Off on a Short Jaunt

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Taking advantage of a short time frame that was open to all four of us, we left home about 12:30 this afternoon, as soon as Wilma got out of the teeth cleaning chair. We immediately stopped at Taco Bell for some fortification before hitting the road.

Hope this isn’t an omen for the trip, but Fred and Wilma picked up a good sized rock chip before we were a half hour down the road! Hopefully we can find one of the chip repair stands before it grows into a full blown crack through the windshield.

Now I need to update a blog from our last trip, when we left the KOA in Limon, Colorado, and headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. We had commented on the toll road going around Denver, and wondered if they were putting in toll booths or taking them out. Probably neither, because one month later we got a bill in the mail for $9.75 for the tolls we accrued on that road. Big brother is spying on us! and license plate reading is alive and well. It is probably a lot cheaper to collect tolls using cameras and computers than to have a lot of human toll takers!

We are trying to get to Glacier National Park in northern Montana on this trip. We need to go sometime during July or August to take advantage of the free shuttles they run across Going to the Sun road. That road is very narrow and tight, and they have a 20 foot vehicle length limit and an 8 foot width limit. Even if we took the camper off, we would still be too wide with our mirrors. So the shuttle is the way to go, but then you have to go with the other hoards of people during the summer months. So we are going to brave the crowds and try to enjoy the park! I don’t think we’ll have to try too hard!

Wildfires abound in Idaho, and today we drove the Banks to Lowman road and on up to Stanley. You could not even see the Sawtooth Mountains because the smoke is so bad. We went just a little way past Stanley and are camped in the small upper Obrien campground along the Salmon River.

We enjoyed a light dinner (light except for the Black Bottom cake for dessert, yum yum) around the picnic table, and Barney geared up and is flinging a few bugs around in the river. Fresh fish for breakfast would be good!

We will be stopping several different places before finding our way to Glacier. We have to feed our National Park Passport Stamp habit, and we also hope to take in the Lewis and Clark Interpretive center in Great Falls. We have heard it is one of the better ones.

We are tucked down in the river canyon and have absolutely no signal, so this will have to post from on up the road tomorrow.  Meanwhile, have a great day.