Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Smoke Jumpers Museum

This morning, I started out making phone calls for future campsites.  We have one week unreserved before Yellowstone.   Joe had picked out a possibility last night so I called them but they were full. They gave me four recommendations. I called the first one and had to leave a message so I stopped there, got Joe up and we made it to McDonald’s for breakfast, which was just right up the street.   While we were there, the campground called me back, but I didn’t have my dates with me so I told her I would call her back.   We went back to the camper and I called her back, and we got that taken care of so now we have a place to stay into August. 

Our agenda today was  the Smoke Jumpers Museum.  We missed the ll:00 tour by 30 minutes so we knew we would be coming back here later today.  We watched 5 short videos about the history of smoke jumping.  The museum itself wasn't very big.

We then drove over to the Museum of Mountain Flying, which was part of the smoke jumpers campus and just up the street.  Several of their old planes were on display, along with their packs and what goes in them, their suits, etc.  There is also a NOAH weather station here, which makes sense since the weather and wind are so much a factor in fires and smokejumping.

This plane was used in the Mann Gulch Fire disaster and was later restored in 2018 and made the trip to Normandy to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of that invasion.  It was renamed "Miss Montana."

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Joe drove a Jeep similar to this, maybe a little newer, when he was in the Army.  

There was a movie made about the Smoke Jumpers.  I don't know if it is still available anywhere but I would like to watch it.  I believe its about the Mann Gulch Fire, where they lost 12 of the 15 smokejumpers and that was the beginning of the smoke jumpers.

At that  museum there was a big poster about a Governor's Proclamation and a picture of somebody receiving an award at the Wilma Theater in Missoula, so of course we had to go track down the Wilma Theater. Joe wanted to drive around in downtown Missoula just to get a feel for the place so we did that and found the theater, which was closed.

It looked pretty grand and is still in use.  It is a "historic space housing an ornate, 1,063-seat theater for live performances, plus a small cinema."  Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside.

We found a place for lunch that specialized in fried chicken.  Parking was a bit of a problem because there were parking meters and they don't just take coins anymore.  This one did, but we didn't have any coins.  We figured out how to use the credit card, and put it in for $1.00 for an hour.  There is always a learning curve with them and we try to avoid them. We paid for an hour, but it took so long to get our order that we had to feed it another hour, but right after I went out to do that, Joe saw the parking meter guy walking by so that was a good decision. It took almost an hour for us to get our food, but we got out of there just in time to make it back to the smokejumpers museum for the 4:00 tour.  Which was fascinating and we had a very good leader.  However, she is not a smokejumper.

Our tour guide took us through the different rooms and showed us the jobs that were going on. There were a few smoke jumpers inside doing their own chores because they are responsible for maintaining their equipment in their downtime.   They rotate through the system, and when they are "1", they are suited and ready all day, except for putting on their jump suit.  It takes about 10 minutes from a call until they are in the air. But when they are on duty and not fighting fires, they work on equipment, not just their own.  They all must know how to do everything involved, including sewing.  Every time a parachute is deployed, it is brought back in and inspected before being used again.

 

They wear 80-pound packs when they jump.  The plane then drops supplies and they must gather all of them up and put them in a bag to take with them to the fire.

This is the folding room, where tents and chutes are repacked, then placed on the shelf indicating they are ready to be reused.  They are dated and must be checked and repacked, I think she said after 90 days, if they haven't been used.

We got to look inside the planes.  There were 2 on the ground, a 10-seater and an 8-seater.

They have a few other bases around the country, and can be deployed anywhere in the states if needed.  Recently the Albuquerque base deployed a team to Ruidoso.  I understood from them that the fire there is now under control, but the "ranger" at the desk said Ruidoso was a train wreck.  We didn't ask him to explain. 

Contrary to some opinions, including mine, firefighters do not fight forest fires at night. They go back to their safe zone every night.  When the fire is out and they’re done, they are responsible for carrying all the equipment back out to wherever they’re going to get picked up. By the way, they have to retrieve their parachutes, even if they are in trees.

Their campus backs up to the Missoula airport, which makes sense. There is a dormitory, but none of the smokejumpers stay there overnight. They all return to their homes in Missoula if they aren’t out fighting a fire.  The dorm is used mostly by rookies who haven’t yet qualified, or visiting government employees. The museum complex was basically on the same road that we were camped on so it was an easy drive back to the RV.

 We were back to the RV by 4:45. There were people in the pool and people walking to the pool so we talked about that but decided we really didn’t have the energy to walk back up there and it did not look like there was parking by the pool.  My phone shows that it got up to 99 here today.  Our RV cannot keep up with these temperatures.  It was a little warm inside until after the sunset.  It doesn't get dark until about 10:30, I think it was 86 inside when we got back.  But by the time we went to bed (too late), we were able to turn it down.

Coincidentally, after all of our interest in fires today, I was notified tonight that our high school in Decker, Indiana, was on fire.  It has been closed for 50 years probably, but was currently owned by a sawmill in town.  We haven't heard any details about what caused the fire, but there was a storm and tornado watch in the area at the time.  Very sad loss to many of us.

 Monday, July 8, 2024

The Bison Range

We got started on our exploring today about a quarter till 12 after running up to the gas station and topping off the jeep. We are less than a half a mile from Interstate 90 and every truck stop you could think of is right here at this intersection, so we’re in good shape there.

When we went to the casino last night, we noticed there were campsites there with electric hook up. I looked at my casino camping book this morning and they were not listed so I googled them. It looks like they have eight sites with electric, free parking for up to four nights.  Who knew?? The casino is Gray Wolf Peak casino about 10 miles north of Missoula on 93. 

It’s 79° here at noon, forecasted to high of 87.  At home it’s supposed to be 113 today. Phoenix had a record yesterday for the high for that day of 118.  That’s why we’re here. 

We went under that animal overpass again and today I saw a sign. It’s called Animal Bridge.

We got to the bison range about a quarter till one. We went in the visitor center and got the information but neither one of us thought to pick up the map so we’re driving blind a little bit. This is run by Indian tribes.   In addition to bison, they’re supposed to be elk, deer, wolf, coyote, pronghorn, eagles, grouse, bear, weasels river otter, and snakes, so we’ll see what we see. We did see two herds of Buffalo and a couple singles from the highway just before we got to the range. 

On the parking lot was a stack of elk antlers, which were interesting.

There were 2 drives: the ridge drive and the prairie drive. We took the ridge drive, which is a 2-hour drive but runs into the prairie drive. You can take the prairie drive which is only a one-hour drive.  The ridge drive was a steady uphill climb to 4700 ft. 

The road up to the summit was pretty smooth, even though it was just a gravel road, but once we started down the steep grade, it became a lot rougher. Joe averaged between 10 and 13 miles an hour on this whole drive.

We had some nice views of the valley and  River from the top of the mountain.

Then we finally saw two lone buffalo, then a few more on the other side of the road.  Shortly past that, we came up on a creek (Mission creek) with a ridge behind it.  There was a small herd of Buffalo scattered around on the ridge, but in the creek itself were six adult buffalo and two calves. We don’t think we had ever seen them in the water like that — pretty cool sight. The range of mountains behind here are the Mission mountains.

When we started on this drive, just passed the entrance  was a little loop road called West Loop. We missed it but when we finished the drive, we could see there was a buffalo back there closer than any we had seen so we drove back so we could get a picture.

The Bison Range drive took just over two hours.  It was a little disappointing, but we did see some buffalo, two antelope and a deer. We actually saw more buffalo out along the highway before we turned in then we did in the park, but I was able to get a good picture of the one on the loop road.

On our way back to the camper, Joe spotted some belted cows. Mike McRae used to tease me about belted cows all the time so we took a picture in his honor. We had to turn around and go back to get the photo but we did it. 

We had a 4-hour outing, 100 miles. It made 90 degrees here today and with our back air conditioner down, the rv was just on the verge of uncomfortable. Our appointment for the a/c on the 22nd can’t get here soon enough.  That was the end of our day.  

Tomorrow we “do” Missoula.

Sunday, July 7, 2024

Moving to Missoula, Montana

Today we moved on to Missoula. We got a pretty good start at 9:35, temperature was 65 so it’s definitely warming up.  The canola fields make a pretty landscape yesterday we had we saw three fields in a row. They are a really bright yellow.  We ask a local guy the other day and he confirmed that they are canola. 

We followed Highway 93 today through Kalispell and drove along the beautiful Flathead Lake for miles and miles. when we headed south on 93, traffic was pretty heavy, especially through the town of Lakeside but once we cleared that traffic cleared got lighter until the end of the lake.  But going through the little towns, with stoplights, slowed us down.

It’s a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. Mountains on one side of us, beautiful Flathead Lake on the other.  There is still some snow on some of the mountain peaks.  68° at 10:30 but climbing to 86, still not too bad.  Nice day for a drive.  Some pretty sailboats on the lake with the mountain as a backdrop. 

This lake has several islands on it, including Wild Horse Island, where there are five wild horses you can’t drive to it. You have to take a boat so we probably won’t get to go out there, but they’re supposed to be other wildlife there too. The island is 2.164 acres, the largest island on Flathead Lake.  It is supposed to be "home to abundant wildlife including bighorn sheep, mule deer, waterfowl, and bald eagles."  There is a self-guided kayak tour -- I don't think so.  For $150, and they supply the kayak.  There are hiking trails and swimming beaches.  Otherwise, you can hire a private boat.  ($875 for group up to 6).   

There’s several small towns along the side that we passed through and I’m sure the other side is the same. There’s also several state parks on both sides of the lake. We drove alongside the lake for about 22 miles before our road turned away from it. But about 8 miles later, we rejoined the lake at the bridge going over the river in Polson. Traffic was backed up on the bridge from the stoplight so this little town must be pretty busy. We could see jet skiers, boats pulling skiers and water toys.  We seem to have caught up with weekend traffic because traffic just crawled through this town. There were four or five stoplights and we were backed up at every one of them. Polson must have been larger than we thought because there was a Walmart on the outskirts of town and they even had a McDonald’s (we didn't stop).  There were seceral marinas along the lake as well.

We went under one of those animal cross-over tunnels after we left the lake.  Didn't see anything crossing.

We also passed the National Buffalo Range, which is on the Flathead Indian Reservation.  We are coming back to it tomorrow.  There herd is 350 adults and 50-60 calves per year.  We think it is a drive-through park.

We got to our Campground, Granite Peak RV Resort, at 12:15 so it was a short day. We only drove 128 miles. We almost missed the turn  into the RV Park and sort of had to come to a screeching turn, but we made it in. We got set up and rested from our long, hard drive. I got to watch the Diamondbacks game. Joe found a Mexican restaurant  so we drove into the edge of Missoula and had dinner.  Then he took me to the casino. We had passed this casino coming in and I read later that it was the largest casino in Montana, but it wasn't all that big.  It was nice enough, and not all that busy. I hadn’t seen it when we passed it earlier but when we got the directions, it was just back up past the campground about l0 miles.  We spent a couple hours there. I actually won a couple hundred dollars. Then we came back and called it a night. Again, we almost missed the turn-off and had to screech to a halt.  Luckily, this time we were in the Jeep.  They could use better signage for this RV park!  It got a little warmer today. I think it was 86 here and every day this week is supposed to get warmer so we’re not looking forward to that. 

We are only here for 4 nights, so we have a bit of agenda.  Tomorrow we will do the Buffalo Range.

I  got a short text from Mary Badass last night.  She is 4 days out from Yaak, over near Troy, Montana.

 

 Saturday, July 6, 2024

Kalispell again

Today started out with a trip back to Kalispell. The town of Kalispell sort of completes the circle of Columbia Falls, Hungry Horse, and Whitefish in a line, and Kalispell a little bit to the west, but these towns are all pretty close together.  After breakfast at McDonald’s, we went to a Farmers Market that was on my list of things to do here, very nice, very pricey, lots of handmade items, baked goods, fresh vegetables, and flowers. We didn’t buy anything but I did get a free piece of cake. 

A lot of flowers were going out of this place.

Our friends, Dorothy and Arnie, were into these kinds of things a few years ago.  They had a nice display of these here, most with birdseed in them.

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And Brenda likes gnomes.  They had some really cute ones.

Walmart was practically next-door. All these places, McDonald’s, the Farmers Market and Walmart were within a half mile of each other. It’s a beautiful morning, heading into the 80s today. We had rain during the night again.

We did our shopping in Walmart, walked most of the store, checked out and came out to the car, and I couldn’t find my keys.  So after searching the car, I went back in and walked the store again, way beyond what I was really wanting to do. No luck.  They called the manager, I talked to a couple people -- no luck. I looked out through the glass doors and saw Joe ransacking the Jeep so I knew he hadn’t found them.  But when I opened the door to the Jeep, they were right there on the floor inside the door.  How we missed them, I have no idea.  I had looked there first because I have found them there before.  Joe must have moved something that made them appear, but thank goodness.  I really think it was a miracle, certainly an answer to prayer.  They sometimes fall out of my pocket when I'm sitting in the Jeep if my pockets are shallow, and I guess that's what happened today, again.

There’s still a little snow on a couple distant mountains, but most of the mountains surrounding these towns has melted, and I imagine the next couple of days will finish them off.  Temperatures predicted at   82 today, then 86, 91, 97 on Wed.  We are moving on tomorrow down near Missoula, but I don't think it will be any cooler there, maybe even warmer.  

We fueled the jeep at Costco. It was seven cents cheaper there than the going right in town, which is 3.49.

We got back to the RV about 12:30 completely worn out. Joe managed to get the groceries brought in and I managed to get them put away, but we were pooped.  We could have done without that little episode with the lost keys.

We spent some time this afternoon getting reservations for the next few weeks.  We still have one open week, but we do have some place to go tomorrow.  Reservations are hard to get, and we are heading to Yellowstone at the end of the month.  We do have 2 nights there and will hope to move into a first-come, first-serve spot at that campground if we can't extend.  That's at a national forest right outside the west entrance to Yellowstone, and we had stayed here before with Jeff and Brenda.

We put in our time here in Columbia Falls.  We probably stayed here longer than necessary, but when we made these reservations, we were expecting to get the rear a/c fixed here.  As it turns out, we will have that done in Bozeman in a couple weeks.  And it is heating up to where we are going to need that second air conditioner!

 Friday, July 5, 2024

Back to Kalispell

We decided to make today a shopping day so we drove into Kalispell to Kohl’s and Costco.  Walking through those two stores (and we ended up walking both stores entirely) exhausted us, and made my knee hurt. We didn’t find everything we were shopping for and I had brought a small grocery list with me, but we were just done. Joe has become less picky with his diet Cokes -- where we used to always have to find a Circle K and we would go in to get them.  Now he uses the McDonald’s drive-through. Times are a changing. They’re not as big, they cost more and they’re not in Styrofoam cups, but it’s all a matter of convenience.

We had a bit of bad luck today.  When Joe brought the awning in this morning, something popped so he knew when we got back from our shopping trip that he was going to have to get the ladder down and take a look.  I hate to see him on the ladder, and I held it but that was my only assistance.

A pin on the top rail of the awning had detached, and the awning wouldn’t go all the way in. He worked on it for an hour or so while I held the ladder, but he couldn’t get enough force to get the pen back in. 

But we found out how you meet your neighbors in an RV park. One guy (Ed) stopped by and said hi and left, but then he came back a little bit later and offered to help.  Before that, a guy stopped by in a car (and he looked older than us) and offered to help but at that point, Joe didn’t know what help he needed. But Ed came back and actually did help, he brought over a bigger set of channel locks and got up on the ladder to try to force the pin back in place, but neither he nor Joe were successful. The guy from the camper in front of us -- a Tiffin -- walked over to see what was going on. His wife said she knew when she told him we had all the tools out that he wouldn’t be able to keep from coming over. The Tiffan guy was 84 and he lives in Surprise. Arizona. He didn’t help but he stayed and chatted with Joe.  Joe and Ed reached the decision that we had to call for a mobile service. They were not able to fix it, so we did that but the Tiffan guy stayed and visited until the service guy showed up. 

The mobile service guy, Craig, said he could be here in a couple of hours, but he actually showed up about 45 minutes later.  He worked for a little over an hour. He had to leave to go get parts but he has us ready to travel again. His show-up fee was $110 and the total charge was just $240. It could have been worse.

Ed came back over later to find out what the outcome was.  He is from California, or "Taxafornia" as he called it.  And he and Joe discussed RVs for a while.  And now they are exchanging phone numbers so I guess he has a new friend.

That's it for today.  No plans at this time for tomorrow, but it's our last day here in this area.  We are heading toward to Missoula on Sunday.

 Thursday, July 4, 2024

Happy 4th of July

After Monday's marathon drive through the Park, we knew we would be tired on Wednesday, so we allowed ourselves some rest.  We did go into Kalispell for breakfast and the laundromat. We found a really nice family restaurant for breakfast and asked for information about a laundromat. The one they sent us to was terrible -- half of the machines were broken and the row the dryers were on was so narrow,  you could only go through there one at a time.  But we got it done, went back to the camper, and that was it for the day. There was a wreck on the highway outside the campground about 11 o’clock. We didn't go out, but could see the reflection of the lights from the police vehicles,  ambulance and wreckers in our windshield.  We never heard any details about it, but this morning we could see the ruts along the side of the road.  We actually heard the crash but didn't realize what it was.  We thought it was just fireworks -- in fact, Joe said it sounded like a cannon.

So this morning, after a lazy morning of phone calls and trying to get reservations for the future, we finally decided to take a drive down to Hungry Horse Dam. We didn’t get started till about 1 o’clock and there’s a rodeo in town tonight that we might try to take in if we get back  in time but the reservoir is 34 miles long so it may take several hours.

On our drive to the dam, we passed two runners carrying torches (we couldn't tell if they were lit or not), then we saw their "Peace Run" bus parked at a pull-off.    

We stopped at the dam and went in the visitor center and got a couple of maps.  The entire loop drive is 112 miles, since the road follows the shoreline, up and down most fingers of the lake.  We went down the west side and looped back on the east side, I guess.  It never felt like we were going the direction the GPS said we were.   14 miles of pavement, the rest was gravel.  We did see a big Eagles nest in the top of a dead tree at the beginning of the drive, but no eagle there.   The second photo is the river coming out of the dam.

There’s numerous campgrounds and boat launches along this lake.  We drove back into Lost Johnny Campground. It was pretty full. I only saw a couple of empty spaces. I don’t believe there’s any hook- ups here. There is a boat ramp in this campground, and several boat trailers were parked, and we could see a couple boats out on the lake. There’s every kind of camper in here.  A few motorhomes, some tents, even a little pop-up on the back of a pick up. We still have snowy mountains in the distance. They’re not really snowcapped anymore, there’s just snow in the valleys.

This drives circles the lake. We went down the west side and came back up the other side (east). The first side was not the scenic drive, and we only had a few glimpses of the lake below.  There are numerous creeks that feed this lake, and they are all beautiful.  Since they are coming off the mountains, they are all bubbling over rocks and tree limbs.  Not many waterfalls, but they are all rushing to the water.

It is very picturesque, and the water looks very inviting.  A lot of people were on the lake today, but it is so huge, with lots of boat ramps for access, that it didn't look busy.

The lady at the visitor center said there had been two fawns down by the dam this morning. We got lucky enough to spot one deer on our drive, along with several prairie dogs/chipmunks and squirrels (one was black).  The deer was right at the edge of the road, but still in the brush when Joe saw him.  Joe backed up a little bit, and we were able to find him through the brush and look at him again. All the prairie dogs seem to have a need to cross the road. One of them crossed the road right in front of us and we barely missed him.  Another one just a little bit later didn’t make it as somebody else ran over him and he was belly up.  This road was not busy at all which made it a nice drive.  Every few miles we might meet one vehicle but there was usually no one in sight behind us.

We came up on another creek and bridge. This was Graves Creek. It had a waterfall practically under the bridge with water pouring into the lake -- very pretty. 

At 3 o’clock, we stopped at a pull-off with a nice view of the lake and had our little picnic. I had bought sandwiches at the gas station and we got our chairs out and enjoyed the view.

As we got to the end of the river on this side, we came up on a little dirt side road that let us to an airstrip so we forded the mud puddle and went over to check it out, because Joe said there’s always animals on the airstrip, but we didn’t see any.  We also did not see any airplanes on the air strip.

But when we got back on the road and came to the end of the airstrip, there was a sign "Spotted Bear Landing Field," and there was an airplane parked there.  Still no wildlife.

We got to the end of the lake where it flowed in from Flathead River. It’s pretty shallow here. The ranger station was named "spotted bear," but we never saw any of them either.  Not sure if it means they spotted a bear, or the bear was spotted.  Either way, nothing appeared for us.  That half of the drive took about three hours with a 20-minute stop for lunch.  It's now 4:15.

 This is supposed to be the scenic route so hopefully we’ll see more views of the lake and maybe something else.  The drive itself is beautiful.  Even when we are not in view of the lake, we are driving through tall trees, with mountains in the distance.

Joe could see some rapids on the river so he found a pull-off where we could get out to take a picture.  When we got out of the car, we startled an eagle who had been sitting in a tree.  He then flew across the river and resettled in a tree on the far side, but Joe had grabbed his binoculars when he got out of the Jeep, and he quickly found him.  The eagle sat there the whole time we were looking, even as we left.  When we got out of the jeep, we saw some rafters at these rapids,  and we eventually caught up with them and got a picture.

We saw where they put in and come out.  The forests on this side are a lot clearer and you could actually see an animal if one chose to appear (which it didn't), but you could imagine animals walking in them and grazing. On the west side, the forests were too thick for animals to walk through, although we did see that one deer. 

All these creeks are very pretty as they bounce over rocks.  Second picture is same creek, just zoomed in.

This road wasn’t nearly as bad as those the other day, but it did have clusters of potholes which allowed Joe to do his NASCAR driving.  We came upon this horseshoe bend in the river.  I told Joe to get out and stand up to get a better photo, but he didn't.  But the water actually wraps around through the top of the horseshoe, and there were a couple of islands out there.

At one point, we saw a boat pulling a skier on the lake. It did not appear that the skier had on a wetsuit. We thought that would be mighty cold water. I guess we were next to a finger of the main lake and when we came around the end of it, we saw people swimming so that must be a warmer end. 

Our loop around Flathead Lake and Hungry Horse Dam took us five hours, about 110 miles. Not much wildlife but we did see a deer, prairie dogs or chipmunks, a black squirrel, and an eagle -- not too bad of a day. As we came through the town of  Hungry Horse, people were beginning to line the street so it looks like they’re going to have a parade in a little bit. I guess Summer has arrived today because there’s lots of people in and on the water.  We were tired so we didn't stop for the parade.  And we came through Columbia Falls about 15 minutes before the rodeo was going to start, but we were too tired for that too.  And it looked like parking was a problem.  We got back to the RV and stayed in the rest of the evening, although we did walk outside when they started setting off fireworks all around us.  Too many trees to have a good view but we could see some in the distance.  And we could certainly hear them, for hours.

We have to get serious about our next place to stay.  We leave here Sunday and haven't been about to find any place around Missoula that has openings for Sunday night.  So that's the mission for today, Friday.