Well; we safely arrived at the Malmstrom AFB Fam Camp here in Great Falls after a 3 day travel period of 840.5 miles. I guess we coulda made it in 2 days if we needed to but we didn’t so we didn’t.

We headed out from the USAFA on Thursday morning after a brief altercation with this jerk who insisted on driving through campsites at the USAFA Fam Camp. Connie yelled at him; he yelled at her…and things went downhill from there. He tried to pick a fight with Neil but he just ignored him and we went ahead and departed Colorado Springs. 

Getting through Denver was a bit of a pain traffic wise but once we got north of the city the traffic died out and we had smooth sailing the rest of the way here. Our first stoop was at the KOA in Douglas, WY about 300 miles up the road…it’s situated about 2 miles from the freeway and was pretty easy in and easy out. The campground was pretty nice…but it was really windy when we arrived. Steady winds of 30-40 knots with gusts to 60. So we just pulled into our pull through site, dropped the front jacks, hooked up power and water and went inside for the evening about 5 PM. The wind rattled the slide toppers all night and we had no TV since it was too windy to put the satellite dish up so we just had leftovers from our birthday dinner at PF Chang’s for dinner, read some books, caught up on podcasts, and went to bed early.

Friday morning we got up early and hit the road. After a quick stop at the Golden Arches for coffee and breakfast we did another 300 miles and arrived at the KOA in Hardin, MT about 1430. Again, we dropped the jacks and hooked up water and electric and called it a day. Neil went on a nice bike ride and we had some frozen lasagna for dinner then watched TV until time for bed. We did get some halfway decent pictures of some birds in the campground; although we were not able to successfully identify either of them. I’ve got to give a shout out to the Hardin KOA…it’s one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve been in for awhile. The owners Dave and Gina just bought it recently and it’s really a nice campground. About a mile from the freeway and we had just 3 neighbors for the evening in our nice pull through site. We would definitely stay here again if we were in the area. Turned out that we were only about 5 miles from the Little Bighorn National Monument which commemorates Custer’s Last Stand (which actually was more of a running battle than a Last Stand…but that’s another story). Neil wanted to go visit but Connie was too tired so we passed on it for this time through.

Saturday morning was pretty much more of the same. Up early, breakfast was a granola bar and a cup of coffee that the KOA provided. After that we hit the road, went about 50 miles up on the freeway to Billings where we got off, fueled up, and spent the last 220 miles of our trip on 2 lane US highways. A little hilly but really pretty nice roads, not much traffic, and we had a pretty decent travel day. We did grab a couple of shots of the mountains today…as you can see from the first one there is still a lot of snow at the higher elevations. Unfortunately; this means that the Going to the Sun Road across the pass in Glacier National Park is still closed so we won’t get the chance to go see the views in the park tomorrow. We’ll still have a hike to a couple of waterfalls we missed the last time we were here but are disappointed to miss Going to the Sun again.

We got here to Malmstrom AFB Fam Camp about 1315, picked out a site and paid our $72 for 3 nights and parked in a nice, level pull through site. Since we’ll be here for 3 days; we went ahead and unhitched BAT, fully leveled the house, and Connie cleaned the inside. Here’s a picture of our site…we’ve got great views through our rear and side windows of the snow covered mountains to the west and south.

Neil went on another ride then had a shower. We headed off to Goode’s Q and Bayou Grill for dinner since we didn’t feel like cooking. We had pretty decent Oyster Po’Boys and Iced Tea then came home. Connie had a shower and washed her hair and now it’s TV and then bed.

Tomorrow we have Mass at 0830 then we are headed off to Glacier National Park about 50 or so miles away. We’re going to enter the east side, go as far up Going to the Sun Road as they will let us and then hit a couple of short hikes to some waterfalls on the way back down. The last time we were here it was early October which was the end of the hot season so the falls and glaciers were at their minimum. In the spring like it is now…we should see much more glacier activity and the flow over the various waterfalls will be much higher resulting in better waterfall pictures.

We were going to go (originally) across Going to the Sun Road to Kalispell, MT and meet a friend of Neil’s that used to work with him at the Missile Defense Agency. Tom gave up being the computer guy and now grows organic vegetables near Kailspell instead…but with the road being closed it’s almost a 550 mile round trip to Kalispell around the south side of the park and that’s just too much for a 1 day thing. Monday we’re going to go see the new Star Trek movie that was release last weekend and then Tuesday morning it’s off to the border to start our Canadian Adventures™.  I think we’re going to grill on Monday as well.

I had forgotten how beautiful the countryside out here in the west is…super clean air, miles of open space, and lots of antelope and other birds flying over the plains.

Cyas.