a family style restaurant. The food was great, the staff friendly and the lemon drop cheesecake was to die for.

After lunch, we wandered down to tour the old Montana State Prison and the adjoining car museum. We arrived in time to take the afternoon guided tour which was very entertaining and informative. When we had stopped in the area two years ago (arriving late in the day and having to leave early the next morning), it was recommended that we make an effort to stop by some time when we could visit and take the prison tour. It was good advice.

We also stopped by the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historical Site. It was late in the afternoon and they were about an hour away from closing, so we just stamped our National Park Passport book, looked around the visitor center for a few minutes then headed on back to the trailer for the evening (after fueling up the truck).

Tomorrow it is on to Spokane (a slight change in plans as we were going to stop in Coeur d’Alene). That will put us a little closer to our final destination on Sunday of Lake Chelan State Park, where our granddaughters (and their parents) are already camped and waiting for us.

August 6, 2015 by malcolmtalley

Partway Through Montana

Current Location: Mountain Range RV Park, Columbus, Montana

No pictures today as we have spotty internet. We left pretty early this morning from Medora, traveling west on I-94 into Montana. We stopped at a truck stop around 10:00 Mountain Time so that Malcolm could take a phone call for work. We were there about 45 minutes before heading on down the road (after topping off the tank).

Malcolm’s Uncle David texted contact information for some relatives that Malcolm has in Absarokee, Montana. We’ve failed to try to visit with them the last two summers we’ve been through the area. As it turns out, the campground that Malcolm picked for today is in Columbus, Montana, which is only 14 miles from Absarokee.

When we stopped for lunch, Malcolm called his relatives and reminded them who he was. Unfortunately, they had their own family coming into town this afternoon and weren’t able to meet with us. We left our phone number and let them know that we’d be coming back through the area in mid- to late-September. We will get in touch with them in advance on the way back.

The campground here is nice. Right off the interstate. The weather is nice enough that we have windows open and power fans running this evening instead of the air conditioner. We drove up to Absarokee to look around, then back to Columbus. We walked down the street in Columbus as the weekly farmer’s market was going on. We didn’t find anything we needed. On the way back to the trailer, we stopped at a self-serve car wash and Malcolm washed the truck. It has been a couple months since it had a good bath.

Tomorrow we head on up to Deer Lodge, Montana.

August 3, 2014 by malcolmtalley

Idaho – Our 28th State

Current Location: Blackwell Island RV Resort, Coeur D’Alene, Idaho

Previous Location: Bearmouth Chalet RV Park, Clinton, Montana

We included two locations in today’s blog post, since we didn’t have any internet yesterday at Bearmouth Chalet RV Park. We’ll start there, since it was a pretty nice park and has a bit of a story behind it.

Last year, as we were heading west through Montana on the way to Washington, we took the easy road and stayed in the KOA in Deer Lodge, Idaho, using our “it’s easy enough to get a reservation on the road with the KOA website” mentality. The Deer Lodge KOA was more or less a big gravel lot on the edge of town, but admittedly the folks there were very friendly. Within an hour of leaving the KOA and traveling through the mountains of Montana, we saw what looked like a really nice RV park next to a river and decided we would try to stay there if we came through again. So we did.

On the road in Montana

Our site at Bearmouth

Bearmouth is apparently under new ownership this year, so they’re making improvements to the whole park. The sites are pretty level, the power was fine, the water pressure was a bit low and there were no sewer hookups, which is fine by us. They did have a dump station that we did use on the way out this morning. Other than a general lack of internet (AT&T was showing Edge network that was OK for very light usage and we didn’t try to hook up the Verizon to try it), the place was pretty nice. You have to pay the camp host with cash (for now, anyway), but that wasn’t a big deal. The overnight rate for 50 Amp was $30.

Another view at Bearmouth

Once we left Bearmouth this morning, we had a short-ish drive to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. It was a good midway point between Bearmouth and tomorrow’s destination at Chelan, Washington. Plus, we got to put another state sticker on the map.

Idaho added

This campground is a big lakeside resort. We took a chance at just showing up at noon and asking for a spot and we were rewarded with a nice and easy pull-through spot on the end of a row. Doesn’t look like much in the picture, but the place is pretty nice with lots of amenities.

Blackwell Island site

Since we were here early, we ate lunch in the trailer then headed into town to pick up a prescription for Malcolm at Walgreens. We decided to go ahead and fill up the truck while we were up that way and had to find a gas station that wasn’t full of travelers. We passed a Lowe’s Home Improvement store on the way to the gas station, then stopped in on the way back through. Val picked up a can of carpet cleaner spot treat stuff that we needed and Malcolm went ahead and purchased a two shelf pullout Rev-A-Shelf unit he had been debating for his camera and computer gear.

Once back at the trailer, Malcolm installed the Rev-A-Shelf unit and figured out that the fabric containers he put all his gear in were too wide for the wire shelves. We’ll have to find better containers that fit in the less-than-twelve-inch wide shelves.

Before installing shelves

Shelves installed

With the shelves installed, we called in reservations at the restaurant down the street – The Cedars Floating Restaurant. It is on the water and we chose to eat outside. The food was excellent and plentiful and we had coupons from the campground that gave us $6 off per person on bar drinks.

Entrance to The Cedars

Our view at dinner

Once we got back from dinner, we ran all our laundry at the campground laundry facility so that we’ll have plenty of clean clothes for our stay at Lake Chelan State Park starting tomorrow. That’s where we are meeting our daughter and family for 10 days. We can’t wait!

August 1, 2014 by malcolmtalley

Big Sky and Wheat

Current Location: Hardin KOA, Hardin, Montana

We were up at almost the crack of dawn today and actually rolled out of the campground in Wyoming before 7:00 AM. Between that and having a short trip today (280 miles), we were checking into the KOA here in Hardin at noon. We had lunch in the trailer after we got set up. The campground here is surrounded by farmland. Directly out our back window is a huge wheat field.

Our site in Hardin

Wheat field

Malcolm fixed a couple things on the trailer since we had the afternoon free. First, he found why the pan in the back of the refrigerator wasn’t draining – a small anti-bug type device at the end of the hose was clogged up. He cleared that out, made sure the rest of the hose was clear and cleaned out the small catch pan a bit. That should eliminate our wet refrigerator when was travel.

Malcolm also found the threaded bolt that came with our bike carrier to keep it from rocking about in the hitch on the back of the trailer. He had to cut the locking one off in Nashville because he lost the keys and it wasn’t staying tight. A search for a proper replacement bolt was a no-go, so he just took the threaded insert out of the hitch and put a bolt and nut through it. That allowed the bike carrier quite a bit of sway – to the point someone signaled us over today and told us “our bike rack looks like it is ready to fall off”. With the original bolt threaded in with a new split washer, it is riding tight again.

Malcolm took the truck downtown to the Ford dealer for his 3:00 appointment to get the oil changed only to find out that they hadn’t penciled him in on the schedule. Fortunately, there was still a 3:00 appointment open (it’s a very small town and a small dealership) so they wrote him in and had it done by 3:30.

We ended up heading back into town about 4:00 to search for some dinner and to retrieve the iPad that Malcolm had left on the counter at the Ford dealership. There wasn’t much in the way of sit-down restaurants that are open at 4:00, so we walked around town a bit but our central time zone stomachs couldn’t wait a whole hour. We ended up eating dinner at a Taco John’s restaurant. The food wasn’t too bad – better than Taco Bell’s in our estimation.

One of the items we found downtown near the train station was a rail car with painted murals on it. The nearby sign explained it was one of the 30 cars on the 1964 Montana Centennial Train. The state of Montana commissioned 150 murals depicting various scenes in Montana history and mounted them on the sides of train cars. The train then made a cross-country trek to the World’s Fair in New York. This is one of only two remaining cars still on display. The town of Hardin, in celebrating its own centennial in 2007, commissioned local artists to refresh the paintings.

Centennial Train Car

The 1927 train station was still intact and is now used for the Chamber of Commerce (that was closed today).

Train station

The Becker Hotel was one of the first buildings built in Hardin in 1907, when the city was platted. It still stands today, though no longer used as a hotel.

The Becker Hotel

In other news, our son earned his black rope in the Air Force. This was a personal goal of his. We’re very proud of him. This article describes the rope system and its purpose in the Air Force tech school.

Displaying his Black Rope

Not many license plates today – 18. Traffic was very light and we left early. We did, however, score yesterday’s elusive Nevada plate.

Today’s License Plates

June 29, 2013 by malcolmtalley

On to Washington

Current Location: Gig Harbor RV Resort, Gig Harbor, Washington

This morning we were up early, awakened by the sound of birds arguing on the roof of the trailer. We’re trying to get used to the longer days up north. 5:45 AM and the sun was already above the horizon and shining brightly, after having watched the sunset colors the night before at nearly 10:00 PM.

As we were loading things in the truck and getting ready to pull it around to hitch up, Malcolm noticed several scratches in the glass on the outside. We aren’t sure how they got there, but they weren’t there yesterday. They’re fairly visible when the sun is shining towards the window and one of them runs right down the center of the driver’s side right where you look out the window when you are driving. We may end up replacing a windshield while in Washington.

We got all hooked up and headed out about 7:30 AM, determined to get as much distance in today as we could. That would make the trip tomorrow much shorter on into Gig Harbor. As you can see by our “current location”, we went ahead and drove the whole way in today – 587 miles.

We stopped briefly at the top of the pass between Montana and Idaho to check out the scenery and stretch legs. Here area a couple of pictures from that stop.

Welcome to Idaho

Looking into Idaho

Looking back on Montana

Since we were driving across the panhandle of Idaho, it didn’t take long to get to Washington state. Here are some random pictures from Washington.

Welcome to Washington

Columbia River

Wind farm in Washington

Mountains in Washington

After a stop at a rest area in Washington, we figured that it was a little over 4 hours to Seattle from the place we were and it was only about 1:00 PM. Checking the map app to see how to get to Gig Harbor without getting tangled in Friday afternoon rush hour in Seattle, Malcolm called our son-in-law, Cole, to verify that taking Washington 18 cross-country would be a viable alternative to heading into Seattle and catching I-5 south.

Malcolm then called the campground to see if we could show up a day early. After checking around for available spots, they said we could come on in, but might have to move to our reserved spot tomorrow. We agreed that wouldn’t be a problem and headed on into town.

As we got onto I-5 near Tacoma, traffic ground to a halt and crawled for several miles. We hopped off and filled up the truck at a Love’s truck stop. Malcolm did the fuel chores while Val and David grabbed dinner to go from the Subway in the building. We ate sandwiches as we traveled the rest of the way to the campground.

Our site at Gig Harbor RV Resort

Though the campground office was closed, they hang out envelopes for those arriving late to grab and park. We grabbed ours and pulled through our site, doing a quick setup (unhitching, leveling, run out the slides, hook up the power, turn on the A/C and outside light). Once set up, we hopped back in the truck and headed out to Fox Island to visit our family, who is camping out there. Since it was getting close to bedtime for the grandchildren, we didn’t stay very long. We headed back to the trailer and plopped down for the night.

David and Violet

Here are today’s license plate finds – 23 of 51.

Today’s license plates

Traveling Talleys

Documenting our RV Adventures

Montana