Butte, Montana to Spokane, Washington....May 28th

Bill let me sleep until 7:15 this morning, and then it was rise and shine and put the coffee on! After breakfast and showers, did our morning packing up, putting away, and emptying tanks and we’re on our way once again. Yikes! Just passed the town of Anaconda; wonder why it was named that. The mountains march down each side of the highway this morning and I can see the stream next to the road sparkle in the sunshine. Cows have had their calves and they’re warming themselves. The sun is warm even at 50 degrees. The road rolls out before us as we work our way to Seattle. You forget how large and majestic this country of ours is until you start driving across it. The next stop is the Adventure Cycling Association in Missoula, Montana about 84 miles away at this point. Saw my first bald eagle; he flew right over the truck. Starting to see stands of Aspen trees too, makes me want to break out in a John Denver song. LOL!  We got to talk to our son in the Air Force today. It’s his golden birthday. He’s stationed overseas and we miss him. For the last couple of days we’ve seen flocks of sheep in the fields. The black and white ones remind me of Shaun the Sheep. A truck stop came into view just in time to get some gasoline and there were a couple of Montana Highway Patrol cars on the side of the road. They’re both in bulletproof vests and lit up when Bill went over and thanked them. One of the troopers gave us his card and told us to contact him when we come back through. Adventure Cycling in Missoula was closed and a good part of the downtown was craft fair, so we slowly drove through and back out again. 27 years ago, we made a stop in Superior to have some lunch and came to the exit today. We made a quick stop at the same Lutheran church and got a couple of photos.

The town was tucked in amongst the trees at the foot of the mountains. We reminisced about being there with our children so long ago.

We’ve been traveling through the mountains for most of the day. The mountainsides are covered with tall, narrow pines that come right down to the edge of the highway. Beautiful and green. Another blast from the past came into view…the Silver Dollar Bar!

It sure has changed in 27 years. The bar now has over 68,000 silver dollars! We picked up a couple of small gifts for grandchildren and continued on our way. We stopped at a rest area in the middle of the mountains to make up some lunch in our little beach house on wheels. Bill cooked up some Italian sausages while I typed up some of this journal for the blog. We walked around after lunch to stretch our legs and saw quite a few marmots. 

They live right at the rest area and came right up to us expecting food. We each had one sniffing our toes and were both hoping they wouldn’t try to take a bite!

Since it was right along the way, we stopped at the Sunshine Mine Disaster memorial to take a couple of pictures.

This was also one of the places we stopped 27 years ago. So many men lost. We walked around a bit and fed a begging chipmunk then headed for Spokane. The first campground we stopped at wanted $65 for the night. Bill and I looked at each other and said, “Let’s keep driving”. The second campground was full so we decided to boon dock at the truck stop. I tried out their $5 internet, but it didn’t work so looks like I will be catching up with the blog tomorrow. Thank-you for continued prayer for us, we are both doing well.