6/22/09 - Kettle Falls, WA
We got up and noticed that our battery was at only 10 volts. It was 12.6 volts when we went to bed last night. The voltage has been fluctuating wildly. We drove to the Wal-Mart in Colville to get a new battery but it did not fit into the extremely tight Casita battery compartment. We found a NAPA auto parts store and bought a battery there that fit. Instead of going on to Canada we went to a trailer park we stayed at last year in Kettle Falls, Washington. We wanted to put a good charge on the new battery. We didn’t take any pictures today.
6/23/09 - Dry Gulch Provincial Park, BC
This morning when we unhooked the new battery was only at 12.2 volts -- it should have been 12.6 volts. I suspect that the trailer’s converter is not charging the battery. We headed for Canada anyway because there is no place to get our converter checked out for hundreds of miles. We knew that Banff National Park had full hookups. We went by Columbia Lake which is the source of the Columbia River which empties into the Pcific Ocean at Astoria, Oregon. We made it as far as Dry Gulch Provincial Park in British Columbia just before the entrance to Kootenay National Park. We ran the generator until we went to bed and then turned off the refrigerator to keep the battery from being depleted.
6/24/09 - Banff National Park, AB
We drove through the Kootenay National Park on the way to Banff. We stopped a couple of times for short hikes to Numa Falls and Paint Pots. We set up the trailer in the Tunnel Mountain Trailer Campground in Banff – we got full hookups. We went to the visitors center, walked around town some, and had beers at a local pub. Then we went on a five mile hike on the Sundance Box Canyon Trail. Along the way we walked by some elk, or maybe they were caribou – we don’t know the difference.
6/25/09 - Banff National Park, AB
We got up at 5:30 and drove the Icefields Parkway through Banff and Jasper National Parks. This drive is one of the most spectacular in North America. We stopped off at Lake Louise and Morraine Lake. The weather was cloudy and rainy most of the time, naturally. We took hundreds of pictures of cloudy mountains. We even got snowed on at the Athabasca Glacier. The Columbia Icefields are immense – they are the largest accumulation of ice south of the Arctic Circle. It took us over 9 hours to get to Jasper, but only 4 hours to get back to Banff. It was a long day.
6/26/09 - Browning, MT
6/27/09 - Helena, MT
We left Browning and drove to Helena, Montana. There we had beers at Louis & Clark Brewing and Blackfoot Brewing. We tried to find a camping spot at the Devil’s Elbow BLM campground, but it was full so we decided to just stay in the Helena Wal-Mart parking lot. On the way there we got caught in a monumental traffic jam because of an air show featuring the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. As we were stalled we got some pretty good views of the aerial acrobatics.
6/28/09 - Wisdom, MT
We left Helena and drove to Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site near Deer Lodge, Montana. It was founded in 1862 and was one of Montana’s earliest and largest ranches. It is still a working ranch and has a 23 room ranch house complete with all of its original furnishings. We went on a tour of the house and went in some of the other historic structures on the ranch. Then we left and drove to the Big Hole National Battlefield near Wisdom, Montana. This was the site of one of the most violent battles between the Nez Perce Indians and U.S. soldiers on August 9 – 10, 1877. Then we camped at the nearby Beaverhead National Forest May Creek Campground. We have been gone five weeks today. This week we drove 1,522 miles. Our total mileage so far is 6,039 miles.
6/29/09 - Reed Point, MT
6/30/09 - Lovell, WY
We drove to the south entrance of Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area near Lovell, Wyoming. We drove through the park and stopped at the canyon overlook. There are approximately 120 mustang horses in the park – we saw two of them. We set up camp on the south end of the park at Horsehoe Bend Campground.
7/1/09 - Miles City, MT
We got up early and drove to Cody, Wyoming to see the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. This is a huge museum which could take several days to see thoroughly. The museum’s permanent collection includes separate areas devoted to Buffalo Bill Cody (my dad saw him and his Wild West Show when he was a kid), the plains Indians, western art (lots of Russells and Remingtons), natural history, and the largest collection of firearms in the world. The guest exhibit was a group of paintings devoted to Lewis and Clark’s Expedition. Buffalo Bill’s boyhood home has been moved to the museum’s grounds from LeClaire, Iowa. We then left and drove to Pompey’s Pillar National Monument near Billings, Montana. William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) carved his name in this rock in 1806. We then drove on to Miles City, Montana and checked into an RV park so we could update the blog. We haven’t had internet access for about a week.
7/2/09 - Theodore Roosevelt NP, ND
We left Miles City, Montana headed for Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. On the way we stopped at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site. This was a fort and trading post on the Missouri River where the Indians traded their pelts for manufactured goods in the early 1800’s. The fort was torn down and the materials used to enlarge a nearby fort at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. The National Park Service rebuilt the fort based on paintings and historical documents. Then we went to the Missouri – Yellowstone Confluence State Historic Site. After that we drove to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There was a herd of buffalo milling around the visitor center at the front gate. We set up the trailer in the Juniper Campground. There was another Casita there. We talked to its owners, Roger and Carla from upstate New York. At 9 PM we went to a ranger talk at the amphitheater about Teddy Roosevelt and the boat thieves.
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