9/27/23 Wednesday: We did the final touches on putting Island Girl to bed for the winter. It’s hard to leave her for SEVEN months! But really I guess it’s only three, since we’ll be here for a few days around Christmas. Then another four months before we’re back in the spring for another summer filled with land and sea adventures.
Kenny checked all the systems while I checked all of the interior. I like to make sure there is nothing touching the hull, like blankets, pillows or clothes than can get damp. I set a fan to run on a timer for three hours every morning down in the bedroom to circulate air. That is the lowest place where condensation would settle. We set the three little built-in electric heaters as low as they’ll go, which says is 45 degrees. I don’t know what temperature they really come on at, but our power bills from last winter weren’t bad at all, and nothing was damp when we returned to her. We made the final loads of stuff out, locked her up, and said good-bye.
It was pouring down rain this morning until after 10:00, so we delayed our getaway until it was a little more hospitable outside. We didn’t get to my brother’s house until noon to get Nitro the trailer. We needed to finish loading stuff in, hook it up to Henry the truck, and load Kawi the side-by-side in. Then put water in the tank, check the air pressure, and have all systems ready to roll.
Our first stop on our trip is Shannon’s house in Spokane. We didn’t get there until about 7:00pm, but she saved some dinner for us which was sweet. I did a load of laundry, and thankfully Cameron helped me with a technology issue. We use an app called OnX on a Samsung tablet for navigating trails. I’d been trying to download maps for the Black Hills in South Dakota for riding next week, but couldn’t get them to load. In fact, I couldn’t get them to load on Sami, on Gladys the ipad, or on my phone. I thought maybe it was the poor wifi at the marina. But nope – couldn’t get them to load at their house on the good wifi either. Well, one problem with my phone was that it was full. WHAT? Yep – really full, with no storage space. Like 127.5GB used out of the total of 128GB. It pretty much stopped working. So I had to download 2022 pictures to my computer and that freed up a bunch of gigabites. Whew! Seriously… like 40 GIG of free space now!! . It’s true. I take a LOT of pictures and video on all of our adventures!! Otherwise, how could I write and show you all about it?!
OK – but that doesn’t explain Sami and Gladys’s problems. Well, the good thing with the app is that all of the data is actually in an account somewhere out in the cyber universe somewhere, so Cam suggested deleting the app and reinstalling it. TA-DA! He’s a genius. (He’s also in the working world where people think about things like that. We used to have to do that at work with some software programs, back in the day when I was working, but it never occurred to me here. I was finally able to get all my maps downloaded, space made available on my phone, and some clean clothes. Whew! Thank goodness for kids who take care of us!
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9/28/23-Thursday: The triplets were up early and getting ready to go to school, so there was no sleeping in for Grama & Grampa. They are in pre-kindergarten this year and LOVE it. Poor Kason has been sick and he was so very sad that he didn’t get to go today, especially because Thursday is SCIENCE day. He was very vocal about having to stay home. They left the house at 9:15 and we left right after them. First stop would be for fuel, but not until crossing into Idaho. Diesel prices in Washington were around $5.49/gal, while prices just eight miles away were $4.59.
I told Kenny as I was taking this picture that I need to take pics of the state signs since we’re on a new adventure. Although this particular sign is in EVERY cross country adventure since we always stop at Shannon’s on the way out of WA. Except today, we were welcomed into “DAHO”. I magically hid the I behind a light pole.
All fueled up an on our way. An hour of driving in the rain through the mountains of “DAHO”, and we were welcomed into Montana and a new time zone. Just like that, two hours have flown by!
More rain and then sun and then more rain, up and down passes, and finally to the Continental Divide. It should be all down hill from now on, right?
Our destination today was the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park near Whitehall Montana. It is 350 miles from Spokane, and about 75 miles northwest of the corner of Yellowstone National Park as the crow flies. My plan is to stay there for two nights so that we can have a day to explore the caverns. We turned off of I-90 onto Highway 2, and it got really scenic in a hurry! The road got really narrow, and I could read Kenny’s mind as he was thinking – ‘what has she gotten us into this time?!’.
But the landscape did open up into a big meadow, with the state park off to the north.
The campsites are First Come First Served after Labor Day, so I had made a list and map of the ones big enough for us with and without electricity. We were able to park in a pull-through spot with power. YAY! We unloaded Kawi since we’ll be here for two nights, and got all set up.
I walked over to the bathrooms to check them out and then was going to go to the entrance which is where I thought we might have to register and pay for our spot. But wait! There was a pay-for-it dealie and sign right by the bathrooms!
I got us all paid up and then took some pictures of the locals who were not very worried about me.
We didn’t get here until after 5:00 with the time change from Pacific to Mountain time, so we didn’t have much time to do anything before it started cooling down and the sun was setting. It was pretty, and this is a nice quiet spot. Tomorrow we’ll go see about taking a tour of the caverns. Tours end on Sept 30, so we’re just going to make it before the season closes!
