Friday, June 3, 2016

Great Falls and Great News!

Driving from Yellowstone
     "Home, home on the range....where the deer and the antelope play".....you get the idea :-)
We departed Yellowstone on 1 June and headed north. We had a plan and an alternate plan - goal was to reach Great Falls, Montana with a fallback plan of stopping in Helena if we were tired and needed to stop.

     I caught myself several times singing "Home on the range" as I was driving - it was that kind of drive, beautiful but a lot of open country. We laughed, at one spot we saw a real estate sign selling "lots" - they were 20 acre lots, so that gives you an idea on the vast open landscape. We traveled along the Missouri river for a good ways and saw several folks enjoying what looked like some fishing float trips - looked like fun.

Great Falls, Montana
     We did make it to Great Falls and are here (Dick's RV Park) for a scheduled maintenance stop. Haircuts, oil change and vehicle maintenance, laundry, grocery shopping, golf and just relaxing. Hey - don't laugh, being a tourist is a tough/tiring job.

     Great Falls is a pretty nice small town. My early observations is that the bars and casinos are plentiful. A lady at the golf course told us towns in this area are all bars and churches. Their number one attraction (on trip advisor) is the Lewis and Clark interpretive center - we plan to visit their before we leave the area.

     Yesterday we rode to the three golf courses in town trying to decide which one to play and when. The temps have been great here (70's) but the wind is pretty tough the last couple days. At the Eagle Falls golf course we met some very nice local folks and managed to talk ourselves into a golf tournament they are having Saturday....we are excited to be able to play and meet some more local folks.

     We spent seven days in Yellowstone with our eyes peeled looking for eagles and did not see any there. As we walked out of one of the golf courses here in Great Falls, a beautiful bald eagle was flying just over our heads....impressive but no camera handy for that. I fully expect we will see many more eagles on this trip.

Great News
      For those of you that know (or have been following the trip from the beginning), our good friends Ed and Kay Culpepper had to cancel due to medical issues they expected to derail them. As it turns out, Kay got a good report from the doctor yesterday and was approved to travel.

     They called yesterday after their appointment excited to ask if we would slow down and wait for them to catch us....we are excited to have them back in the plan. They are departing the Griffin, Ga. area today and we expect to meet up with them in Glacier National Park in the next six or seven days. We are going to stay in Great Falls a little longer than planned and may tour both the West (not originally planned) and East side of Glacier now in order to allow them time to catch us.