Aug 28, 2011 - A week of R&R in White Sulfur Springs MT

Tuesday morning we made the trip from Great Falls to White Sulphur Springs after the visit to The Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center. We had stayed in the Conestoga Campground in May 2010 and liked it. It is a Coast to Coast Park so it was only $10 a night plus $3 for 50 amp and tax. Still a bargain and a place to rest and recuperate from our Canadian travel. Judie has had trouble with her computer for some time, and after a couple of phone calls to the Geek Squad and hours on the phone it was determined there was a virus and it needed to...

Jul 9, 2011 - Dippers

We both slept late today. I am normally up early, but not today. We didn’t leave until about 10:00 and started driving north. Just a few miles from town, we started climbing and were soon in a dense stand of lodge pole pine trees. It was very pretty. It wasn’t too long and we headed down a gravel road just to check things out. We had only gone ¼ of a mile and Carolyn spotted a couple of what we think were sandhill cranes. I didn’t picture them being in a wooded environment, but there they were in a little meadow with a stream nearby. There...

Jul 8, 2011 - Work Day

Today is a work day for us. We can only play for so long before it’s time to do chores. We started with a walk in the country. There are many farms around here and we walked by one of them that had a bunch of cows with calves. They were a little curious. We also saw 4 Magpies that were sitting on the fence and kept flying up the fence line to stay ahead of us. We got back and cleaned up the shower and sink. Carolyn did banking while I hung up the new remote we got for our fantastic fan. The old remote you had to hold about 6” from the fan...

Jul 7, 2011 - Mosquito Heaven

I am wide awake at 4:30, so I get up and decide to go for a walk. It’s 55 degrees out and calm. I walk a mile west of town. From the freeway to the river is about ¾ of a mile. It slopes down to the river and there is grassland and a couple of farms. There is a fog hanging over the fields and the sun is just coming up. It’s beautiful and I realize I didn’t bring the camera so I can only keep looking back as I walk up the road. There are a few clouds on the horizon and the sun turns them pink. By the time I turn around and head back to town,...

Sep 1, 2010 - Big Sky (and Clouds) Country

Rolled into Big Sky Country, also known as Montana, on Tuesday. The weather has changed a lot from Kansas and Nebraska. Our rest stops now always involve coffee and hot chocolate rather than iced drinks and we leave all our jackets, gloves, etc on. Mary and Joe have even been seen perusing some of the scenic overlooks through face shields on their helmets. They opted to leave the electric gear at home, it being August and a particularly hot summer back east. Going somewhere named Glacier should have been a clue. Forecast for the next few...

Aug 19, 2010 - White Sulphur Springs, MT

We have five days before our reservations at Yellowstone and we'll spend them in White Sulphur Springs, MT at Conestoga Campground. It's a very nice small park and was a good location to catch up on few things before heading to Yellowstone where we'll be without power for five days. We didn't do much exploring on this visit to Montana as we plan on returning for a longer visit in the years ahead.

Aug 19, 2010 - Yellowstone

WOW!!! What a beautiful part of the country. Our eyes are tired because we have to look all around all of the time. We have spent two days wandering through Yellowstone and have not gotten near to seeing everything. We are very tired though and filled with new visions of our country. We will be heading to Glacier Nat'l park next. Yellowstone has a lot of Bison and Elk and many other critters and we got just a few pics of some to share. We are staying at about 5000' at the rv park and Yellowstone roads go from about 5000 to over 9000' and...

Jul 7, 2010 - White Sulphur Springs, MT

White Sulphur Springs, MT Montana is a state of vast valleys and few homes. As far as you can see are lush green hued hills, waving yellow wheat all set against snow capped mountains. We drove past a vast array of snow fences along the highway. As you can see from the photo they work very well as there is no snow on the road. At the campground I moved my chair outside where I could see nothing but land. Here I finished reading “Montana Women Homesteaders”. This gives you a real idea of the vastness. In the tiny town of White Sulphur...

Jun 3, 2010 - White Sulphur Springs, rustic and rural

Well, the weather was not summery, or even, springy in White Sulphur Springs. This is a very pretty valley, and we are told that it has the worst winter weather in Montana. I guess we can assume the fierce wind, clouds and showers are the spring weather! We both enjoyed overlooking the large ranch across the small road. The rancher would bring a couple round bales of hay and scatter it on the ground for the cows and calves in the evening. We knew when he was coming as the cows started talking and telling him to hurry up! The Mayn Cemetery...

May 29, 2010 - Our final day of Yellowstone, but we'll be back

We extended our stay in Gardiner one day to go back to YNP. We heard about an area where you could see wolves and pups and also a lake with a sand hill crane on a nest and other birds at the lake. We did not get the early start we wanted, as we did some work before we left. We went to Mammoth Hot Springs to check on the owls and get a picture of mom. She was there and we did get her picture. We then headed east towards Tower-Roosevelt. Along the way Ed spotted a Grizzly going up a slope across the ravine. We pulled over, grabbed the...

Jun 4, 2009 - Custer Battlefield in Crow Agency,MT

After a good nights rest we traveled to Crow Agency for our visit to the Big Horn Custer Battlefield. We had visitied this before in the mid 70's. To our surprise there was much more information and the talks by the native Crow's and the Park Range was excellent. Spent a good three hours here and then traveled on to White Sulphur Springs, MT. This was a long day given our visit to the battlefield and 400 miles of driving. We stayed at the Smith River Valley - Conestoga Campground which was a nice oasis on the Montana Plains.

Aug 28, 2008 - White Sulfur Springs, MT

Today was an easy day. We did shopping, then toured the Great Falls and the hydroelectric power plant. The hydro plant was built in 1915 and generates up to 60 megawatts. If you pay $0.10 per KWH, the hydro power is worth $6,000 per hour or about $48,000,000 per year. We tried fueling at Flying J, however, their computer went down and all the pumps shut down. Some customers had their credit cards in limbo. We filled propane at $3.16 per gallon. We were able to pay for the propane and then went to Pilot (same Deisel price $4.15). The...