Heading East

We are leaving Carbella tomorrow (Monday) morning, headed to Iowa. I would list the itinerary but it’s likely to change.

We found a company in Iowa (CDI) that repaints campers. We’ve been talking about doing this for quite a while. We’ve watched videos on how to do it ourselves and found where we could order decals to exactly replace what we have. It seems like one of those projects that would take a lot of elbow grease and time and yuck! Sally does not want to do it. The decal kit just by itself is almost $3K.

A woman we became friends with, Vivian, at the Malmstrom AFB campground went to a rally where this company CDI has flyers and reps. We’ve talked to the company a couple of times and decided this is the best way to get it done.

We will drop the camper off in Iowa Sept 5. It takes 3 weeks. While we wait we will stay at Ft. McCoy in Wisconsin. We can get a room with a microwave, etc for $75 a night. The paint job will be about $16 K. This is a substantial sum but remember this is our home and it’s looking a little shabby. We are very excited and looking forward to having this done.

We’ve loved being here outside Gardiner, Montana. We’ve seen some wildlife, mostly outside Yellowstone weirdly enough. One day we spent hours driving around in Yellowstone – the only wildlife we saw besides bison were dragonflies and butterflies.

Here’s one you won’t see often.

We heard from another camper there are bears, lots of them, in the area across the river. There are houses and ranches accessible only by a rough gravel road. It took about 40 minutes to drive up there. We brought snacks and water. People gathered, the area is well known to the locals. There was even a woman gathering info on how bears showed up, how many people showed up – I’m not kidding. Vic talked to her and found out she has a masters in grizzlies. The bears showed up all right. At least 7 of them including a Sow with two cubs. There is a non-native plant called caraway the bears love to eat so that’s the draw. Problem was they were so far out you needed binoculars and even then they were difficult to see. Even with our lens we couldn’t get a good shot. There’s a u-tube video showing 15 bears right in the field where we were.

Disregard the blank image that follows – just a glitch.