Butte-Days Inn

Okay, montana is wonderful and all, but i'm sooo ready to go home and get ready for our trip. as of yesterday, both of us finally hold the ticket for our flights, at least the international part (JFK-IST). i'm stoked to see ny on the way. now to tackle the rest of my to-do list!

... truck and sent the driver out (Sam) to pick us all up in the mini van. Sam arrives and before I know what is going on he hops in the drivers seat, fires up the Minnie Winnie and while revving it up yells for me to drive back the van ! He roars off and I am thinking "Ok, a strange man has just taken off with my kids and they are going to freak !" I run for the van panicking that if he gets too far ahead I won't know where I am going ! Sam keeps it going all the ...

... colors, so on we go!<br><br>Well, tomorrow we'll try to remember to take a picture or two to add to the blog. Thanks to all of you who are commenting and calling us. We can't always answer the phone while on the road but leave a message and we'll call you back as soon as possible.<br><br>Our ride today was 597 miles and a lot of time on the seat of bikes but we're still having fun and are in great health. Thanks for praying about that too.<br><br>Paul<br>

Today we left the vast openness of Montana and climbed into the mountains, through Idaho and into Washington. We crossed the Columbia Plateau in Washington with its huge wheat fields and semi-arid range land for about 100 miles. Besides wheat we passed fields of alfalfa, corn soy beans, peas, as well as vineyards. After crossing the Columbia River at the Gorge we again climbed into the mountains. The day was very hot until we stopped at Cle Elum in the mountains, where it was very pleasant

We arrived in Butte at around 7:30 pm. We found the Copper King Mansion up near the top of the hill and had a moment of pause... was it haunted? We went to the door, where we rang an old fashioned (of course) twist mechanical door bell. The giant door creaked open to reveal a small older man in his stocking feet. Perhaps we had interrupted him from sharpening his knives?<br><br>But no, he was one of the owners and a very nice fellow. We felt at ...

... of a long tunnel. The water was very high, and a murky reddish brown. I recognized the hot-and cold color mixing (like cold milk in hot coffee) from a hands-on display at the Mineral Room. Very odd looking. I remember seeing it as a Girl Scout when it was still in operation. It is hard to imagine how deep it really is!<br><br>After returning to the hotel and regrouping, we headed out for dinner. From the list ...

... There&#8217;s some sort of regional wrestling competition being held here and the town is bustling with activity. Since we got in early, and it was raining, I elected to do laundry and catch up on the computer. My &#8220;blog&#8221; had gotten bogged down due to a hitch transferring my contact files from Outlook 2007. I ended up having to export the contact file and email it to the technician at Travelpod, and he managed to get them uploaded&#8230 ...

Gisteren zijn we vanuit Billings vertrokken richting Butte. Eerst hebben we een paar stops gemaakt bij diverse winkels om de benodigde spulletjes in te slaan. Walmart voor hap en drank en een coolbox, Ross (*2) voor wat kleding en om de eerste verschijnselen van shop-a-holic te bevestigen en Target voor een wijnopener (heerlijke australische wijn hier....die Calafornische is super duur in Montana). In het begin van de dag zijn we een paar keer verkeerd gereden maar ...

... disturbed year after year) and I even got a great photograph of a pictograph on a canyon wall that is estimated to be 1400 years old. We finished our day with an unexpected quick trip to the Big Hole - the former open mine called the Berkely Pit right here in Butte. It's over one mile across, almost one mile wide and 900 feet deep - filled with extremely toxic water. From Wikipedia ...

... next time. There is an abandoned gold mine up the slope on the other side of the river which is used for rheumatism suffers. Apparently they moved some mine workers to this mine who'd had bad rheumatism and they got better. No-one knows for sure how it works - radium? - dunno. We'll visit it tomorrow. The Camp host did the usual and decided we were Australian - so far other than one Australian women who knew we ...