Idaho-Montana

We’ve covered a lot of the USA in the last few weeks, the last entry here was Washington State, and so I thought it time we covered a few states at a time.

Idaho was a one week stop at the Coeur d’Alene RV Park in Post Falls. This is where we found out that Spokane is pronounced Spo-Can and not as we thought Spo-Cane, and Coeur d’Alene is Kor-d-lain, no French accents here. The city has a great park for walking Rusty each morning and evening, and very scenic views of the small dam and river at the edge of the park. Also came across some of the local wildlife – a Groundhog also known as a Woodchuck – how much wood can a woodchuck chuck etc.

This was pretty much a relaxing week – getting ready for some more hills to climb in ’Arvey (AKA Junior) – Montana was beckoning.

We really need to find a way to include sound bites – Willy Nelson’s rendition of ‘On the road again’ would be playing right now. We thought the I-90 between Coeur d’Alene and Butte Montana was a real challenge with all the steep up and down grades; we had yet to realize that we had more to come after Butte crossing the Great Divide. Butte was often called ‘The Richest Hill on Earth’ due to the abundance of copper in the area needed when the new-fangled electricity became ‘fashionable’ in the late 19^th century. We stayed at the Fairmont RV Park – right in the middle of nowhere, at a mile high. We took a trip to the Lost Creek State Park and hiked to the waterfall, to us at a mile high climbing a steep path for about 200 yards is hiking. Why it is was called Lost Creek we have no idea, we found it quite easily.

Another week goes by and we’re on the road again, now I have an ear worm of Willy Nelson singing. Time to make the great ascent to cross the Great Divide at Homestake Pass – 6,329 feet – engine screaming and Rusty running for cover, he doesn’t like Junior when it’s really noisy at 4,500 revs. Finally we reach the crest – OK, now we need to get down the other side. Did you ever climb a tree when you were a kid and it was quite easy until you look down and wonder how you’re going to get down – safely, same kind of feeling at the top of Homestake Pass. After a few white knuckle curves and downgrades we made it, just in time to climb another hill – that was the same for the whole trip that day. We arrived at the Billings Village RV Park after a very stressful 5 hour drive, the wine that evening was a welcome sight.

One trip we took was to Crow Agency and the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument; I never realized that it was such a spread out running battle between the 7^th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Sioux and Cheyenne under Sitting Bull – 2 days of fighting in June 1876. There are stones to mark where people from both sides fell. The interesting fact to me was that the battle did not end on Last Stand Hill – AKA Custer’s Last Stand, according to some accounts the fight ended in a ravine below the hill known today as Deep Ravine.

As always we looked for, and found a really nice park this one alongside the Yellowstone River for our daily drags with Rusty. Rusty was getting a little shaggy so we took advantage of the 3 hours he was being trimmed to walk around a small zoo in Billings and eat at a nice Mexican restaurant, our time was soon up and we were ‘back on the leash’.