Montana Travels

Thursday, Aug. 14 - This morning we packed up and headed east, leaving Glacier Park behind.  We would now be traveling for miles across the ranch lands of Montana.  Down Hwy 89, part of the Lewis and Clark trail to Great Falls, then southeast on Hwy 87 to Lewistown, arriving early afternoon.  We found an RV park with full hookup and laundry, we needed to wash clothes from our Glacier Park stay - without hookups in Kalispell and Browning and the warm days, we had two hampers full.  After setting up, I took the hampers and headed to the laundry room.  Of course, I got there right after two other women, one of whom had her bedding to wash.  After looking to see there were just three washers and two of them were being used, I knew I needed Plan B.  Back at the motorhome, I put one load in our washer and then headed to a local laundremat to do the rest of it.  As I arrived there, it began to rain and rained the whole one and a half hours I was there.  As I started putting laundry in the washer, the attendant came over and apologized telling me the air conditioning was not working that day.  It was hot and humid in there.  I filled three washers and then went out to sit in the cooler car to read.  When the loads were done, I was able to use two big dryers and get things dried quickly.  Back home again, done with that job, just in time for supper.  We had cable TV hookup, so enjoyed watching shows and the news that night.

Mountain Acres RV Park, Lewistown, MT

Friday - Checking out that morning, we learned that the Cowboy Poet/Storyteller Event was beginning that day and realized the two campers parked by us had two of the participants.  The white hair, jeans, tooled belts and boots gave them away.  We continued south on Hwy 87 to Billings, then west on I-90 (with many big trucks) for 54 miles.  There we turned at Garryowen on to Hwy 212.  This area has the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where Custer fought.  We considered driving in to see it, until we saw the sign that there were no truck turnarounds.  Heading east, our plan was to stay in Lame Deer at the casino, which listed free RV parking.  Arriving at the casino, we found that it was a small, three tiered level gravel parking lot, not much room for big rigs.  We went in and had burgers and fries for lunch.  Returning to our MH, we found two semi trucks had pulled in to the parking lot as well - pretty much filling up the lowest level of parking.  We decided to move on.  Continuing on Hwy 212, we decided to stay in Broadus for the night.  After driving around the town, we parked beside the large city park for the night.  We were able to find the Catholic Church in town and went to the 5:00 Holy Day Mass there.  A truck driver parked his semi down the block and joined us for Mass as well.  We stopped downtown afterward for a bite to eat.

City Park camping, Broadus, MT