Great Falls MT - 2023

 Hello,

It's the end of May and I must say it hasn't been a good month for people.  I know of at least 4 people that have passed away.  Two from cancer and two from aging out.  My brother was one of those that had cancer.  Then my daughter-in-law got in an accident with her motorcycle.  She was banged up a little with a few days stay at Aurora South Hospital.  Some jackass turned in front of her at an intersection, then jumped out and ran away.  Don't know if he got caught or not.  Alright, enough with the Debbie downer stuff, let's get on with the happy Jack stuff.  

360 degree view of Overton BLM

Well, we booked out of Benson on our way to Great Falls Montana to meet up with our caravan from Adventure Caravans. We are going on the Canadian Rockies and Alaska Tour. On our way, we stopped at Quartzsite AZ, Overton NV, and Rowley's Red barn for overnight stops. The first two were on BLM land while the third was a harvest host. We stop at Rowley's because they have great tasting ice cream and who doesn't scream for ice cream?

From there we booked it to the Yellowstone Holiday RV Park just Northwest of West Yellowstone.  We camp hosted here last year and wanted to stop and say "hey!" so "hey!" We also wanted to get a burger (and fried cheese curds) at TR Burgers in West Yellowstone.  I don't know what it is, but in my opinion, they are the best burgers by far than any other ones I have had.  By far I say!  If you're in that area, stop and have one.  You won't regret it.  Just remember they open up at 4 pm.

After a short couple of days we headed to Great Falls to meet up with the caravan.  We stayed at the Great Falls RV Park for a total of 3 nights (1 for us, 2 with the caravan).  It's not a bad park; there is a lot of RVs here that looks like they stay all winter long.  In fact one RV had his external tanks wrapped and insulated. 

When we start out we will have a total of 11 rigs with another 5 joining us at Dawson Creek BC.   On our first day, we had orientation in the morning and pictures in the afternoon.  The wagon master and tail gunner did a physical check of the rigs looking for anything bad.  We were good... At least for now.  They also put yellow stickers on the front and back of the RV and back window of the truck.  Each RV has a number assigned, our is number 8.  When we travel, we will be using radios to communicate with each other. The night before each travel day, we have a meeting about the next day. 

Since we had the rest of the day off, we went to check out a dam and falls that were together.  I never saw that before and this town has 3 or more of them on the Missouri River.  Here are the pictures for that.  The next day we checked out the Lewis and Clark Discovery Center.  That was pretty good too.  Some of the things I learned was they had an air rifle back in the day.  I was told after about 1000 pumps the rifle could shoot like 40 bullets before it needed to be pumped back up again.  

We watched an intro video about Lewis and Clark.  While we were watching it, they mentioned the falls being like 80 feet or so tall.  Well, that got me thinking.  Yup, thinking.  When did the imperial measurement system take affect? When did the metric system take affect?.  Well, the metric system took affect in the late 1700's and the imperial system took place in the late 1800's.  So, I said to myself,  why is everything measured in feet and inches if it wasn't around for another 80 years?  Come to find out they were using the English measurement system, which wasn't much different than it is now.  The biggest thing I noticed was a ton was 2240 pounds back then and now it's 2000 pounds.   Hmm, who knew.  Here are the pictures for that.

 After that, we filled up the truck ready for the travels to Cardston AB.  We'll see how the border crossing goes. 

See ya'll there.