Today was a pack up and travel day! We are still terrible about making this happen in a timely fashion. Levi woke up this morning and I had to ask him three times if the tooth fairy had come! Finally, he was like, “Oh. I’ll check.” Came back with two $1 bills and completely missed that there were quarters. I seriously don’t think this kid could care less!
We finally got everything loaded up, Trista and took the van to get some cold drinks at the gas station while John finished up with the RV and we met over by Chimney park to load the van. Something about this interruption to our routine caused us to drive all the way to Montana with an open cargo bin! Fortunately, there were no negative consequences to this oversight and once we discovered it, we sat down and wrote up a checklist, which I will laminate!
Pretty uneventful driving day, with one exception… in Miles City, we entered an area of road construction on the interstate, no big deal. John needed a pit stop and opted to take an exit… we did not realize that the exit was also under construction (Levi says destruction, “Is the road under destruction?” Can’t exactly say he is wrong) and the exit ramp was completely gravel! We certainly love to off-road, but not in a motor home, towing a minivan! We may have rearranged a few cabinets, but we made it off and back on the freeway – through gravel both ways!
We came upon a sign for Pompey’s Pillar and it looked pretty cool, so we stopped. The gate was closed and we got out to just look over the gate and there was still a ranger in the guard shack and apparently we arrived moments after they closed, but he told us all about the area and the pillar. Apparently, Lewis and Clark split up at one point on the journey and one of the men with Clark fell ill, they stayed near the pillar longer than planned and Clark etched his name into the rock, which is the only physical evidence of their journey.
Our intended destination for this evening was Cody, WY. Unfortunately we had been looking and had not been able to find a spot in Cody. We had left messages at a couple of places and today hoped to hear back from anyone and we called again with no luck. We stopped in Billings to discuss our plan. Our plan had been to get to Cody for two nights and back to Dubois on Sunday. We decided that we could always fast track it to Dubois and then come back another time… we called John’s mom to see if she would like to come back with us or what she thought. We decided that we might just stay in Billings for a couple of nights if we could get into Cody later and just extend our trip. We then proceeded to call every place in Billings and FINALLY got the last spot at the KOA! I am typically not a huge KOA fan, because they are too resorty and too expensive, but we needed a place. They had a single overflow spot left, (electric only) and they would give it to us for $44/night (usually $88/night), we called Cody and managed to find a place for the three nights after that and we are officially detoured!
Even when RV spots are narrow, it is kind of accepted that your site is from your door on the passenger side to the driver’s side of the rig next to you. It is ok to go to the driver side of your own rig for hookups, but you don’t generally hang out over there. Apparently the guy parked next to us has not gotten that memo and as soon as we were set up I texted my mom, “Ah, I’ve always wanted to camp next to a half naked, old, chain smoker with two angry pocket dogs next to him in a pack n play… this is the life!” He was certainly cozy on my side of his rig and when Trista went over to the “cute doggies”, he told her they were not friendly. OY! At least this place has a pool and a hot tub!
Once we got set up (it was so HOT), we opted to not heat up our rig by cooking, so we went for pizza and a little driving tour of Billings before coming back for a night time swim, a dip in the hot tub and sleeeeeeppppp!
