A Fond Farewell to Memorable Montana

We left Montana on September 24th.  It was quite a summer filled with shingles, smoke, and sweat.  We didn't see the sites as we had planned.  Gary got shingles fairly soon after we arrived, and then that was followed by the forest fires that surrounded us on all sides--the worst being the eastern Washington fire.  And then the sweat was because this was a tough summer, but we learned a few things that we will remember for our next assignment (if we decide to continue working our summers):

1. Never an assignment near a National Park again.  Way too many people populate the area in the prime summer months.  From June 15 to August 15 our 70+ site park was filled to overflowing and we were turning away guests.  With only one person in the office, chaos reigned.  The phones were ringing, guests were arriving for registration, and drive-ins were standing by waiting their turn to register.  Like I said, way too busy.
2. Never an assignment with a new owner.  New ownership means the place is in transition which, at this park, contributed to the chaos of the high activity level compounded by the fact that they had just put in a new, unfinished computerized system which no one really knew how to work and so they decided (initially) to run both the old, archaic, ridiculous manual system along with the new computer system ... NOT!!!  Seriously, I lost it.
3. Never an assignment where the ownership is not on site the whole summer.  I'll just leave this one at that.

Honestly, if it weren't for our wonderful Workamping friends we would have left, but it's the friendships we formed that summer that made Montana memorable.  So, on our last night we celebrated with an appetizer potluck with fabulous homemade Mojitos (courtesy of Heidi).

Mike with the hiking stick that Colette made for him.

 Joe, doing the grillin' honors.

 Heidi marveling at Sadie's desire to find out what was going on underneath the deck.

 Colette and Joe fighting over the grillin' responsibilities.

 Heidi and Gary.

 Mike and Judy -- cheers!

It was sad to say "goodbye" to these dear friends who we will greatly miss, but we know our paths will cross sometime in the future.



We stopped by the side of the road to change drivers and to give Sadie a potty break.  Here are a couple of photos from our journey as we traveled into Idaho.

 

 

 Sadie, contemplating the universe and how she fits into the overall pictures of things.

 Crossing over the border ... goodbye Montana!



Our first stop on our journey to Nevada was in Couer d'Alene, Idaho.  Initially, we thought we would stay two nights, but the weather wasn't all that great and we just weren't "feeling" it.  We did, however, stay at an awesome campground right on the Spokane River which dumps into Lake Coeur d'Alene. 

 

 



We took off for our next stop and headed into Washington.  And there we chose the city of Kennewick ... and that I'll cover in my next blog.

Proverbs 17:17a

A friend loves at all times ...