Today we moved just 60 miles north, crossing the border to Crooked Creek Campground in Waterton, Alberta.
I’d made this a short hop because I’d read to allow an hour and a half to cross the border into Canada. You now have to download an app called ArriveCAN and fill that out. You upload images of your passports and your vaccination records. Within a 72 hour window before you arrive you fill in your crossing point and time (date and hour) and where you are headed on arrival. They email back a receipt with a scannable code block which you are to present at the border.
In addition to that we: Put our passports, vaccination records, vehicle registrations and proof of insurance, and Matey’s rabies vaccination paper together in folder; ate up all of our fresh fruits and vegetables; ate, gave away or threw out any unprocessed grain (several kinds of rice); used up all of our fresh meat and eggs; and gave away my pepper spray.
We arrived at the border and it was a non-event. We were behind another trailer and they were quickly processed. On our turn the agent asked for our passports; didn’t need the code, she said the ArriveCAN information was linked to our passports. She asked for the license plate number of the truck, asked Bud if we had any alcohol, tobacco or firearms (no), and wished us a safe journey. The whole thing, including the wait, was less than 5 minutes.
We stopped at a grocery store in the next town and bought meat, rice and fresh produce and now we are here.
This is a nice campground, and it does have a crooked creek.
It has paths through walk-in tent areas.
We are on the eastern edge of the Canadian Rockies.
This evening, while walking Matey, I took this photo of the plains to the east. Then I turned around…
and took this one of the mountains to the west. Tomorrow we explore.
We decided to start full time in the trailer we had, to see if that would work and, if not, what we wanted. We found out we needed more space for visitors; if this is our only house, we’d like to be able to comfortably have company. And we found out we’d like as much insulation as we could get, to protect us from the cold and the heat. You can’t just drive away from either, and in the desert you can get both each day, with 50 degree swings daily. We also decided to stay with a trailer. Fifth wheels may feel more stable when you tow, but if you take any floor plan and make it a fifth wheel you add 3,000 pounds of weight and $10,000 to the price. We like the Tundra. Now that we’ve added a sway bar, air bags for the springs, heavy duty tires, new shocks and brakes, it’s a pretty good towing vehicle, but it won’t handle a fifth wheel.
We researched well insulated trailers and a few models kept coming up, Arctic Fox, Lance, and Reflection, by Grand Design. Lance doesn’t make a trailer as big as we wanted, but there were promising models in the other two. While we were at Cusick for two weeks we drove down to Spokane to look at some. The Arctic Fox dealer showed us a model made by the same people called Outdoors RV. We were impressed. It had a very heavy frame and axles, 16 inch wheels, shock absorbers (first time we’ve seen those on a trailer), the same insulation and thermal pane windows as the Arctic Fox, but less fancy, less weight, and a lower price. But the model he had didn’t have the floor plan we wanted.
We did more research and found the Outdoors RV Blackstone 280 RKS had pretty much everything we wanted. The only problem was there weren’t any for sale anywhere around. We saw a couple advertised in Fairfield, CA, and one in Round Rock, Texas. There were a couple of used ones, but living in our trailer and moving all the time it would be logistically almost impossible to buy used and then sell ours. We were resigned to waiting for the 2023’s to be built, which isn’t scheduled to happen until December.
Then I did a search and a unit came up in Missoula. I called, figuring it was probably still on line, but already sold (that happens a lot). They still had it. I told the salesman we’d be trading our KZ, he came back about an hour later with an offer we couldn’t refuse and I put a deposit on it. Then I called and cancelled our 8 day stay in British Columbia, got us a reservation from Saturday to Friday back in Missoula, and another for two nights back in St. Mary near Glacier so we could keep our reservations in Waterton, Alberta and beyond. We drove back down to Missoula and stayed right across the road from the place we’d stayed before. This turned out to be a nice place with huge fields for walking “well behaved and non-aggressive” dogs off leash.
We finalized the deal on Monday, they had already started prepping the trailer. They added the second air conditioner to the bedroom (the unit was pre-wired for it) and it was ready to go.
We parked the KZ next to the new one so the doors faced each other. By noon on Tuesday this was where we were with the move.
Tuesday evening we had it back in our spot at Granite Peak RV Resort,
looking good,
and put together enough to tow and live in. On the short tow back to the RV park we found that this unit did, indeed, have decent brakes!
That evening I enjoyed the light from our new electric fireplace and found that the added insulation makes it feel a bit more like a cozy cottage than a tin can. Nice.
By Thursday evening we had things organized enough that we were ready for the 224 mile trip through the mountains back to St Mary, MT.
And here we are, safe and comfortable,
in our fairly well-organized trailer.
The bed is ready for us.
Both the weather and the scenery are pretty dramatic!
And we are happy to look out at the rain from our snug new home.
So geographically we haven’t made it far, being right across the road from where we were a month ago, but we have worked very hard to get here! And now we’re ready for visitors!
I took the time for an unsatisfactory phone call with our insurance agent (she uses Triple A, guess we will be soon, too.) Then I found a decent sounding trail not far from us and off we went.
We drove 36 miles north to Frater Lake Trail in the Colville National Forest. Along the way this family of wild turkeys crossed in front of us.
It’s a well maintained and lovely trail, through the woods…
and along the mountain lake.
It’s primarily a cross country ski trail,
with this warming hut complete with a shed full of wood.
The blazes, like these about three feet above Bud’s head, must be set for deep snow.
We passed this seed orchard, which seems to be doing its job. There was very high fencing all around it, no doubt to protect it from deer. We did come across one deer and a couple of small, dark squirrels. It was a nice hike.
This all started because I decided to take Matey to the Banfield Pet Hospital that is associated with PetSmart so that we could reach a vet that had his records as we traveled. I made an appointment for last Saturday at 4:00 PM at the PetSmart in North Spokane, 40 miles from our campground.
It’s not Matey’s fault and the visit went well (except I found out he has a heart murmur that I need to look into). It was after the visit, when we stopped at Walmart just down the street that the fun and games began. Matey and I waited in the truck for Bud to do a bit of shopping. Bud called me because he had forgotten the grocery bags and you have to buy them here if you don’t bring your own. So I shut off the truck and took the bags to him at the front of the store. I got back to the truck, turned the key and nothing happened…nothing.
So I called the roadside assistance number on our insurance card. About a half hour later a Road Warrior arrived. He had this small box that he sat on top of our battery and hooked to the battery terminals. Bud turned the key and the truck started up. The guy shut his device off and the truck stopped. “Uh-oh,” says our Road Warrior, “I think it’s your alternator.” We tried again with the same results. “It’s your alternator.”
Bud noticed the battery terminals were hot and asked if it might be the battery. Nope, it’s the alternator. By now it’s 5:30 on a Saturday evening and all the repair shops are closed so there’s nowhere to tow it. Bud asked the guy if we could just put a battery in it and make it the 40 miles back to Cusick. Wouldn’t work, says the Road Warrior. So he left us to work it out. Called roadside assistance again but they had no solution. Yes, they could arrange a tow back to Cusick, but there might be some out of pocket expense. Never mind that!
A security guy driving around in a truck told Bud he could probably leave it in the parking lot if he let the manager know. So Bud went to see the manager and I found us a car rental still open at the airport. I then called an Uber ride. We had to load our perishables, our essentials and the dog into the Uber car and ride the fifteen miles to the airport. Our very nice driver offered to wait to take our stuff and the dog to the rental, but we didn’t know how long the paperwork would take, so we off-loaded everything onto the sidewalk and then schlepped it past the rental counters and out the back doors to the car. We got a little Kia Forte, which was a nice car. Of course we had to rent the car until at least today since we wouldn’t be able to do anything on Sunday.
This morning, at 5 AM Pacific Time (8 AM Eastern) I called our extended warranty company. No, we didn’t have to take it in to a Toyota dealer, just have the repair shop call with the diagnosis and they would make the arrangements with them. As soon as the shops opened Bud was on the phone. About the fourth place he called said they could probably get to it by Friday (we are scheduled to leave Saturday).
I called our roadside assistance number back to arrange the tow. I explained that we were not at the truck and it would take us about an hour to get there. I asked if they could use the towing company recommended by the garage. She took the number but was very impatient with me. She told me to wait until I got a text confirming the tow. I got that with both the pick-up and drop-off addresses correct.
Meanwhile, I went online and extended our rental until Thursday. $$$$
We jumped in the rental (Matey, too) and took off. In short order I got a text saying Big Jim’s Towing would arrive at 9:45. That was about 15 minutes before we would get there so I called the number they gave, but had to leave a message. Not five minutes later I got a text saying that they were at the location but couldn’t find the vehicle, please check the address followed quickly by a text saying they were there but couldn’t find us and since we hadn’t responded the order was cancelled. I called the reference number only to hear hold music. So I looked up and called Big Jim’s Towing. They were in Oklahoma! And they didn’t get a dispatch and they don’t work with our insurance company.
So I called the company recommended by the auto shop and he arrived within a minute of when we did. Here’s our poor truck loaded and ready to go to the shop. (The roadside assistance people said since I had called a company on my own I would have to contact my agent for reimbursement. OKAY, well thanks!) By the way, Big Jim’s said they’d been dispatched recently to Boston and Frazier, the guy we called, had a pickup in Washington, DC.
Here’s a view of our truck I never wanted to have!
After setting things up with the garage we decided to try to redeem our day with some disc golf. We had transferred the rest of the groceries, Bud’s golf clubs and our discs to the rental car. We found this very nice course nearby.
We didn’t get to play long because the garage called. They’d had a chance to look at the truck and the problem was…A BAD BATTERY!
So back to the garage, switch back our stuff, go online and change the rental car return time again, drive both vehicles to the airport to return the rental when all we needed to do in the first place was walk into Walmart and buy a battery. Aarrgg! We got home at three, which is 5 o’clock Central, but tomorrow I’m calling our insurance agent.
Since we are staying here two weeks Bud wanted to try and get the bed of the truck fixed where the miss-installed shock absorbers damaged it. We were going to look for a welder to mend the hole, or perhaps just use a steel epoxy, since the hole was small. But when Bud talked to the folks who sell and install Line-X bed liners, they said to bring it in before he did anything. So Monday, we ditched our trip to a disc golf course and drove to Spokane. We found out they could repair the small hole and pound out the other dent when they put in the liner. So Bud called Red Desert Off Road back. He didn’t know these folks in Spokane and said he’d get back to us. He had hoped we could take the truck to someone in his network, but the nearest place was about 5 hours away.
So Tuesday, while Dennis from Red Desert checked into how to handle things, we drove to Sandpoint, Idaho to play disc golf at Baldfoot. The course is run by volunteers, there was a requested $1 donation per player to play, but we didn’t see a box for the money. Turns out there’s a slot in the grey post of their rubbery basket statue; we happily put our money in it.
They have put a lot of work into this course. It’s 18 holes through the woods, about two miles of walking. There are concrete tee pads, good signs and well constructed paths. It was pretty challenging for a couple of oldsters, there were a lot of ups and downs, especially if your disc went astray. Matey got to run loose practically the whole time and we didn’t lose any discs.
Wednesday Dennis called and said he’d set things up with the shop in Spokane, they should be calling Bud. They did and Bud took the truck in yesterday. The bed looks like new (aside from the dusty footprints). The shop in Spokane billed Red Desert Off Road directly. Any business can make a mistake, a good business steps up and fixes it with as little pain to the customer as possible. Thank you Dennis and Red Desert Off Road!
Matey and I stayed home. I did the wash, almost as much fun as sitting in the shop waiting for the work. We did a long walk in the morning; on our short evening walk we saw this sky.
Today we went to play disc golf again. We did a lot of driving, and not much playing. We went to an 18 hole course in Deer Park, Washington. The reviews said it needed to be mowed. It did! We played holes 1 – 7 and our shoes and socks and all of Matey were covered with sticky weed seeds. We played holes 14, 15 and 18 just to get back to the truck, then spent about 45 minutes getting the seeds off. I’ve tackled Matey three times and he’s almost clean. Then we drove up to Chewelah, WA to another course. On the way it rained hard enough to use the wipers, first we’ve seen that in a long time! It was still drizzling when we got to this short course and a man was mowing the front of it, the rest of the course was as tall as the last one, so we decided to just drive home. Home was over a ridge of mountains, so it was a nice drive. This is looking down on the Pend Oreille River from the east side of the ridge about 10 miles from here. An adventure gone astray is still an adventure.
I was anxious about this campsite because we are staying here two weeks. We haven’t stayed anywhere more than four nights since Adler joined us in early June. We need a break, but I was afraid this campground would have some fatal flaw.
We are in Cusick, WA, on the West Bank of the Pend Oreille River (pronounced pond oh-RAY according to Boise State Public Radio). We aren’t far from Lake Pend Oreille and the river is wide here.
We are at Eagle’s Landing RV Resort. One small area of this campground, which was at one point abandoned and is now somewhat resurrected, is landscaped and there are a few very nice, large concrete pads.
I opted for a standard site, which you can see is very plain. But the hook-ups work, we have no issues with the satellite TV antenna and the cell signal is strong enough to use my phone as an internet hot spot. And it’s $61 a week less.
We still get to use the very attractive club house, but haven’t been in it yet.
Better yet, the walking path along the lightly traveled road leads to this habitat restoration area with this nicely mowed graveled path. Matey and I had a very pleasant mile and a half walk this morning.
We took a drive about 30 miles down the river this morning…
crossed and came back the Idaho side. It’s beautiful country. There’s a decent grocery store about 15 miles south of here and we are about an hour from Spokane, WA for more serious business. So I think this place will be just fine.
We are now back west of the continental divide, in northwest Montana along the Clark Fork River in Trout Creek. Lots of green here, lots of tall trees and welcome shade. No TV; Bud is coping.
The river here is beautiful and boating is popular. We are along the Noxon reservoir.
The reservoir is from a hydroelectric dam about 12 miles downstream…
along the Noxon rapids.
We stopped there yesterday as well as at the park in the village of Noxon, which sits at the downstream end of the rapids. You get to the village over this one lane bridge which crosses the Clark Fork from MT 200.
We had driven northwest to Clark Fork, Idaho, where we found a great disc golf course. It was built as a nine hole par three golf course. They added two baskets and one tee pad to every fairway to create an 18 hole disc golf course. It was pretty nice. It was being mowed by a volunteer who stopped to talk to us. He said the original golf course was made in this chunk of woods because the principal of the school wanted something other than the woods where his students would hide out, no doubt during classes. It was all built and maintained by donations and was free. Matey got to be off-leash and he loved it, too.
Today we drove 20 miles in the other direction, back upstream to Thompson Falls. Matey and I took a walk in Thompson Falls State Park.
It was a short trail but very pretty. It went through some big ponderosa pines. Too bad you can’t take an impression of smells, because the sun was shining on the bark of those trees and the whole area smelled like vanilla!
Then we went back to River Bend Golf Course and waited for Bud to finish his nine holes on what is one of the prettiest courses I’ve ever seen. Here he’s putting out on the ninth green.
We took the back road home, Blue Slide Road. (Love that name, wonder how it came to be.) It was a bit narrow and in some places very twisty, but gave us great views of the river.
I’m liking this western side of the Rockies. (By the way, the discolored parts of the water in this photo are where it’s shallow and the bottom shows. The whole river is very clear.)
The second morning we were at Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park we took the short drive to the Missouri Headwaters State Park.
This is where the U.S.Geological Survey has designated the Missouri River begins.
It is at the point where the Madison River and the Jefferson River converge. The park also encompasses the area about a mile downstream where the Gallatin River enters. Lewis and Clark explored this area in 1805. Sacajawea, who was part of the expedition, recognized the place as the homeland of her tribe, the Shoshone. She had not seen it since she was kidnapped by a rival tribe as a young girl.
It was a lovely land, with trails wide enough for Matey to walk without battling the grass. This trail led along the newly formed Missouri.
From a high point you could just see the convergence of the Madison, along the left, with the Jefferson, coming from the right. Jefferson was President when he commissioned Lewis and Clark to explore the Missouri, looking for a water route to the Pacific. Madison was Secretary of State and Gallatin was Secretary of the Treasury, hence the rivers’ names. Some think the Jefferson should really be considered the upper reaches of the Missouri. I wonder if having three supporters of the expedition to honor influenced the decision to name the Jefferson a separate river.
We walked just a little ways east across that high ground and then we were walking the high bank of the Gallatin.
Here I’m standing near the Gallatin looking downstream to where it joins the Missouri.
The signs at the State Park named the Missouri as the longest river in North America. I read that after some of its riverbed was straightened for hydroelectric projects and the like it might be shorter than the Mississippi. There’s no doubt that it’s an important river.
This sign about high water temperatures along the Gallatin, along with the shrinking glaciers at Glacier National Park, make me wonder how long those waters will flow with the abundance needed to support our food source.
We are still along the Missouri here. Last time we visited we drove out to see the “great cascades” that gave Great Falls its name. Unfortunately most of the falls are dammed for hydro power.
After knocking about in the northwest for a while we plan to come back to the Missouri on September 9th and continue our journey downstream. I’ll no doubt post more about the mighty river then.
Since sending Adler home Bud and I spent a night at a KOA campground in Helena, MT, three nights at Montana’s Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, and are now back at Great Falls RV Park. Each of these places has been very different, and each has had good and bad things.
Besides being close to a good airport, Jim and Mary’s RV Park in Missoula was very well kept and had trees and flowers everywhere. It had full hook-ups (water, sewer and electric) and we had a good cell signal. As a private campground it was more expensive than public campgrounds, but it wasn’t exorbitant. The downsides? The trees blocked our satellite dish and although they did provide cable TV, it only had about three watchable channels. You may scoff at needing TV in a campsite, but remember, this is our home, so going long without TV is annoying at best. And it was on a busy highway isolated from any other streets or trails, so the only option for walking Matey was to circle the campground, over and over.
The Helena stop was because I couldn’t get in to the state park until Thursday and I couldn’t add another day to our Missoula stay. I chose a KOA, they are reliably easy, flat sites, so we were able to pull in and with a minimum of adjustment, leave the trailer hooked to the truck. We had TV and cell (so also wifi) and didn’t bother to hook up, although we could. There was a walking trail advertised, but when I asked at the office on check in the young woman said, “No…there’s just the sidewalk across the street or you can walk around the campground.” Her description was accurate. There was just a wide, paved sidewalk that went straight along the side of the highway with no trees or turns or any destination that I could see. Oh well, it was just for a night.
The state park looked promising. For a non-resident it wasn’t cheap, but it was less than the KOA. The sites were large and level and the setting was beautiful. There was a scattering of trees, happily they didn’t interfere with the satellite TV, unhappily, they didn’t shade the trailer.
We’re back in the heat, so Matey and I took morning and evening walks. That was OKAY. But the only hookup here was electricity. We were only staying three nights, added to our night at Helena that made four nights using our tank water and not draining our holding tanks. We made it, just. Worse, there was no cell service at all. I had to go up to the visitor center to make a phone call and internet was not possible. We went into towns both days we were here, so I did my downloads then.
All that would have been fair trade for nice walks, but, this is almost as far as Matey and I made it on our one and only trail walk. You can see the trail is narrow. For Matey it was a tunnel through the grass. And the grass was Hespirostipa comata, needle-and-thread grass.
This is the needle-and-thread; and those things stuck all over Matey, including his face and feet. After several stops to clean them off him he simply refused to go forward. I couldn’t blame him, the promising trails were a bust.
We did get to take the cave tour, which was nice.
But our tour was only one room.
It really couldn’t compete with Kartchner Caverns, Sonora Caverns, Natural Bridge Caverns or Carlsbad Caverns. Perhaps we’re jaded.
It is the first cave we’ve visited on the top of a mountain, and that was interesting.
So now we’re back at a commercial campground in Great Falls, mainly to get Matey a haircut at PetsMart. Since this is a return visit, the young woman at the office helped me reserve a site that has shade and TV. In the city there’s great cell coverage and a so-so section of the river trail for Matey’s walks. We’ll take it.
On Sunday we drove from St. Mary, along the southern border of Glacier National Park and down to Missoula.
We drove down the east shore of Flathead Lake. It’s sloping shore and cherry orchards reminded us of the Finger Lakes region of New York.
We came here to put our grandson, Adler, on a plane home to Hot Springs, Arkansas. He had been with us for 51 days, from the red rock deserts of Utah…
to the conifer woods of Glacier. Our trailer isn’t made for three people. It was tight quarters, Adler had to sleep on the converted dinette and had no space of his own. But he was an uncomplaining traveler and brought a lot of laughter.
As I watched his plane taxi…
and then take off, I just hoped he would have a safe trip (he did) and that he would be willing and able to join our adventure next summer.
On the Roam Again 