It’s unreal how much has happened in the 5 weeks since we
left Glacier National Park. First of
all, we want to say how glad we are to know that all of our friends, family,
and properties are all okay after the ravages of Hurricane Irma. However, after sighing in relief, we know
that there are so very many people that are still having to deal with
life-altering effects from Irma and our hearts and thoughts continue to go out
to them.
We headed east from Glacier across the top of Montana on US
2, which is the furthest north of the east-west highways before crossing into
Canada. The northeastern part of
Montana is a drastic contrast to the lush green landscape, scattered huge boulders,
and beautiful lakes that we drove through to get to Glacier. The northeast Montana landscape seemed to be
painted in a palette of grey, brown, and tan with rare spots of green. We drove through miles and miles of wheat
fields, past huge silos and grain elevators, under smoke-hazed, overcast, pale
grey skies. After a while, it actually
became a bit depressing!
US 2 passes through several Indian Reservations and
parallels railroad tracks. Most of the
towns and the campgrounds are next to these railroad tracks. Our first stop along the way was in Havre,
Montana (pronounced “have – her”), at the Evergreen Campground. Thankfully, this campground was a few miles
outside of the town and not next to the railroad. Oddly, it was in fact in the front yard of
the owner’s home! We were able to catch
up with laundry, WIFI, and news which we weren’t able to do in the past 2
weeks. Havre boasts about its
“underground city” tour and Jean was sad that we missed it. Later on, we heard from some fellow campers
that we hadn’t missed anything, so she was relieved. We were all hooked up and ready to pull away
toward our next stop when our truck would not start or even turn over... not
even a click! Luckily we had a set of 25 foot jumper cables
and were able to start the truck off of the trailer battery. Havre had a Walmart so it was a quick stop to
buy a new battery. Jerome install it
himself as Walmart employees can’t change a battery in the parking lot and we
weren’t about to unhook the truck from the trailer for something that Jerome
could do in 10 minutes!
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| model made from the mold of the T.Rex skeleton found at Fort Peck |
From Havre, we next camped at Downstream Campground, an Army
Corps of Engineers (ACE) campground, in Fort Peck, Montana. This was a really interesting place to
visit. The Fort Peck Dam was built as part of the New
Deal. It is the highest of six major
dams along the Missouri River, the largest hydraulically filled dam in the US,
and it created the 5th largest man-made lake in the US. On site is a great Interpretive Center with a
skeleton cast of “Peck’s Rex”, the Tyrannosaurus Rex discovered 20 miles
southeast of Fort Peck. The original
skeleton is now on loan to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History for
50 years. It is known there as the
“Wankle T.rex”, one of the most complete T.rex specimens ever discovered.
As we headed further east, we camped in the Stanley City
Campground, where we were the only people camping in their small city
park. The trains whizzed by–sometimes 2
passing in different directions at the same time- just maybe 50 yards away from
our campsite. We had of two of the worst Mexican burritos
ever here, but all in all, it was a nice little town.
Eight days and 3 campgrounds after leaving Glacier National
Park and the burning wildfires there, we finally were about to get out of the hazy-grey
skies and see clear blue again. Driving
into the Turtle River State Park in Arvilla, Montana was like driving into a
lush green oasis with a river running next to it. We stayed here over the Labor Day Weekend and again,
as on US 2 so far, we could not get any TV or radio stations. After 2 days of trouncing through the
underbrush to get Carly untangled, we were informed that it was poison
ivy! Lucky for Jean that we were
informed incorrectly or that she wasn’t allergic to that strain of poison
ivy. Even without radio stations to
listen to and all the “poison ivy”, we really enjoyed it here.
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| it was so nice to see colorful flowers in Pokegama |
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| and berries too! |
Traveling further east, we stayed in Pokegama (pronounce Po
– keg- a- ma) Dam Recreation Area, another ACE campground. It
seemed strange to us that we were in a town called Grand Rapids, looking out at
the Mississippi River, but we weren’t in Michigan or Mississippi….. we were in
Minnesota! We discovered that the Mississippi
River headwaters is here and that people can actually wade across it. This is
also Judy Garland’s hometown. We found
out about both of these interesting facts too late to enjoy wading across the
river or visit the Judy Garland Museum and her childhood home, but we really
enjoyed visiting the Art Center here and the town in general. The train tracks here at Pokegama were even
closer than in Stanley but luckily the trains here only passed through once a
day if at all.
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| the view of the Mississippi River from our front door.... and Carly of course |
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| our first glimpse of fall colors across the river |
Finally, finally, on September 8th, we crossed
into the Michigan Upper Peninsula. Here
we stayed in the Eddy Park Campground on Sunday Lake in Wakefield. That first night, while we were listening to
the wind and feeling it gently rock our trailer, we could only imagine what was
happening at the very same time at home with Hurricane Irma making
landfall. To our surprise, Helena and
Carl, who were in East Glacier when we were, then camped next to us in Havre,
and in Fort Peck, were now camping here too.
It’s so much fun to meet up again with people we have met in other
campgrounds. If you ever pass through
Wakefield, the pasties at Russell’s Bakery are delicious.
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| J |
Speaking of meeting up with others, while in Munising, we
were so very fortunate to be able to meet up with our dear, long-time friends
from Traverse City, Dick and Gaila Mallory.
They were on their way west on US 2 heading the way that we had just
come from.
We hadn’t planned on the
campgrounds in the upper peninsula being full on a Monday, especially after
Labor Day, and we ended up having to search a bit to find a campground here.
We were relieved to find Otter Lake
Campground, about 9 miles south of town.
It’s pretty, wooded, on a nice lake, and was a great place to sit around
a campfire catching up with Gaila and Dick.
As it turned out, Gaila and Dick’s friends,
Diane and Dean (also from Traverse City) were on their way home from Glacier
and joined us as well. What a fun evening we all had!
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| Dean & Diane, Gaila & Dick, and us |
The next day, they all headed out and we
stayed another day so that we could go into Munising and take the Pictured
Rocks boat tour.
The fall colors were
already popping and we had a wonderful time.
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| Jerome, the consummate photographer, at Wagner Falls |
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| kayakers enjoying the beautiful day.... too bad it wasn't us kayaking too |
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| incredible "natural" artwork made by minerals leaching out of the rocks |
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| arch rock |
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| colorful black and white cave |
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| pedestal rock with lone tree attached to nearby cliff by it's roots (notice on left) |
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| Grand Island East Channel lighthouse across the bay from Munising |
‘Now on to lower Michigan and Traverse City…. Jerome & Jean
