More Montana & The Potato State

Our next stop was suppose to be Yellowstone National Park but when they had the flooding there we rerouted. Since a good portion of the Park was closed.

To break up the 267 mile drive to Butte, MT we booked a Harvest Host stop in Ovanda, MT at Trixi's Antler Saloon. It was a back-in to a gravel parking lot at the restaurant/saloon. We went in to Trixi's for a beer and some wings. The place was cool. Not quite as cool as the name of the place but the staff was awesome and to find a place to stay in no-where Montana it worked out just fine. We did have a dust-up while there. Literally, the wind started kicking up and got ferocious enough for us to pop-in our slides to the Coach and close all the windows. By the time we battened down the hatches the wind storm passed. Briefly we thought about Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz. It's a twister Dorothy!

It was raining pretty good when we left Trixi's but we only had a little of a two hour drive to Butte. Our campground was called Cardwell General Store and Campground. The General Store was awesome! Besides having penny candy, ice cream and a variety of very weird shakes, the store was more of a department store with general store appeal. From outerwear to fishing gear to t-shirts and Montana tourist stuff the store rocked.

Butte is an old coal mining town. They pride themselves in having and marketing 4000 historical landmarks. “The Most in America”. We went to two. The Red Brick Dumas Brothel which was the longest running bordello in America which was closed Ha! And, we went to the Copper King Historic Mansion. Next visit we’ll have to hit the other 3998 Butte historic sites.

The World Museum of Mining was the highlight of our Butte visit. Shows you how exciting Butte is! The World Museum of Mining is one of the few museums in the world located on an actual mine yard. They had like 50 exhibit buildings. It was like an old mining town with nonfictional stories tied to each building. Pretty cool! Countless artifacts and exhibits were in the mine yard too. We spent a couple of hours and passed on the formal tour of the place cause we like to do our own thing. We had more fun then the Jamokes walking around the place with their miners caps on while touring. And, they paid an extra twenty bucks more than us!

The mining laborer was consistently working in a dangerous enviornment. Not an easy way to make a living, and, they didn’t make any money while putting their life on the line daily. The Great Mountain Spectacular Fire Memorial was dedicated to 168 Miners that lost their lives. It’s a panoramic view of headframes, overlooking the remnants of a once-flourishing mining industry, and most importantly, interpretation of the events, people, and turbulent times that surrounded the catastrophic Granite Mountain/Speculator fire. Our visit to this site helped us appreciate the national significance of Butte's mining and labor history.

Our Yellowstone change-of-plans brought us to Idaho Falls. It’s a majestic little town who’s centerpiece is their Falls. It’s a man made falls that was built after a flood tore apart the town. It now feeds electricity to to the city but did start out as a natural waterfall. A flood as recently as 1976 completely changed the dynamics of the falls. Nevertheless for us it was a fun bike ride around the Riverwalk. It was the first thing we did when we arrived. It was only a seven minute bike ride from our campground. Below are pictures from our ride. The building was a religious center pretty enough for a picture and the Eagle Rock Fountain was much prettier than the picture. Brad insisted on riding his bike around it and sent it to his hometown boys to get their Eagles fix on. Let’s Fly!

We crossed the bridge above to a Japanese Friendship Garden which was cute. Then we finished the bike tour at Snow Eagle Brewing.

On the morning of July 6th, we got the most horrible phone call. Seven and a half hours later we packed up the RV for storage. We also packed our suitcases, our bikes, and food, to make the thirty-five hour drive back to Connecticut. It was a hectic, fatiguing, and emotional drive home. The only good thing about it was we had each other. We were able to talk through Larry’s passing before we got back home to see the kids and grands. It gave us time to gather strength so we could lead by example and show strength and leadership to our heartbroken children and grandchildren.

We stayed home for a month and a half. Including a five day visit to St. Petersburg, Fla. to visit Brad’s Mom. Including Brad’s sister Marci and her husband J who also live down there.

We are currently eight days in to our drive back to Idaho Falls. This time we’re taking the scenic route. In another five days we’ll be at our RV and continue our adventure around the country. Heck, we’ll be celebrating a year on the road shortly. We have had some cool stops in our driving journey already…Notre Dame, The Badlands, Cedar Rapids IW and more.

Thanks for following our journey. Kathy and Brad