THE FINAL WEEK
April 29, 2012
After spending last night in a lovely little RV park located
right on the river in
Clarkston,
Washington, we drove about
45 miles to gather with some friends and relatives in
Orofino, Idaho.
We were only there for about 2 hours as we
had 1400 miles to drive in order to be in the Twin Cities by Tuesday night, May
1
st.
In a short time,
however, we were able to do a lot of “catching up”.
Of course, I made everyone “pose” for a group
shot before leaving.
They all suffered a
great deal over it, but I know they’ll be pleased to see their smiling faces at
the top of the page!
J
You won’t be surprised to hear that the subject of
Tillamook’s Udderly Chocolate Ice Cream came up. My cousin, Diane, informed me
that Udderly Chocolate was one of her favorite flavors!
Who knew?
I said, “You can buy that here???”
And she said, “Of course”!
“Where”, I demanded!!
I was told
that Tillamook was sold in all 3 grocery stores in town, but if I wanted
Udderly Chocolate, I needed to backtrack 1 mile before we headed east in order
to get it.
Guess what the first thing we
did was when we left town?
Naturally, we
went back the mile to get our ice cream!
They had 2 one half gallon containers in the freezer – I took both of
them.
It’s probably a good thing they
didn’t have more as I would have been tempted to get more than 2!
The drive from
Orofino,
Idaho to
Missoula,
Montana is one of the most
beautiful drives in our vast and beautiful country.
It first follows the Clearwater River and
than the
Lochsa River.
The entire drive along the Lochsa is located in the wilderness.
The river is wild and beautiful, and used for
kayaking and rafting.
In fact about 17
years ago my sister, brother in law, Tom, and I did a raft trip on that river.
Tom tried to fall out of the raft, but my
brother in law, Tony, grabbed him by the foot and pulled him back into the
raft!
We have very fond memories of that
trip, but don’t think we’ll be doing it again anytime soon!
My sister had reminded me of how much she loves
that drive right before we left Orofino.
So, Sonda, the picture below is just for you…
The highlight of our drive along the Lochsa was when we
stopped for lunch. We fixed a sandwich
& sat outside & watched the river go by as we ate our lunch. After lunch, there were Udderly Chocolate Ice
Cream Cones to enjoy!
Our goal today was to drive to Bozeman, MT. It was a long drive, but we really wanted to
be in the Twin Cities by Tuesday night.
So we decided to “bite the bullet” and do it.
This is the funny story for today.
We started out in the Pacific Time zone, and
when we got to
Missoula;
we entered the Mountain Time zone.
Upon
seeing the time change sign, we said, “Ok, let’s move our clocks back an hour.”
We proceeded to change the clock and our watches.
It was about 6:15pm when we commented on how
pretty the late afternoon light was over the mountains.
All of a sudden, I was having this BAD
feeling.
I looked at Tom and said, “I
think we moved our clocks the wrong way!”
We don’t always agree on everything, but we did agree on this!
And we weren’t just one hour off, because by
moving one hour the WRONG way, it made us 2 hours off!
It was really 8:15, not 6:15!
No wonder the light was so pretty!
So instead of getting into
Bozeman at 7:30, we got there at 9:30!
It’s always so fun to get to your campsite
after dark…
The good news is that we got
to have some Udderly Chocolate ice cream before going to bed!
April 30, 2012
Why is the train track often times very close to the
campground??
We were awakened at 4:00am
by a very loud train with a very loud whistle.
Since we were unable to go back to sleep, we decided at 4:30 to just get
up and get going!
We drove from
Bozeman to
Bismarck,
ND.
The day was fairly uneventful, accept for we
had more Udderly Chocolate ice cream and got lots of sleep that night!
May 1, 2012
Today we drove from
Bismarck
to
Apple Valley, MN.
We got to Michele’s house about 4:00pm – after resetting the clock in
the right direction!
We slept in her
driveway as the Lebanon Hills Campground doesn’t open until May 2
nd.
Of course, it was great fun to see the
Graves’ Family again!
May 2 & 3, 2012
This morning we hauled ourselves over to Lebanon Hills to
set everything up for one last time.
Lebanon Hills is the most amazing campground space right in the middle
of
Apple Valley.
If there is such a thing as a great “city”
camping experience, this is it!
Anyway,
we spent Wednesday & Thursday doing errands and playing with the twins.
May 4, 2012
We finally arrived at where we started from – HOME! Now it’s time to unload, unpack, do the
laundry, sort & read the mail (mostly junk), etc., etc.
Here are some Trip Stats we thought it would be fun to
share:
Number of
miles driven: 9, 115
Number of
days gone from home: 50
Number of
pictures taken: 3,262 (I need to get
busy and delete a bunch!)
Number of
windy days: All the driving days, for
sure!
Number of new
friends made: A bunch
Number of
friends/relatives visited: 17
Number of
rainy days: Too Many!
Number of
happy days: Most all of them! J
Total
number of states visited: 14
Amount of Udderly Chocolate
eaten: 1 ½ gal (1 ½ gal still in freezer
– will be gone soon!)
Thanks for joining us on our “great adventure”! I hope you enjoyed reading the blog as much
as I enjoyed creating it!
Melissa