Our RV Adventures

As it seems to happen all the time, the forecasted low of 39° for Garrison, MT last night turned out to actually be 32°.

And expecting this, I did plug in my engine’s block heater last night so that this morning my engine oil temperature was a toasty 137°. Nice.

We were out on I-90E heading to Billings, MT 240 miles away a little before 10am. And thanks to blog reader Mary Burge, our first stop was at the Wheat Montana in Three Folks, MT,

Wheat Montana is a family farm/deli that specializes in non-GMO wheat products grown on their own farm. Wheat which they then turn into delicious wheaty treats like ginormous cinnamon rolls

and other delectables.

Besides the goodies, we split a really good Tuna Melt with Cheddar Cheese before we got back on the road.

Thanks, Mary.

Two things come up a lot while you’re traveling through Montana:

First off you start to hate these signs.

It means you’re now in for a long, slow climb at 40mph and 3mpg. Sometimes it seems like you’re going straight up. But at least I finally got to pass someone, the slower trucks, as we crawled uphill. And just like yesterday we were back up in the snow line with piles of it still along the road.

But it also means great scenic views along the way.

One thing that was different about this trip was Karma. When we first started traveling with her last year, she would run and hide as soon as I started up the rig, and not show up again until about 15 minutes after we were parked.

But in the last six months or so she’s started coming out more, sleeping on the sofa, or on the floor between our chairs.

But today, just liked Mister used to,

she climbed up on the dash and went to sleep.

By 4:30 we were parked and set up at the Billing’s Trailer Village RV Park, a park we’ve stayed at many times before.

And this morning we decided to shake the Jell-O again and change our schedule a little. Originally we were going to stay one night here in Billings, and then in Gillette, WY for one night, before going on to the Rapid City, SD area for a week or so.

But where to stay in Gillette was always kind of sketchy. So now we’re staying here for two nights, and then we’ll make the 365 mile trip straight through to Rapid City on Tuesday.

About 5:30 we headed out to have dinner at Famous Dave’s BBQ once again. Our last visit was about two months ago when we were staying in Apache Junction, AZ, so it was about time for another meal there.

Jan got her regular 1/2 rack of St. Louis Ribs, with fries and beans,

and I got my usual Rib’s N Meats Combo, with St. Louis Ribs, Beef Brisket, and a Hot Link Sausage, along with corn on the cob and beans. All delicious as usual.

Yeah, it’s a rut, but it’s a tasty rut. And as usual also, plenty of leftovers.

We’ll sleep late tomorrow, goof off and then do some shopping. Then it’s dinner at our other favorite place here, the HuHot Mongolian Grill.

The Flat Earth Society claims they have members all around the globe!

adfasdf

We were up about 7 this morning wanting to get on the way by 9 or so. I said in yesterday’s blog that we were going back in to Pacific Time today, but I meant from Pacific Time back into Mountain Time.

Actually we’ve essentially been in the Pacific Time Zone since we entered Arizona on March 14th. Since DST had started two days earlier, and Arizona doesn’t observe DST, they’re the same as PDT. But another thing is that Idaho is in two different time zones, but not divided east and west like some states, but north and south, with the north, skinny part in the PDT and the south is in MDT.

We were out of the park and on US90 by about 10:15 MDT. It was sprinkling slightly when we left  and that continued until we entered Montana. One thing noticeable was how much snow was still on the ground, not only on the surrounding mountain tops, but along side the roadway also.

After we entered Montana we started seeing billboards for the St. Regis Travel Center and their signature ‘Huckleberry Shakes’. So a little over 30 miles in Montana we took the St. Regis exit. Although the billboards didn’t say anthing about RV parking, I was hoping that being a ‘Travel Center’ meant we could find a place to park.

And we did, about a block away in a big rig lot with a couple of other trucks.

The place turned out to be a casino, a bar, a restaurant, a snack bar, and to Jan’s delight, a very large gift shop.

By the time we left 45 minutes later, Jan had a new moose ornament, a bag of Huckleberry Taffy, and we each had a Huckleberry Shake.

We pulled into the Riverfront RV Park in Garrison, MT about 3:45pm and were met by a camp host in a golf cart who verified my name and led us right to our long pull-thru.

We’ve stayed here twice before, once in 2010, and once in 2008. And in fact the 2008 visit in early April still holds our record for the coldest night we’ve ever encountered while RV’ing.

It went down to 6° that night, but with both propane heaters running, as well as our three electric heaters, we stayed nice and cozy. And our next lowest was 17° and strangely enough that was at Galveston RV Park in Dickinson, TX, south of Houston.

But tonight;’s only supposed to go down to the high 30’s. Much nicer.

Tomorrow we’ve got a 270 mile day over to Billings, MT, and dinner at Famous Dave’s BBQ.

“I laughed so hard, tears ran down my leg.”

dgfgsf