We made it to Moab on day one, only to find the town packed with people and the campgrounds packed as well. So we kept going into the darkness and ended up in Green River, Utah parked at a truck stop next to a melon patch. Green River used to be dusty and dry but now river water is available and it is the biggest farm area in the state. We had eaten in Moab (Zax Pizza) so we just hit the hay. There were two other trucks in the overflow parking lot when we went to bed. I got up to close a window in the middle of the night and found we had about 100 neighbors. They were all gone by the time we got up.
We wandered up the highway into Utah, over Soldier Summit and down into Spanish Fork where we hit I-15. This was the start of the three day Memorial Day weekend, and my parents are buried in the city cemetery at Payson, Utah. That's only a few miles from Spanish Fork. Every year my cousins Jolene Coons, Kathy Moore and Linda Stanton have put flowers on their graves, while decorating the graves of their own parents and our grandparents. This year we were perfectly positioned to join in. So we did.
On Monday we moved on, going up to Kaysville, Utah where we had an appointment at Blaine Jensen (Camping World) RV to put a new awning on one of our slide outs. We camped in their driveway overnight, and were first in line the next morning. We dropped it off and went off to have breakfast. Our plan had been to head north to Brigham City to overnight at Walmart. But Jensen's ace service guy Ray Tanner got us done by noon, so we blasted right past Brigham and headed into Idaho.
After driving an hour in a rainstorm, I noticed something odd in my right hand mirror. We'd driven off with the bedroom slide in the out position. Sigh. Getting old is no fun. Good thing it was on the curb side of the bus.
We we continued north through Pocatello and Idaho Falls and made it all the way to Dillon, Montana that night. Safeways was very accommodating and let us park overnight in an RV parking space they thoughtfully provide in their lot. In the morning we went to gas up at their service station, only to find that a cattle truck had parked sideways across all the gas lanes. It stayed there while the driver drank coffee and yaked with the girl in the booth. He blocked all the pumps at Safeways for 30 minutes! One unfrustrated motorist smiled and said, "Welcome to Dillon. People here operate on their own schedule."
We drove through Butte, Montana (above) and then up into the high passes between Butte and Helena. After Helena we followed a beautiful trout stream that turned out to be the Missouri River. The same river that Lewis and Clark followed on their way down to Dillon.
We hit the border an hour later and found the crossing at Coutts, Alberta pretty much deserted. We were prepared for a long and detailed search, and I had carefully computed how much ammo, liquor and soda crackers (just kidding) we could legally carry across into Canada. The nice lady in the booth asked if we had firearms; we did. Since pistols and revolvers are not allowed, I had brought a shotgun and a new Marlin 1895 Guide Gun in 45-70 caliber. An elephant gun suitable for bear, in case we run into trouble in the wilds of Alaska. I handed her our passports and the firearms forms the Mounties had posted on their website.
She told me to go inside the building and pay the required fee. I did that then went back outside, expecting to find Marsha up to her eyeballs in a full-blown inspection. But Marsha was just sitting there in the bus. We were all done! Off we went, down a deserted four lane highway into Canada. Nobody had checked to insure we had the trigger locks in place, and had put a lock on the bed so it would qualify as a "locked" compartment. They didn't even ask about ammo to make sure we had no more than 200 rounds.
It was all too easy!
(Next blog--Rain and more rain on the way to Edmonton; then a visit to the Ukraine in Alberta)
Yaaayyy!!
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