Welcome to Mountain Time in Montana. We are so grateful to have made it this far, on schedule. And we are enjoying it, despite Rick’s back problems.
We have planned for these kind of situations in that I am (also) fully capable of handling all of the setup/teardown steps on my own. That has come into good use! If Rick is going to risk stress to his back, it is going to be doing something fun and not this day to day work! Save it for hiking…
Rick knows what to do to strengthen/repair his muscles, and is investing appropriately in the exercises and heating pad a couple of times per day. We have more than enough time for that! Tylenol helps, as did the martini last night!
We have yet another interesting campground tonight, and they are all a bit different. I decided to grade them:
N1, Illinois: B+ County parks are a huge asset, and can get you a beautiful campground just outside of a metropolitan area (CHI/O’Hare area). We had a similar great experience in Denver. Sad about no full hookups, otherwise an A.
N2, Wisconsin: A! Another county park, new and seriously fantastic in every way. I’m so glad Rick tried these new places as much better than some of the privately run ones we have stayed at. This one was not far outside of Minneapolis/St Paul with lots of “suburban” amenities on the way. I love both Wisconsin and Minnesota, so I would stay at any campground, anytime. We will likely come back here at some point to just relax.
N3, North Dakota: D. OMG it was not nice. The only thing good that I can say is that it was close to the highway and it was, most likely, safe. But the bugs were overwhelming, we had a smell from the dump station a little too often, and the highway construction work went well after 11pm. While we finally could get some cooler temps and had a great sleep with the windows open, I couldn’t wait to leave this morning.
N4, Montana: A! This is great! We’re in a little town (Glasgow) that is in Northern Montana, but still 6 hours East of Glacier National Park. It’s simple, in the back of a hotel, with a railroad station behind us… but the space is level and clean. There are only a few campers here and most of us were in the hotel bar for a little bit! Now we are out here enjoying a wonderful evening before we make our last big journey tomorrow to our first “real” destination!
Today’s driving was not fun. Lots of wind, a fair amount of rain. Livvy’s gas mileage sucked. But now, at 7pm, the winds have died down and there is not a drop of rain, or a serious wind, in our future. I will take one miserable day of driving in order to have a wonderful experience in our primary destinations!
This evening, there is some smoke in the air from the Canadian Wildfires. We just met a lovely fellow camper (who just completed visiting all 63 US National Parks, our goal!) who said that the smoke wasn’t this thick in Glacier. So hopefully it is just a one night thing for us. The other thing we are experiencing is the sound of the local demolition derby from the county fair. Not only did we see a car heading to competition earlier, but a young man was hailed out of the bar because “her kids want to go see the derby!”
Montana brings you a little bit of everything, and it is all good!
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