8-18-17 - (Day 18 - Glasgow, Montana and More Explorations)

Our original plan was to stay at West End Campground for a couple of nights.  We decided being we have such a nice campsite, and still have things to check out, we would stay a few more nights.

We rode to Glasgow to fuel up the truck and stock up on supplies.  Glasgow is a small town.  It took about as long to drive there as it did for us to purchase our goods.

After lunch we went back to the Interpretive Center, to walk the Downstream Nature Trail.  The 2.3 mile trail weaved around several ponds, went along the beautiful Missouri River, through grassy land, and a beautiful grove of cottonwood trees. We saw 5 deer on our walk that weren't very worried about humans in their neighborhood.  We saw a couple of very excited kids catch bream from a fishing pier at the Downstream Campground.

We went by the fishless, fish hatchery.  This is the first fish hatchery that we have ever been to  that the fish tanks were dry.  They were doing some sort of construction work.   We walked around a little bit and viewed the fish mounts in the glass cases.

We stopped at the beach area where several people were enjoying this hot, low humidity, day.

We found the buffalo on Big Horn Road.  Big Horn Road turned into gravel, so we sat on the road taking pictures from afar.

We headed to Duck Creek Recreation.  The asphalt queen turned around again when the road unexpectedly changed from paved to gravel.

We bought a fried chicken dinner at Albertsons today, which covered us for lunch and dinner.  At the dinner table, aka picnic table tonight, I insisted Lauren sit beside me so we would both have a view of the lake.  And what a view, 2 deer were wading in the water as the geese were flying by, then
7 deer were grazing right across the road from us at their dinner table.

Do you remember a couple of days ago, we mentioned the Camp Host yelling to his buddy it was happy hour? Wellllll, today must have been an exceptional happy hour, away from the cg this time. The camp host's car returned, it took the aforementioned buddy and another happy hour buddy, (one under each shoulder) to haul the camp host to his motorhome.

A sunset stroll around the campground, revealed more deer, including a buck.  We must be straight dab in the middle of deer country.

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8-17-17 (Day 17 - Fort Peck Day)

We planned to get up early and take a picture of the sunrise.  Didn't happen.  Mid morning, we watched several deer across the way,  as we ate breakfast.

We only went a few miles today, but were gone for five hours.  We checked out the marina, several campgrounds, rode across the spillway a few times, and stopped at a lot of overlooks.  A very scenic day.
                            

We stopped at the Interpretive Center & Museum and were pleasantly surprised.  It had all kinds of fossils, wildlife mounts, real life turtles, snakes, toad frogs, salamanders,  fish, honeybees, etc.  It had very detailed information regarding the species living on the land and in the lake.  It also had a lot of history about the construction of Fort Peck Lake.  We viewed numerous Pelecanus, (aka Pelicans), and Comorant's, (aka Water Divers), in the River from the Interpretive Center back door.

We had a picnic lunch with a gorgeous view at the Louis and Clark Overlook, then returned to the Interpretive Center to take a tour of the Power House.  We followed Katy, our guide, from the Interpretive Center to the Power House.  It was a very informative tour.  Afterwards, I realized the energy to flip the light switch on is a lot more complicated than I ever thought about.

Our 3rd stop at the Interpretive Center today was to view the Star Lab.  We crawled our way into a dark, pretty dome lit up with the constellations .  Our guide was very knowledgeable about the Greek Gods and their contributions to the constellation.  We were mind boggled by the information we received, as we crawled back out to the light.

We took a ride a few miles past the lake to the Bad Lands, rode by the Montana Veterans Memorial, and made it back to camp.

It has been a warm, windy day.  We are glad we have electric hookups in this 90 degree weather, Thanks to all that those in the 1930's that worked hard and made sacrifices to provide us with electricity to cool us off on this gorgeous lake.

                                                         
                                                                      Just woke up!!!
Pictures:

8-16-17 (Day 16 - West End Campground, Fort Peck Lake)

                                                                 Foggy start today

I asked Lauren this morning, reckon how far we will go today, he responded, maybe 20 miles or maybe more, whatever we find that we like the looks of.   After about 150 miles we found the spot that we loved the looks of.  We have a campsite on a hill overlooking Fort Peck Lake.  Awesome, gotta stay here at least a couple of days

Ferny Kat decided to throw a few fits on the ride over here today.  At one point as she was raising heck looking out the passenger window of the back seat, Lauren rolled down the window. Usually, she would quieten down, cause she don't like her hair to blow in the wind.  It wasn't a usual day.  She stuck her head out the window like a dog, would do, and got some fresh Montana , I'm looking at the Big Sky, air.  Once we got her head back in, she settled down for the rest of the ride .

We decided it was a chill out kind of day.  We sat around in the shade in the 90'ish degree weather with very low humidity, (which by the way, was another awesome).  We took a long hot shower in the shower house right across the road, fried some fish, and watched a gorgeous sunset.  All the while, Amber sat resting under the shade tree patiently waiting to take us on a tour of the lake tomorrow.

We felt right at home when we talked to a fisherman catching land locked King Salmon and the words "Happy Hour" called out from the camp host site.


More pictures are here:

8-15-17 (Day 15 - Trenton Lake, ND)

It was a great sleeping night last night listening to the rain peppering on the roof top.  We awoke to a cloudy, windy, cool morning, with a muddy road.  It was time to move on.

After 71 country miles, we are at Trenton Lake in North Dakota.  We have electric hookups and non potable water.  After smelling the non potable water, we opted to use our reserve water in the holding tank.

We had never been to a Harley shop in North Dakota. We made a trek to Black Magic Harley Davidson in Williston, ND to buy a tee shirt and a few other items. A very nice place with excellent customer service.

Ferny Kat came out as we grilled our Walmart steak this evening and gave her approval of the campsite.  We watched the boats, skiers, and tubers playing in the water.

The sun finally came out, helping to diminish the gnat population, as we watched the boats load at the boat ramp.


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8-14-17 (Day 14 - Teddy Roosevelt North Unit)

Turkeys came for a visit this morning while we were drinking our coffee.

We found out what we thought was a bumper crop of crab apples were actually wild plums.  They are pretty good when they get good and ripe.

We really enjoyed the South entrance of Teddy's National Park so we decided to check out the North side.  We traveled 73 miles to Summit Campground.

This is our kind of place.  3 RV sites with no hookups and no one here but us.   Shortly after we were parked, we saw a deer.  Lauren went to grab the camera while the deer was grabbing dirt.  Hence, no picture.

We took a ride a few miles up the road to the North entrance.  It was really laid back.  It was similar to the South entrance, only a much more diversity of colors and greenery, and  fewer tourist.

We saw a some longhorns, a few buffalo, some deer, and a bunch of pretty scenery.

It was cloudy, and looked like rain when we returned back to our prairie campsite on the hill. A few sprinkles, and a lot of wind, drove us inside.

We cooked hamburgers in the electric skillet while the batteries were charging from the generator. The down side to solar are these cloudy days.

We are in for the night with no rain as of yet.

More pics, Click here:

8-13-17 (Day 13 - Enchanted Highway)

                                                                morning walk

We were all snug as a bug in a rug this morning, until I made the mistake of hot flashing and threw my leg out from under the covers, invaded the Ferny Kat space, I then got bit, (pretty much just a nibble,) which woke everyone up.

It was on.  Ferny Kat never has anything to do with me, for the most part, she started PURRING!! She woke me up every time I dozed off to make sure that I petted her.  This cat ain't right.

                                                         cg view from the overlook

It was a cold, cloudy, in the low 50's morning.  We strolled around the campground a few times, hiked up a hill to the Buffalo Gap Overlook, (I slittered down the steep backside,) ate lunch, and waited for the sun.

Finally we had sunshine around noonish, time to ride.

We rode the interstate to Enchanted Highway.  We usually avoid the interstate but there is not much traffic in this area and the back roads around here are gravel.  A no brainier.

It was a splendid ride through the farming land.  At one point, we saw what looked like a blue lake in front of a Windmill field, realized it was a some sort of crop of blue.  Totally gorgeous.  Found out later the so called blue lake was Flax.

The seven metal sculptures in the 32 mile stretch are amazing and definitely enchanting!!

We stopped in town for ice cream and continued on our way.  We made a stop at Wally World for some chicken to grill and checked out another beautiful boondocking spot.

Of course, Ferny Kat was ready to come outside when we got home.  She has been chasing bunny rabbits and birds in her little part of paradise.

More pictures right here:

8-12-17 (Day 12 - Teddy Roosevelt National Park)

It was a cool morning with the temperature in the low 50's.  Ferny Kat was all cuddled up with us, snoring this morning, when Lauren woke her up.  Pay back for all those mornings she woke Lauren out of a deep sleep, which by the way, doesn't happen very often.

It was a beautiful morning as we watched a flock of turkeys walking in our yard, while eating breakfast.

                                                                     turkeys

We rode a few miles east on I 94 to Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  There were big piles of hail leftover from last nights thunderstorm and leaves covering the ground that had been knocked out of the trees.  Luckily, our weather wasn't that bad last night.

We were very impressed with Roosevelt's cabin.  It was small, but all you really need to live comfortably.

It was a very pretty 36 mile ride through the Badlands in the park, watching thousands of prairie dogs, lots of buffalo, wild horses, and one buck .  It had a lot more greenery than the Badlands in South Dakota.

We had a great picnic lunch in the Cottonwood Picnic Area, motored the last 5 miles of the park, then headed through downtown Medora to catch I 94 east.

We took in some more gorgeous scenery at the Painted Canyon Visitor Center where we watched several wild horses on a ledge across the canyon.

It was time to head to the camper.  We decided to make one last stop to check out a boon docking spot.

We got on I 94 west then took some gravel roads on Amber, The Asphalt Queen, to check out another good looking boondocking area. It was secluded and beautiful.  Our kind of place.

We saw the dark skies in the direction of home.  We pulled over, put on our rain gear, and toughed it out.  Luckily, it was only 14 miles to the camper and only hard rain, not lightening and hail.

We hung up all our wet clothes in the garage, watched the lightening bolts dancing in the dark skies, thought we were done for the day, then this beautiful rainbow appeared on the hill.  We love rainbows.

We took a short stroll, grilled some pork chops and sweet potatoes while Ferny Kat explored the jungle in our back yard.

It cooled off fast tonight.  We are inside with all  the windows closed thinking about turning on the heater.

Da Pictures are here: