After leaving Glacier we went back to Billings, Montana for a few days. When we left Glacier we have to drive through numerous smaller towns before we get back on one of the major highways. This time of the year many of the businesses decorate using the big round hay bales. One place had stacked two bales end to end and had converted it into a Minon, looks like they used spray paint to add on the clothes and it had one giant eyeball. We saw a monster truck that had the round hay bales as the tires. There was a very impressive looking bison where they had used what looked like black plastic to make curly fur around the face. We did not see any two the looked alike and we saw dozens of the hale bales in each of the small towns.
Billings is a good size town to just take a break in our travels and handle any maintenance and shopping that is needed. While picking up prescriptions at a CVS I talked with someone in the pharmacy and they commented on my cough. She said it could be part allergies (they had been having lots of customers with seasonal allergies) and part of it caused by being up at Glacier around the wild fires. We did occasionally smell a faint scent of smoke when in the area. I suspect my problem started as a cold when I got real wet when we were setting up at the RV park in Medora, North Dakota. I finally got over the sore throat, ear ache, bad chest congestion and runny nose. While back in Billings it was just a nagging cough and sinus pressure and that is finally going away.
We got stocked up on groceries, medicine, did a little cleaning in the RV and just relaxed. We also worked on getting future reservations made. We normally try to schedule RV parks about two months out but had got a little behind so needed to get caught up. We had booked most of November, December and the first half of January but had left a gap for the last half of October and first half of November. Had to make some adjustments in our originally planned route as we had trouble finding RV parks that were open and able to handle our size RV. We are flexible so just adjusted our directions.
Bruce did have someone come look at the generator in the RV. We have not had a reason to use it but Bruce likes to start it every month and let it run awhile to just make sure it is alright. It did not want to start and he had checked everything out and ran all the test programs but could not figure it out. He had arranged for a mobile RV repair service to meet us at the RV park. The guy came, he opened the front of the RV where the generator is located and pushed a button and it started. Of course he did have to hold the button down for awhile to get it started. His comment was that we were from Texas and our generator was not used to the cold weather. You needed to hold the button down for awhile to give it time to warm up. Sort of like when Bruce would start his diesel truck, it always had to warm a little before it would start. I got a good laugh, told Bruce that man probably went back to his office telling his buddies about those crazy people from Texas that can’t start their generator. I made Bruce test it using the button inside the RV before the man left. He has tested it a few times since then and it is working fine. While the man was here Bruce went ahead and asked him several other general maintenance questions since we had to may for the visit anyway. Our neighbors came over and wanted the man to come look at their RV when he finished with us as they were having some type of issue. He talked with them a few minutes then told them he had several other calls already scheduled and would have to come back the next day.
We went to a big Cabela’s that was close to the RV park to look for a few items and met a couple from Arizona. The lady had noticed the shirt Bruce was wearing and wanted one for her husband. We told them about the store in Houston where we bought the shirts and they let us know they were wanting to move to the Houston area as they were getting ready to retire. We probably talked for about 30 minutes.
Billings was nice change in the weather as it was very warm and clear. You could go outside without bundling up in several layers of clothes.
When we left Billings we took two days to drive down to Fort Collins, Colorado where we planned to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. Most of the first day of driving was still in Montana and then we got down into Wyoming. We have decided to give Montana the nickname of the dead skunk state. We never saw any live skunks but we saw numerous dead ones along the road. Wyoming we should name the Pronghorn state. Huge herds of Pronghorns all along the interstate. We spent one night in Douglas, Wyoming on the way. Douglas is the location where someone created the story of the Jackalope. They even have a giant metal Jackalope built on top of one of the plateaus near our RV park.
Close up of Jackalope
Jackalope in distance
Apparently the Jackalope was first created by two men in this area. They also had a metal horse and rider on another one of the plateaus.
Metal horse and rider in distance
The RV park was overrun with rabbits, I was afraid we would run over one while trying to get the RV over to our parking spot. As we were driving to Douglas we were talking about how windy it must be if you have a house up on one of the plateaus as there are no trees. It is just wide open spaces with snow fences in many of the areas. Well we discovered how windy it is after we go the motor coach set up at the RV park. A storm came through and the wind was horrible, you could really feel the movement. We had another RV on the side that the wind was coming from, hate to thing how bad it would have been without that RV blocking some of the wind.
We got to Fort Collins (north of Denver) driving in and out of the rain. Managed to get a break in the rain long enough to get set up. It rained all day Sunday and Monday, they had an early winter cold front come through the area and it was down in the 30’s. On the west side of Denver, back in the direction of the national park they had snow storms which the news said was the earliest they have ever had in this area. Tuesday the rain finally stopped but it stayed overcast and cold all day. We did not attempt to go out sight seeing in the national park and other areas. In checking road conditions Bruce discovered several of the roads going to the national park were closed and we would have to drive a long way out of the way to get back to the park. We hoped to go to the park this time of the year because the Elk are supposed to be very impressive in September and October. We will have to keep this on our list of places to go at another time. The snow was so bad on the west side of Denver that there was a power outage that caused them to shut down the Eisenhower tunnel that goes through the mountains. It caused the traffic to back up for hours as they had to route the people off the interstate and around an old route. They finally got it opened back up on Tuesday. According to the news the storm was unexpected and no one was prepared, there was a huge number of wrecks.