Leepers Motel Lincoln

Leaving Missoula via The KBGA Bus!

I am writing this entry from comfort of my living room in Missoula, Montana.
Kingston (my dog) is staring up at me and laying his muzzle on my knee, looking at me, sniffing, licking, calmly telling me to get off the computer and go play with him in the sunshine ...

... but here the call them growlers he he. We took a whole lot back to their place had elk burgers, listened to Andy bang out tunes on the guitar and had a raging good local time. Awesome! Now I sit here, it's our second night in this hotel as we didn't accomplish much of a rest day yesterday

I'm blown away with the cool people we have met to date. Americans are so very welcoming, generous and know how to have a good time, so not the stereotype that you hear about so often.

The harvesters have been stopped by a combination of green wheat and rain so we have a couple of days of down time. Yesterday we did some shopping and errands but today we decided on a road trip. We started out and realized that we needed to top up the fuel tank so turned back into Great Falls. We have found that here in the west, it is a long distance between fuel stops so you never head out with a part tank. What we didn't realize was that we had ...

... once we are in the right place at the right time. In several places a lot of the "attractions" seem to close for the season on Labor day (Sept 3rd) or by the end of Sept - mind you it's saved us a few dollars in entrance fees! It seems that Rogers Pass about 40 miles NW from here, a pass through the Continental Divide, is a migration route for eagles at this time of the year. So with cameras, binoculars and sarnies we set off. Toad climbed ...

Our last day at the 'Lake Upsada Dude Ranch' was just as wonderful as the first, but not without some excitement. This morning, after breakfast, we loaded up in a van with some other guests to drive to a local hike. We didn't realize it was going to be such a long drive.(almost an hour) This was my kind of hike. We started out around 4,000ft. By the time we got tour starting point, we were at about 7,000ft. We only hiked a couple hundred feet, but we were at one of the highest ...

We had such a great time in Missoula. It's a beautiful part of the country, but we really enjoyed meeting up with some friends even more. Today, before we pulled out of town, Kelly took the boys on a field trip to a 'Smoke-jumper" school. These are the guys that parachute into fires to put them out. Today was graduation, so they saw some demonstrations and ran into a producer that is shooting a movie about the jumpers. While they were on their field trip, I got us packed up ...

September 26th and 27th Paradise Valley, Montana Our goal was hot water at Chico. Thinking that late September would be quiet at the historic hot springs resort, we called on Tuesday morning expecting to be able to find a room at the inn. No such luck - but the fact that they didn't have rooms turned out to be a lucky break for us. We left our in-town Livingston RV Park, got some provisions at the grocery store, fueled up (again!) and ...

September 22nd through 25th Four Days to Montana We decided that we would do our damnedest to get in the truck and get from the Adirondacks to Montana; Chico Hot Springs in particular, as fast as possible. It's not that we have anything against the Midwest or the Great Plains; well, maybe we do. We just feel at home in the West and wanted to get there as quickly as possible. So we abandoned our earlier ban on interstates and not only did we travel virtually exclusively on interstates ...

For those of Calvary Chapel and Celite workers who knew Mike and Avis and their 2 girls we have some pix of them. They are also putting up with Sergei which is quite a feat. Cheryl and I know this because we have nearly 9 years with him. Actually, Sergei is doing very well, the Boston's and there extended family love him, esp the kids from what we observed. I think the next time we see him, he will be like the Russian ...

During our three months off one of the things i really wanted to make sure and do is get back to Big Sky and visit all of our friends. This year we flew instead of drove across the country and it was so much easier! I didn't miss the drive through North Dakota one bit. I think it took like 3 hours versus 2 days of driving. Our friends picked us up at the airport and we headed into town ...