31 May 2012 - St. Mary Glacier Park KOA Kampground, St. Mary, M T

We left Glasgow this morning and headed west in the fog. Not too many miles from Glasgow, we were moving right along going about 60 miles an hour on a two lane road (we were out of the fog by this time), when we came up over a hill to find a couple of guys on horses herding some cattle right on the roadway. They hurried up and started moving the cattle off to the side, as we braked as much as we could. They got away safely and we did too.


Within about an hour or so from Glasgow we started seeing some snow capped mountains. Those first ones were just a small mountain range called Brown Mountain.

We skirted around them and an hour or so later, we started seeing a large mountain range with lots of snow on top. Those stayed within our sight the whole rest of the way. We saw a lots of cattle ranches today and lots of wheat fields. The wheat here grows all summer and is harvested in the fall. They have HUGE grain elevators in this area and every little town had an elevator beside the railroad tracks, plus an occasional one between towns. We saw a few antelope along the way, but I think that was the only wildlife for today.

We drove about 7 hours today to get here just outside Glacier National Park. It’s a nice campground and very scenic, situated almost in a bowl between the mountains.

One aspect about it though that’s not thrilling, the park guidelines paper gives instructions to put your garbage in the “bear proof containers”. Yikes! There is no TV reception here, including no satellite service for TV, so I guess we’ll be reading our books tonight or maybe play a game of cards. Tomorrow we plan to do some driving into Glacier Park, but we’ve been told that some of the roads have not been cleared of snow yet.

30 May 2012, Cottonwood Inn and RV Park, Glasgow, MT

We woke up this morning to 39 degrees outside. At least it was sunny and the wind had died down over night. It didn’t take long to get on our way as we hadn’t unhooked from the truck. As is our usual weather it seems, it was overcast and rainy off and on all day, but it did warm up to the upper 50’s and even got up to 64 this afternoon.

Today we saw the Big Sky from the road and the Badlands in Theodore Roosevelt Nation Park.

               Big Sky

                 Badlands


We drove longer today than we had planned. We first planned to spend the night in Glendive, MT, but it was still early, only about 1:00, but the driver wasn’t too tired, so we decided to keep going rather than sit around there all afternoon. Glasgow is where Lenny was born and I hadn’t been back here since we had left when he was about 3 months old. Jim had been stationed at Glasgow AFB and was discharged in November, 1964, so it’s been a “few” years since I was here. Within minutes of coming into town, I found the house we had lived in. Larry wanted to fill the tank right away, so we went into town, he didn’t see the diesel pumps at the first gas station so went on another block or two and pulled into another one. We had lived in a little rental house on the alley behind a gas station just a half block off the main drag.  As we pulled into the pump I looked between buildings and said “I think that’s it”. It was! I walked around to the alley and snapped a couple of pictures.

29 May – Jamestown Campground, Jamestown, ND

Our trip today was about 350 miles long. Left the campground at 8 o’clock this morning and pulled into the Jamestown Campground at 3:30 in the afternoon. At that point we were ready for a break. The sky has been overcast for most of the day and we have been fighting a stiff wind that was either from the front right or directing into us. Needless to say, this will probably be our worst gas mileage day of the trip. The temp has taken a dive also. At one point it was at 40 degrees, but right now it is 57 degrees at the campground. The weather just showed a possible 32 degrees tomorrow morning.

                      North Dakota Flat and Stormy

The picture should give you and idea of what it looked like when we decided to stop for the day. Karen took it out of the window before we got to Jamestown. The campground is right next to I-94 and we may have some road noise during the night (unless we try the white noise generator). But, it really is a nice clean campground with limited cable TV and great WIFI. We have a very long and flat spot that has allowed me to leave the RV hooked to the truck. And we have no one even camped close to us. Right now there may be eight campers in the campground, though there will probably be more coming in.

28 May – Still at Dakotah Meadows

                     Kyle, Alec, Lora, Darrell Peterson

Monday (Memorial Day) was cooler and very windy after a night of storms. We went over to Lora’s mid-morning and spent the day just relaxing around their house. Sometime after lunch we all got in the car in search of ice cream. We sat outside in their gazebo some, and then watched from the front yard while their family played some hockey in the driveway. Later in the evening we played a board game, then they grilled some pork steaks and we enjoyed a typical holiday summer meal. As we had done each day here, we left fairly early so we could get back to the dogs, who were anxiously waiting on us in the trailer. We’ll be seeing them again late in August when they come to our house so the boys can stay with us as Lora and Darrell have a vacation by themselves to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

26-28 May – Dakotah Meadows, Prior Lake, Mn

We will be at Dakotah Meadows until Tuesday morning spending time with Lora and family. The drive was about 225 miles on Saturday. It was as an easy drive until we hit Albert Lee, MN. Sky turned black and we ran though a major rain storm. I have never seen so many cars pulled off the road because of rain. But, since we could see well, I thought it was more dangerous to pull over than it was to slow down and keep driving. We made it into the campground about 1 o’clock and Lora and family brought us lunch from Culvers. We spent some time at the RV, than headed to their house for the rest of the day.

Today (Sunday) was a fun day with a project. We spent today changing the swing set I (Larry) helped build eight years ago, into a fort for Alec by enclosing the playhouse section.

Alec Helping

Kyle Helping

Almost Done

Finishing Up

Done for the day.

I had a lot of fun working with Darrell and the boys on the project (one of the things I like best, being able to help and feeling useful). I think by the time we finished today it had really taken shape. With a few small things to finish tomorrow, they will have fun painting it at a later date. Today was the hot day with temperature in the 90’s. Storms are moving through as I write this and than tomorrow will only be in the 70’s. Go figure, we picked the hot day. But with a breeze blowing all day it did not feel that bad.

25 May – Lazy Acres RV Park, Urbana, IA

Surprisingly we both slept well last night and didn’t stay awake with anticipation of the monumental trip ahead of us. Of course, that could have been because we had hardly slept at all the night before. The problem the night before was that Harry had a severe reaction to the flea and tic treatment we had gotten from the vet. We don’t know if it burned his skin or not, but it definitely caused him to hyperventilate and become extremely anxious. He couldn’t lay still, his legs jerked and he was constantly twisting and turning, all the while panting like he was burning up. We each slept probably less than two hours all night. I (Karen) took him to the vet Thursday morning and he had to get an IV with Prednisolone, we are giving him Benedryl and will start with Prednisolone tablets on Saturday. He is much, much better! This morning as we were doing our final loading and getting ready to get hooked up, Larry asked me if I smelled something bad around the back of the trailer. After a little investigation, we found a bird’s nest built up under the back end of the camper. Larry got down under and with gloves, started pulling out the nest. He pulled out a half bushel of sticks, grass, leaves and three dead baby birds. Apparently birds had built a nest while the trailer was in storage, then we brought the trailer home and the birds lived a few days before we noticed the smell this morning. Yuck! We drove away from home a little before 9:00 with it getting pretty warm at about 82 degrees. We are now at Urbana, Iowa, close to Cedar Rapids and it is somewhat cloudy and drizzling a little and temp at 66 degrees. We’ll go on to Lora’s tomorrow morning (about 4 hours).

One week till we leave for Alaska!

Since I sent a notice out to several people today concerning the blog, I thought I should have something posted for this trip. We leave for Alaska next Fri (25 May). So we are one week out and already wondering what we will forget. We plan to bring the 5th wheel home on Sunday so we can have 5 full days to forget to put something into the camper.