June 25 - Drive to Helena, Montana

We slept in a bit and still managed to have breakfast and start to hook up the trailer by about 9 o'clock, but then disaster struck. The jack on the trailer hitch stripped its gears just as we were trying to position the car's ball underneath it. So instead of getting our planned early start to get to Helena in plenty of time to find our next campsite, we spent the next three hours running around finding the correct size of jack (the first one the dealer gave us didn't fit) and buying the combination wrenches I needed to unbolt the old jack from the trailer frame. Home Depot had the wrenches, but I had to finally go to a "Big R" supply store for ranches and farms to get the jack for the hitch. They had all sizes of hitch jacks, I guess to fit various kinds of farm equipment towed by a tractor, and sure enough they had one to fit our travel trailer for only $23.00, which was noticeably cheaper than the RV dealer's price of $40.00. So if you ever need a hitch, jack, or ball while you are in Montana, you just might want to stop in and try out the assortment at a Big R store to see if they have what you need.

So we were finally on the road by a little after noon, following the Missouri River toward Helena, Montana, the state capital. As we drove south on Interstate 15 we rather suddenly came up to the narrow gap that was described by Lewis in 1805 as the "Gateway to the Mountains". This gap has high, rocky shoulders of the mountains on each side and was, to me at least, immediately recognizable as a really, really huge "gateway". I-15 diverged to the west of the Missouri for a while, so we had to climb over another small pass to get to Helena, but from the top of the pass the air was so clear that we could see the entire city spread out on the valley floor in front of us. It was an unexpectedly broad valley given the rocky gorges that we had driven thru for the past few miles, and the city was very prettily nestled down in it.

We found our campground a few miles north of the city without any problem and we signed up for the very last free site they had available, so our concern about not getting there too late on a Friday evening was, in retrospect, quite justified. We generally try to not shift campsites on Friday or Saturday if at all possible because the campgrounds fill up early on those days in the areas of the country we have explored. The rest of the afternoon was spent shopping as I needed some washers for the new jack installation plus some grease for the hitch ball, and Monika wanted to lay in a store of groceries. We found a Wal Mart Supercenter, and they had the $1 bread and cheap canned beans, chicken, turkey, chili, and so forth, but their cheapest milk was priced at $3 a gallon, which was somewhat disappointing.

But the big disappointment of the day was finding that the Helena Volksmarch had been cancelled when we went to sign up at Jorgensen's Restaurant in the center of the city. Nuts. Helena is not exactly on any of our normal routes and its a pretty far piece from Virginia, so getting back here next year to walk the state capital just might not be in the cards. The gentleman who sponsored the walk had medical issues and was moving up to Great Falls, so I couldn't really blame him even though it was doggone inconvenient for our plans. What this really demonstrated was how dependent all the Volksmarches are on local clubs or people who are willing to volunteer to develop and sponsor these walks. Unfortunately the ranks of people willing to put out the time and effort seems to be decreasing each year, so if any of you reading this decide you would like to do these walks, my strong advice would be to not put it off until you retire like I did. Do it now and see the USA in all its infinite variety before these walks disappear.

Somewhat downcast, we drove back to the trailer and spent the rest of the evening writing our photo-letters to friends and relatives. That cheered me up a bit. Thunderstorms that seemed to be brewing up north came rumbling down our way as we wrote, but the rains were always gentle and I imagine they were well received by all the farmers in the area. The level land that was farmed in the Helena valley seemed rather arid, and many fields had the irrigation machines already in use or waiting for use. We finished up the evening reading cowboy literature from Baxter Black. I was reading a set of his contributions to National Public Radio over the years called "Cactus Tracks & Cowboy Philosophy" and Monika was reading the quite humorous novel with the intriguing title of "Hey Cowboy, Wanna Get Lucky?" They were both enjoyable reading and a good way to wind down for bedtime.