Catching Up

Burr……..

Last night just before going to bed the rain started and it started with a BANG. One clap of thunder that was the loudest we have ever heard. Along with the rain a cold front moved in and the temperature this morning was in the mid 50’s, we weren’t expecting that...

Shelby North Dakota

                                                                  Beautiful North Dakota

Despite the cooler temperatures the sun was out and it was a beautiful morning until we were just outside of Williston, the oil rich boom town of this century. The lack of road construction that we had enjoyed up to this point ended abruptly. Williston is being redone from the inside out to accommodate the rapid population growth that is underway. There is such a lack of housing for the oil workers that we even saw steel storage containers stacked on top of one another and people living in them. You would think that with the economic boom and all the oil being pumped out of Williston that they would have decent gas prices. Wrong, prices range from $3.69 to $3.79 a gallon.

Heading to Williston ND

 Fender bender

 Wide open spaces

 Could be a country school house

The weather was threatening all day but never did storm or even rain. It cleared up entirely and we are enjoying a nice cool evening. 

We are in Shelby Montana at a very nice city park and again it is a very chilly morning with bright blue skies. We decided that instead of spending any time in places we have seen before like Glacier National Park, we would head for head for Washington and Oregon and maybe have some time on the coast. So we will see what happens, there is a chance our plans may change again.

 

WOW what temperature changes, it went from 52 degrees this morning to 96 degrees this afternoon. We are in Superior Montana at a federal forest campground. It’s 9:00 pm and just starting to cool off.

This morning we left for Washington. We are currently staying in Ellensburg Washington. Western Montana and Idaho both have spectacular scenery.  This part of Washington is quite pretty too, very green and hilly with a view of the snow capped mountains. We are camped at the Yakima River RV Park it is part of a ranch that raises bulls for rodeos. The weather here is windy, sunny, and cool, our views are beautiful plus this park has WiFi, couldn’t ask for much more.

 Scary exit from our campground, yes we did make it through in one piece

 Crossing the Columbia River

 That's Mt Rainier way way off in a distance

July 7th and 8th

We had an uneventful drive to Cass Lake today. Very hot and humid, that is until we got within 20miles of Duluth, when the weather turned cool and foggy. Good old Duluth you can always count on a variety when weather is concerned.

We have camped many times over the past twenty years here at Cass Lake, always an enjoyable time. We had some fire wood that was left over from our last trip that I wanted to burn and the person before us in the site left a bunch so we had a camp fire late into the evening.

Storm warnings were posted for the evening but it turned out to be a peaceful. We left early enough to get to the Forest Services Office in Cass Lake at 8:00am to get another America The Beautiful Pass, it seems I left mine at home. This pass gets us into all National Parks for free as well as 1/2 off the price of camping. It's also good at National Forests and Monuments.

We crossed into North Dakota and enjoyed a very relaxing day. North Dakota is a beautiful state and highway 2, for the most part, was a very good four lane with little road construction.We stopped at 5:00 and we are camped in the town of Stanley at their city park

We are starting to see a lot of activity involving the oil fields here and it will get much worse tomorrow as we pass through Williston

                                                                Cass Lake campsite

ND has many clover fields, the smells were terrific

Stanley City Park

 

 Downtown Stanley with threatening skies

On the road again....

Summer trip 2013 has begun. Our only commitment on this trip is that we are attending our nieces wedding in Oregon on the 20^th of this month. So our trip, will once again, take us west. We decided to avoid freeways as much as we can so we decided to travel highway 2 which I believe runs entirely across the northern United States. We will pick up highway 2 just north of Cloquet and west of Duluth.

We got a leisurely start today around 10:00. After getting the RV from the storage lot, finished loading it and a quick stop at the Holiday Sation to top off the tank we were on the road at 11:00. We weren’t very energetic today and only traveled to Grand Casino RV Park in Hinckley. First day 100 miles and tomorrow won’t be much better as we are only planning on going to our favorite park in Cass Lake. We will have to pick up the pace up after that or we’ll miss the wedding. Ha!

Last night on the road

Our last night on the road was spent at Lakeside Casino and RV Park in Osceola Iowa. This is a convenient stop for us as it makes for a relaxing final leg home. We pulled in about 5:00pm and drove the one way loop around the campground looking for a spot we liked. There weren’t many options as the place was just about full but we did spot a nice site on the end of an aisle. Unfortunately we missed the correct turn so we had to go all the way out to circle around and enter the loop again. In the meantime four other RV’s were driving in and got ahead of us, now were worried about getting any spot at all. We did manage one of the last spots.

These pictures are from last April 2 when the weather was much nicer than this year. It was 87 degrees there.

Heading Home - Driving Slowly

We left sunny, warm and beautiful Arizona Tuesday morning for our long trek home. We didn’t travel that far because we haven’t been in any hurry to return to who knows what kind of weather will be waiting for us. We stopped for the evening at another one; I think our tenth, of New Mexico’s state parks. This one, Bluewater Lake, is about 50 miles west of Albuquerque. It is a beautiful park along a seven mile long lake and sits high in the mountains, and that was the problem. I think our elevation was 7,000 to 7500 feet and it got cold, very cold last night. Our thermometer read 21 this morning, that’s the coldest we have had the entire trip other than the zero reading the day we left.   Needless to say we hurried getting things ready in the morning and promptly left.

Tonight we have located yet another state park, Ute Lake, which sits on a 13 mile long lake which has some of the best walleye fishing in New Mexico. The park is not as pretty as the others we have stayed in but it is right along our path home. Sorry no pictures from Ute State Park  

 It was so different from the desert terrain we have been used to

 It was good to see green and trees as well

 We were one of only four campers there for the evening

 All thought we didn't see any the area was covered with Elk evidence