Laundry and Bears

Wednesday we needed to do laundry again so we went into West Glacier and found a coin laundry. While Lynn hung out at the laundry I visited the local fly shop for some advise. I bought the hot fly's they recommended and headed back to get Lynn. We returned to the rig and had some lunch then decided to try some fly fishing and site seeing. Checking the map I found a bridge crossing the Flathead River about ten miles into the park. hen we arrived their were two people watching something with binoculars, they said it was a big black bear down on the river right were I wanted to fish.

The bear was gone and we never seen it so I went to the other end of the bridge to see if there was a way down to the river. When I turned to come back I noticed a big black bear about 30 yards behind Lynn who looking at the river and was not aware of the bear. I yelled honey get in the car. When she turned around she was a little surprised to see the bear so close, I yelled don't run. She stood there looking at the bear and the bear looking back at her. The bear continued across the road a disappeared in the brush.

I fished this beautiful hole and never had a bite. I tried every fly I had.

I am a little far away to here Lynn yell bear, bear.

We are having a great time.

I told her I found a way to get down to the river to fish and she said are you crazy that was a big bear. I said I know but he is gone now and you can be my bear watch. Just let me know if he comes back. About an hour later I am fishing and she sees the bear again on the other side of the bridge in the river. She yelled at me but of course I never heard her. Just then some other cars stopped and the bear went back in the brush. So I caught no fish and did not get to use my bear spray (oh that was back in the motor home shi;;;) oh well I did not need it. Hear are some pictures of the area I was fishing. Sorry no bear pictures Lynn had the camera.

Tight lines and safe travels.

Swan Lake Campground

Our campsite at Swan Lake

Kayaking on Swan Lake

Can't find the boat launch.

We are headed for Glacier NP and along the way we stopped Saturday night at a Walmart in Billings Montana for the night. People are right when they say it is more expensive to stay for free at a WM because you end up shopping all night. We had a good nights sleep until about five am when the parking lot sweeper came to clean the lot, that thing sounds like a tornado going by.

The next two nights we stayed at a National Forest campground on Swan Lake $7.50 a night with the Old Geezer Pass. We had heard that Glacier was full up so we waited until Tuesday to come up.

We passed historic sites including the battle of Little Bighorn.

Anyway Swan Lake and Swan river are beautiful and we had a great time Kayaking and fishing. Sunday morning I was sitting on the couch when I heard the neighbors Rottweiler barking wildly, so I looked out the window just in time to see a big black bear run across the road and along side our motorhome, boy that will wake you up.

We took the Kayak out on the lake and motored around and paddled a little, (note to self) make sure you know where you launch the boat so you can come back without paddling all around the lake in the dark.

Swan River. It is a six hour float to the lake.

Here fishy fishy.

Monday we went down the road with the car and spotted a charity Huckleberry pancake breakfast. Sooo we had to stop. This was a cool little cafe, it had two resident Golden Retrievers and they would go along and visit all the patrons laying their heads in your lap hoping to get a treat. If the owner caught them they got in big trouble. I ask a local where I  could fly fish and he sent me about five miles down the road to a place called Blair Flats. We packed our lunch and went down for the afternoon. The river was beautiful and their were quite a few fisherman floating the river, but no one including me was catching any fish.

McDonnald Lake across from our campsite in Glacier.

So now it is Tuesday and we arrived at Glacier about 10 am and had our pick of camp sites $10.00 with the old geezer pass. We plan to stay here about a week and then head for Yellowstone. We will keep you up dated we do have cell service here in the campground. We will be taking the Going to the Sun Road on Thursday so stay tuned for some great pictures.

You guy's do know you can send comments on the blog. Hope to here from you. Until next time.

Headed for Glacier National Park

Well the Rally is over and we are heading for Glacier NP today. The Rally finished with a dance Thursday night and a breakfast Friday morning. We plan on a two day trip to get to Glacier from here and plan to stay in a Walmart tonight. We  needed to stay over an extra night in order to get the Motorhome weighed. Yesterday was a repair and cleanup day for the rig. Lynn cleaned all the screens and we replaced a leaky black tank valve, that was rather unpleasant. I was wishing Betty was here because she has experience with stinky backup. The wind last night must have been fifty MPH it shook the motorhome like the jolly green giant wanted us out of bed. We heard a crash and new the satellite dish had just blown over, and it was weighted down. Their are still allot of folks in the camp ground, I think they are afraid all the campsites will be taken on the Labor Day weekend.

Please keep in mind that their is limited cell coverage in Glacier and no Wi-Fi so we may be off the grid for a couple weeks. We will go from Glacier to Yellowstone depending on weather, if it turns cold and snowy we will head south. We turned the furnace on for the first time this morning, it was 49 degrees inside when we woke up. Today the highs will be in the sixties.

I have added a couple more pictures from our travels. I plan to be trout fishing by Monday Yea.

Mount Rushmore

Sylvan Lake near Needles

Two happy campers

This is part of the road at Needles.
You can see the tunnel in the distance.

Tight lines and safe travels.

Escapade Rally Gillette Wyoming

Tuesday sunset.

Here are a few of the RVs. That's ours with the blue stripe.

This is the building where they hold the seminars and entertainment.

This is the vendor room, this is one of five aisles.

We have been very busy here at the rally, attending seminars on all things RV related. The best one I attended was one on fire safety. Most fires in an RV are caused by an electrical wiring short or the refrigerator. A good question the instructor asked  was is your refrigerator between your bedroom and the door? In our case yes it is. We have a large escape window at the head of our bed, so we learned how it operates. Some of the other seminars were cooking in an RV, RV sewage systems and how they work, tips on driving and backing an RV, packing in a limited space an so on. We have also been attending potlucks and eating way to much, we just returned from a great potluck put on by the Michigan Chapter of the Escapees Club.

This is where we had lunch. It is in the old part of town.

Can't wait to try there cheese.

The Cam-Plex where the rally is located is a huge complex, it has over a thousand campsites. There are people showing up with horses, it looks like there is going to be a large Rodeo here over Labor Day. We are staying an extra day here so we can get the motor home weighed, Lynn is biting her nail thinking she has went over our weight limit, I am sure of it.

We spent the morning running around town shopping. We spent the gift certificate Lynn won at the RV store and purchase a few thing we needed for the motor home, it was a great store and they had just about anything you would need. We replaced most of our lights with LED bulbs that take 90% less power to use, this will help conserve our battery power when we are boon docking.
We also went to the Chop House Restaurant and had lunch to use the other gift certificate Lynn won, it was very good. Across the street from the restaurant was a cheese store so I went to see if they had any five year old Cheddar, I love aged cheddar. They had a great selection, some aged for ten years. We also bought some rib eye steaks they had that were corn fed and reasonably priced.

We bought a bottle of this wine. Umm good.

We had a sever thunder storm here Monday with hail and high winds, man you could see it coming, it looked very omenous. The storm was a good test to see if I repaired all the roof leaks before we left and yes we stayed dry, yeah. The sunsets are real pretty here on the plains. To day we got our Flu Shots right here at the rally, they had Walgreen's come in and give the shots. We need a break this going back to school is getting old. We have learned allot and it has been well worth it. I have attached some pictures of the complex. Y'all have a great day.

Needles and Iron Mountain Road

On Saturday we decided to take the Needles highway and the Iron Mountain road and checkout the scenery. These roads are a must see, oh if I only had my motorcycle. The roads were pretty heavy with traffic being a Saturday a lot of people were out driving around. These two roads have to be the most exciting and scenic roads I have ever been on for a motorcycle, and that includes the Tail of The Dragon in Tennessee. So if there are any riders out there reading the blog check it out. I will attach some pictures that show some of the tunnels through the mountain. If you look closely you can see Mount Rushmore framed in the tunnel. This was done on purpose by the Governor of SD at the time. He purposely lined up the tunnels so they framed Mount Rushmore "cool". The switchbacks on the needles highway are so sharp you can see your own taillights as you go around. Lynn was a little white knuckled.
We also drove the wilderness road in Custer State Park, Lynn wanted to see some animals. She got to see Antelope, Buffalo and some very friendly Burrows. She was crawling into my seat trying to get away from the Burrows putting their heads in the car looking for food. It was another great day and we took a lot of pictures.
Sunday we drove to Gillette Wy for the Escapade RV Rally. We went to the opening ceremonies and Lynn won a nice door prize, a $25 gift certificate to a local restaurant and a $50 gift certificate at a local RV accessory store. The campground here very nice with with full hookups. Last night they had a comedian for entertainment who was very good, we laughed for an hour. As you can see we are really having a lot of fun. Wish you could all be here. Tight lines and safe travels.



Hey baby how about a kiss.

Spearfish Canyon SD

Soiled doves above the saloon.

Wild Bill Hickock was shot to death in this saloon.

Spearfish Falls. A nice hike.

This pine tree smells like butterscotch.

 

Bridelvail falls.

Hey Butch keep an eye out for the delivery.

Yesterday we went to the town of Deadwood and drove through the Spearfish Canyon. Boy was I missing my motorcycle on those curvy mountain roads. The scenery was just awesome and we really enjoyed the drive. The town of Deadwood was an old west town that was thriving back in the 1800's and was real big in mining. It was interesting to go into the old buildings and sit at the old saloon bars. They have manikins setup in the windows upstairs dressed like the soiled doves of yesteryear "prostitutes" that was kind of fun. We decided to take a hike up to Spearfish Falls that was used in the movie "Dances with Wolves" about two miles round trip at 90 degrees. It was a nice hike but we had to stop and rest a few times. There were allot of trout in the river and we could see them as we hiked along the river, and me with no fly rod. We are taking hundreds of pictures but we won't bore you with them all, I will just add a few so you can get an idea of what it is like. Today is a day off and we are going to stick around the Rig and get some chores done. Just after we left Spearfish a bad thunder storm popped up with lots of lighting and hail, boy I am glad we were off that mountain trail with no place to hide. As the storm approached Stugis we lost electricity and I started the generator because it was so hot. The lady in the big RV  next store, her name is Kathy said you can't run generators in this park, when Lynn ask her why she said because we don't have one ha ha.  We are headed to Gillette Wyoming on Sunday so I guess we better clean the old girl up for the Rally the" Motor home that is, not Lynn". Stay safe

Mount Rushmore

Yesterday we visited Mount Rushmore for the first time. The drive back into the hills was beautiful and crooked. I can see why the motorcycles riders like this area. Mount Rushmore is an engineering marvel and was very cool. We took the presidential trail and hiked to the bottom of the monument, their are over 400 steps to climb back up. With low oxygen levels at this altitude it was difficult to breath. That's my excuse for breathing hard anyway. The weather is still very warm and sunny. We have met new friends in the campground and it has been fun talking with everyone. We will see some of them because they are also attending the rally next week. I was next store helping the neighbor with his awning when a stiff wind came up, we just got it under control when Lynn yelled our awning was coming apart. We got it rolled up but the frame came apart. I was able to fix it the next day. Note to self if neighbor is having trouble in the wind put my awning down before helping him. We are going to drive the Needles Highway and go to the town of Deadwood today.

 The top picture is of the Badlands.

 This is a picture of the area we where hiking in the Badlands. You can probably tell I am trying to sneak a big rock back for Lynn under my shirt.