Saturday, Sunday & Monday, June 29 & 30 & July 1, 2013 (White Sulphur Springs, MT)

Well we made it back from Oregon.  It seemed like a fast trip.  It took us two days to get to my mom's.  It was a long day driving the first day, around 9 hours but we gained an hour.  We spent the night in Kennewick.  It sure felt good to be stopped for the night.  The next day we got on the road by mid morning and luckily it was a much shorter drive today.  We got to my mom's sometime in the afternoon.  It was good to see her again.

Sunday we just kicked backed.  My mom and I ran into Salem to see my daughter Amber's new house.  Then Jessica and her fiance, Garry were coming to spend the night with us at my mom's.  It was good to get to visit with them and get to know Garry a little bit more.  Monday was the funeral for Lucille, so we got up early and got around to get to the funeral by 10:00 a.m.  It was a nice gathering.  It was good to see the kids and grandkids, though it was a very short visit.  We are looking forward to a much longer visit in August when we are in Washington for Jessica & Garry's wedding.  After the funeral we went into Salem and did some shopping at Costco.  Tuesday and Wednesday it rained and rained so we, rather Rich just got a few things done at my mom's.  Thursday we headed back for Montana and it was just a reverse of our trip out, except we made a fast pass through Bend.  We had to get our tires rotated, and visit our elderly friend Burla and Rich got his hair cut and then we were back on the road.  We again, spent the night in Kennewick at the same hotel, but apparently there was a big baseball tournament in the area and because most of the rooms were sold out, we had to pay quite a bit more for our room...yikes that was a bummer.  Because we had our short travel day on Thursday, and Friday was going to be our long day, plus we were going to lose an hour, we got a early start.  We stopped in Helena to get some perishable items from Costco and boy was it hot.  Whew, it felt good to get back in that air conditioned truck.  We got back to our 5er around 7:30 p.m. and everything was as it should be.   Here are a couple pics I took on our drive back.  These were both in Montana.

The picture doesn't do it justice, there were these fields of bright yellow plants - not sure what it was - but it was pretty

This is a "beaver slide" - they use them with horses to make the loose piles of hay in the fields.

Saturday we just spent recuperating from our long drive and didn't do much of anything.  Most of the day was spent reading in the shade.  It was pretty warm here, I think in the high 80's to maybe 90.  We did have a pretty sunset that we captured.

 Sunday, we spent a leisurely morning before we attended the local community church here in White Sulphur Springs, Mountainview Community Church.  The building is very old, it actually is the same building that we took a picture of and is in the Wednesday, June 19th post.  It was a cool little church, and the people were so friendly and made us feel so welcome.  

After we got home from church and had a bite to eat, we moved our 5er.  When we left for Oregon they had us move to a water/electric site and only charged us a storage fee instead of the normal campground fee.  It wasn't until Sunday that a 50 amp full hook up site was available.  With 50 amps we can run both our air conditioners and with this heat, that will be nice.  Other than getting set up in our new site and spending more time relaxing in the shade, that was pretty much our day.   

Monday, we woke up and got back into our morning routine - walk/jog before breakfast.  We had a quick breakfast and then headed off to the hot springs here in town.  They are located in one of the hotels and are open to the public.  When you drive into town, you can smell the sulphur from the springs, sometimes it is stronger than other times but it wasn't too bad today.  They have three pools, one very hot - around 105 degrees; one hot - around 102/103 degrees and then a cooler one - around 96 degrees.  We got to the hot springs around 9:00 and there were only a few people in the pools.  We were there around 2 1/2 hours and by the time we left, there were quite a few more people enjoying the water.  The Indians discovered and made use of the springs, many tribes including the Flathead, Blackfeet and Crow, came here to use these waters to heal their sick.  The valley and springs became neutral ground; a Valley of Peace.  It was permissable to kill your enemy on the other side of the mountains but not here.  The spring water chemistry has frequently been praised and often compared to Baden-Baden, the famous spa in Germany.  One thing we appreciated was that the pools are drained and cleaned every single night and then refilled with the natural hot mineral water.  No chemicals or chlorine is added.  Our skin felt really good after soaking for a couple of hours.

After lunch, it was laundry day, we have our own washer and dryer which is very convenient, so I was able to stay in our nice air conditioned 5er.  It was another warm one out there today.  After dinner, it had cooled off enough that we decided to take a bike ride around town.  I'll leave you with some pictures from our ride.  This is an interesting town, they have some very nice historic homes and then some very run down and old single wide mobile homes, sometimes right next to one another.  There definitely aren't any zoning laws here.  

Antique farm truck

Old rail cars from Northern Pacific

Historic home in process of remodel

Our favorit historic home - it's huge

Old antique fire truck

For our ODOT friends - check out the road surface - they are putting this thick layer of used, chunked up asphalt pieces down over the gravel on the side streets of town - it is very rough and uneven, but I'm sure it keeps the dust down. It looks like they grade the gravel road, water it good, and dump the used asphalt and then run a roller over it.  It sure is rough.......

This Victorian is for sale - $295,000 - it has some amazing detail on the exterior wood work