Little Bighorn Battlefield

We are staying at the 7th Ranch RV Camp just a few miles from the Little Bighorn Battlefield. We can see the hills where the battles took place from our motorhome. The battlefield is located in the Crow Indian reservation. Except for the National Cemetery, visitor center and Indian and Cavalry Memorials, the land is like it was when Custer and his troops rode to their demise. We plan on staying here until next Wednesday before moving on to check out Devils Tower. http://www.nps.gov/archive/libi/home.htm

Butte, MT

We visited Butte, MT last Sunday. It was once know as the "Richest hill on earth". Gold was discovered in the area in 1864...then copper in 1872 and finally silver in 1875. The gold and silver didn't last but the mountain was rich in copper. The underground below Butte is miles and miles of tunnels of copper mines. Underground mining was finally stopped when the last mine closed in 1981. The pictures show the Berkeley Pit...an open pit mine started in the mid 1950's, and a picture of Butte showing the many headframes that dot the sky line on the left two thirds of the picture and the Berkeley Pit in the right one third of the sky line. The Berkeley Pit is very interesting. It is 1700 ft deep and 3 miles around. When they stopped operation in the early 80's the pumps stopped also that removed the water and the pit has been filling up with water for almost 30 yrs. Notice the color of the water...you would NOT want to swim in this water. It would be like swimming in battery acid. http://www.buttecvb.com/History.html

Montana State Capital

On 8/19/08 we visited Helena, MT and took the trolley tour. We saw the state capital, downtown and many very old homes. Helena was founded after gold was found in the area...then later,silver. http://helenacvb.visitmt.com/history.html This is a very interesting town to visit. It is funny that the state capital of Helena has fewer than 40,000 people living there. The entire state has less than 1 million people.

Old Montana Prison

We visited the old Montana prison today. It was established in 1871. The sandstone wall that surrounds the prison was built in 1893 by convict labor. The red brick cell house in the back of the picture was built in 1912...again using convict labor. This prison was used until 1979 when the prison was moved to a new site four miles west of town. Along side the prison is the Montana Auto Museum that we also toured. Over 130 autos from the early 1900's into the mid 1960's. When we finished the tours, we treated ourselves to ice cream before heading out back of the prison to find another geocache..."Prison Break". Busy morning...life is good!

Deer Lodge Rodeo

Last night we attended our 3rd rodeo of the summer at the Tri-County fair in Deer Lodge, MT. Real cowboys having a lot of fun! This cowboy riding the bare back bucking bronco was thrown a few seconds after this picture was taken. I think next week we will make a trip to Helena, MT...the state capital to check out that area. Life is good!

Grant-Kohrs Ranch

One of the places to see here in the area is the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, in Deer Lodge, MT, which is a National Historic Site. The ranch was settled in 1859 by Johnny Grant and then sold to Conrad Kohrs and his half-brother John Bielenberg in 1866. Conrad Kohrs was known as the Cattle King of Montana and at one time this ranch included 30,000 acres of the surrounding area. This is a very interesting ranch to visit. You can tour the very large ranch house, bunk houses, barns, etc, that have the original furnishings in them. Conrad Kohrs died in 1920 and his grandson took over the ranch and ran it until the property was opened as a National Historic Site in 1977. The picture was taken of the view from the back of the ranch house. The chuck wagon serves beans and coffee for the park visitors. This is still a working ranch. They have about 150 head of cattle, a couple dozen chickens and several horses. The ranch hands still work on the ranch to move the cattle, bale the hay and whatever needs to be done. This is a fun place to visit.

Back in Montana

A week ago we traveled back into Montana. We are staying at Bernie & Sharon's Riverfront RV Park in Garrison, MT. Check out our view! Garrison is about 9 miles west of Deer Lodge....and 50 miles west of Butte, MT. This is beautiful big sky country! We were going to stay a week and visit with friends from North Ranch, Chuck and Kathy Van Winkle, but it is so nice here we decided to stay another week.

Home for a week on Whidbey Island

Here we are sitting in the driveway of our friends Bill and Pat Lineberger. We knew them when we lived in California. They weather has been cool and foggy in the morning, but very little rain. It finally rained a little the day before we left and was suppose to rain more today. We headed east on I-90 yesterday and stayed in Moses Lake, WA for a couple of nights. We will move on tomorrow and be in Deer Lodge, MT in a couple of days to visit with more of our SKP friends. Life is good!

Deception Pass

Deception Pass, the north side of Whidbey Island, WA

SKP Ch 5 Rally

We had a great time visiting the Escapee's Ch 5 rally at the ELK's in Bremerton, WA. We ate a lot and played games, like ladder golf that Ed is playing in this picture. The weather was great...just cool, like it usually is on the west coast. The rally was from 7/28-7/31. After the rally was over we took the motorhome over to Whidbey Island, on the ferry out of Port Townsend, WA. That was a trip. We had to make a reservation for the motorhome since they will only take 1 big rig on the ferry along with all the cars on each trip. Whidbey Island is just northwest of Seattle in the middle of Puget Sound. I wanted to get a picture of the RV on the ferry but just as we were getting on the ferry it started to rain and I was not going to get the camera wet to take that picture.