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Joan made a new friend in Billings County North Dakota.  She always follows whatever rules are imposed on her and tries to be a good citizen.  However there are a couple of places where she sometimes goes astray.  Like many of us she will set her cruise control at 5MPH over the speed limit.  This usually works fine until the speed limit unexpectedly drops by 20MPH, and you don’t notice the sign.  In that case, all of a sudden you are going 25MPH over the speed limit.  When this happened to her, the new friend in the Billings County Sheriff’s Department explained how she should make a mandatory “contribution” to the well being of the citizenry of Billings County.  At first I was irritated by this, but as I thought about it I realized that it was a good opportunity for me to tease her about being an outlaw and a criminal—which I did relentlessly until she threatened me with battery (and even a big flashlight!).

As we left North Dakota and Joan’s new friend, we traveled I-94 West.  I’m not sure if it was actually in western North Dakota or eastern Montana, but soon we were passing through a town called Home On The Range.  Seriously!!  I was driving at the time (5MPH UNDER the speed limit) and as I looked around there was not a cloud in the sky.  And while it’s true that we were not in the town very long, in our time there I did not hear anyone mutter a discouraging word.  From I-94 we headed north to US Highway 2.  Route 2 is the northernmost federal highway in the USA.  It goes clear across Montana just a few miles below the Canadian border and its true that in Montana the sky really is bigger than other places.  Montana is aptly named the Big Sky state.

Route 2 took us to Glacier National Park in the northwest corner of Montana.  This was our second trip to Glacier, but this time we spent four days exploring it thoroughly.  At least as thoroughly as we could at this time of year.  Because of its high elevation and northern location some sections do not open until later in June.  But the snow capped mountains are beautiful right now.  We have been to about 100 national parks and monuments in our travels over the years.  Joan calls Glacier her favorite for natural beauty.  I am still partial to Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, but Glacier is right up there in my book too.  While exploring yesterday in the car we saw, and got a couple of nice pictures of, a bear.  It was brown, but not exceptionally large so we’re not sure if it was a grizzly or not.  And in one of the parking lots there were three mountain goats.  We had our Border Collie, Daisy, with us and she was all set to jump out and start herding them.  The other wild life that it is common to see both inside and outside of the park are wild horses.  They are everywhere, as are what we in West Virginia refer to as road apples.

The WildaBeast has a king size Sleep Number bed.  A Sleep Number bed is actually just a fancy air mattress.  It has a control for each side that causes air to be pumped into the mattress if you want it to be firmer.  And it releases air for a softer feel.  When we bought the motorhome the guy who did the walk through with us explained that if we drove the motorhome to higher elevations we needed to let some air out of the mattress or it could be damaged because the surrounding air pressure would drop and it could over-inflate.  We bought Wilda in Florida at sea level.  In the Dakotas we were camping at about 3,000 feet and in Glacier at about 4,800 feet.  Joan has been diligent about letting the air out of the mattress as we moved.  Now since I am always thinking of blog entries, I have thought several times about what a good story I could tell about our bed exploding right behind us as we drove through one of the high mountain passes in the Rockies.  But I guess it’s not to be.

I must have backed off of the teasing about the speeding ticket in time because we are still together.  And we will celebrate anniversary number 44 today, June 4, with a dinner somewhere in the park admiring the vistas.  

Tomorrow, its on to Canada with a stop planned at a duty free store at the border to feed another of our nasty habits.  What we’re after is what the Canadians called “forty ouncers” when I worked up there in the 70’s.  Now they’ve gone all metric and I’m not exactly fluent in that system, but I bet I will be soon, EH?

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