GREAT FALLS, MT.

The past week has been fun and an adventure itself.

Had a great time with the Haynies in St. Louis, but boy was it hot. Nice place to park the rv and the casino was awesome. I also left there with extra money in my pocket. That was nice for a change. It rained really hard during the night and we left around 7:30 on our way to Council Bluffs, Iowa via Kansas City. Uneventful trip. Landscape was rolling but nothing bad.

Stayed in the parking lot at Ameristar casino. Had dinner in the casino and played for a few minutes. I won $90 and was so excited but later thought I lost my ticket. However, my sweet husband found it in my secret compartment I had forgotten about. Still up in the money dept. Those penny machines have really been fun. Off early to head to Rapid City, SD. A long, long day --over 500 miles.

Our trip to Rapid City, while long and tiring, was really nice. Drizzling rain on leaving Council Bluffs, but turned really pretty by the time we hit Sioux Falls and turned west.

The plains are incredible. I wasn't bored at all. You can see forever . There was a lot of familiar sightings that we remembered from our trip in 1985. Saw Wall's drugstore signs all the way across the state. We didn't pull in there as we had seen it before and had a lot of miles to cover. Our campground is the Lazy J in Rapid City. Very friendly host and nice site. We found it to be very conveniently located as well.

After arriving and setting up, we met out neighbors, Bob and Audrey from California. We really enjoyed meeting them and having happy hour every afternoon. They had lots of stories. We thought they were a lot older than us, but found out they are about our age. Audrey plays tennis regularly and in tournaments. Bob is a retired logger and tax assessor in a little northern California town of Red Bluff. We had chicken casserole for dinner and hit the sack. So tired. Will spend 2 full days in Rapid City.

Our first day, we did Mt. Rushmore. Even though we had seen it before, it was still impressive. They did renovations in 1989 on the visitor center, gift shop and information center. It really was impressive. After that we took the wildlife loop in Custer State Park. It was beautiful. Lots of one lane, low tunnels and winding roads at first and then just rolling meadows everywhere. We were so lucky to see buffalo, pronghorns, prairie dogs and burros. The burros were so cute. They stood in the middle of the road and people were feeding them bread and pancakes. We saw one car where the burros were sticking their head thru the windows on both sides. We ate a buffet lunch at the Game lodge and had buffalo stew. VERY GOOD!

After leaving the park, we drove over to the Crazy Horse Monument, which is owned by a private family that has taken on finishing carving Crazy Horse on his horse into the side of a mountain--similar to Mt. Rushmore, that their father had started in 1948. They are still working on it. This sculptor is MUCH larger than Mt. Rushmore. You can put all four presidents heads into Crazy Horse's head. They also had one of the largest Indian museums in the US. Very nice. Then back to the RV camp, where we grilled out and had a restful evening.

The next morning, we were off to visit the town of Deadwood. This was an old mining camp where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed. It is an old town, but other than the saloon where he was shot and the cemetery where he and Calamity Jane are buried, there is nothing there but casinos and gift shops. The casinos were all just storefront types and we didn't linger in any of them. We did have a really good lunch at the Gold Rush casino. I bought a book about Pioneer women and a souvenir. Back to the RV for a nice afternoon.

At the RV park, a couple of RV's parked in front of us that we had been passing back and forth and stopping with at the same rest areas. One had a Shelby County tag on it. Last year, in North Sydney, NS, we met a couple from Pelham who had signed up for this trip and so I decided to just embarass myself and ask them if they were headed to Alaska. I couldn't believe it when they said yes. We found out that Dan and Janice Spigler from Pelham and Allen and Norma Spigler (they are brothers) from Cape Giradeau, MO were the ones we had met in Nova Scotia. Can you believe all those miles, campgrounds, etc. and we ended up in the same one in Rapid City. They were also leaving out the next day, but were going to Deadwood on the way to Montana.

The next morning, we pulled out. Denny spoke to Allen and found out after Deadwood, he and Dan were taking different routes towards Billings. Allen was taking the route 212 that we took, while Dan was staying on the I90. More rolling plains all the way and we went thru the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Passing thru the Cheyenne and Crow reservations, we saw about 50 Indians on horseback. They had 2 flags representing their tribes and the US flag. Pick-up trucks and lots of Indian spectators were on the road watching them. We don't know what the occasion was. As luck would have it, we were watching The Battle of Little Bighorn-the Untold Story on the history channel. Found out the battle was fought on June 25th, about 133 years ago. What a coincidence. Got gas in Billings, but decided to go on to Big Timber for the night as it was early. Half way there, we started seeing the Rockies off in the distance with snow on the mountain tops.

We arrived at Big Timber and sat outside our RV and just relaxed. Had no Sat. tv because of the huge trees and really bad cable. It didn't matter, we were tired and excited about what the next day would bring.

Left around 9:30 headed to Great Falls on a back road . About 50 miles up the road, out engine ran hot. Not a good place as there was no where to pull over. We were forced to stop in the middle of the road. Fortunately, traffic was very sparse and we were still in the plains, so we were able to see from a distance. Denny put some water in the radiator and we took off again. We saw a herd of buffalo. Fortunately, they were on the other side of a fence :-) Made it to Lazy J in Great Falls to fill our tank for the start of our trip on Tuesday. Then, when we got ready to leave Lazy J, the ignition switch was loose and we like to have never got the motor started. But it did and we made it to the RV park and our rendezvous site.

The majority of our group is already here. Our friends from Al. haven't made it yet. We met the couple next to us and I have already forgotten their names. Thank goodness we will all have on name tags.

Just finished cleaning the inside of the RV and Denny is tightening the ignition switch. He seems to have fixed it. WHEW!

Pray that we have no more troubles with the car or RV. It can sure take the fun out of a day. We have been fortunate that so far, nothing too serious has happened, although the engine running hot was a scare. Denny had checked the water level in SD, but we have really been climbing and it has been unbelievably hot!

I haven't worked on my pictures yet, but that is on my agenda before we leave.

I hope this made sense-trying to go back and catch up is hard.