Missoula, Montana

Hey everyone!  Wow did we have an interesting day, and I was worried that I wouldn't have anything to tell you.  Well I'll start at the beginning.  So we stayed at Wal-Mart last night.  I woke about 8:00am.  Strange thing is these street cleaners find their way over to where your camper is in the parking lot, and feel the need to start cleaning.  Coincidence?  I don't know.  It happened the morning before in the other Wal-mart parking lot, only that was at 7am.  I have a hunch that they're trying to wake up those vacationers minding their own business in their campers.  I think they're jealous!  Anyway, we went in the store for a few things.  When we came out we met the couple in the camper next to us.  Actually Gus met them the night before while I was updating the blog.  They were really cool people.  Their names are Gil and Willa, and they have a dog named Monty.  They've been traveling all around the US this past year.  They're headed back to their home town in Washington.  Then they're going to pack up their things and drive to their new home in southern Utah.  They love it there.  The family in the next camper also spoke highly of it as well.  We'll have to put it on our list, and hopefully catch up to them.  So we drove a few hours, passing mountains, after mountains, after mountains.  Guess what?  More mountains.  the view is amazing!  They don't call Montana "Big Sky Country" for no reason.  Then we came upon this pretty dark, and rather large cloud.  The wind was blowing unbelievably strong.  Gus was having a difficult time driving in it.  It was pushing us a lot. Then we started hearing a noise of something flapping and smacking against the camper.  I looked out my mirror and didn't see anything at first.  Then I saw something flapping at the top of the camper, like on the roof or something.  I told Gus to pull over.  We both get out to discover that the awning had unlocked itself from the wind, unraveled a couple times and was flapping like a sail.  To make things worse a section of it ripped. So Gus got up on top of the camper trying to wind up the awning and reconnect it to the camper.  The wind was really whipping around, and Gus said he was worried it would push him off the roof! Meanwhile traffic was flying by like the wind, and Gus was using all his might to fight against the wind to fix the awning enough so we could keep moving, and the his finger got pinched in the awning lock! He said it hurt like hell, and he had to get his finger unjammed so he could lock the awning back.  He got a pretty bad gash.  We started driving again, and about a minute or two later, it started hailing !  The hail was about the size of a nickel, and it was literally smacking onto the windows!  I thought it was going to make a crack in the window.  That lasted about 1-2 minutes long and then stopped, and was just rain for a few minutes.  We pulled off the road to make sure Jack (our jeep) was OK.  He was and we kept going.  We just looked at each other in amazement at what we just went through.  We caught our breath, and then suddenly the sky was just as beautiful as ever, deep blue, and big cotton-ball like clouds.  Yeah, so we drove a few more hours till we got to our second Yogi Bear Jellystone Park in Missoula, Montana.  Very nice place.  We check in and parked at our site.  Gus went up on the roof to look at the awning and then he was yelling down for me to quick get the camera!  He saw a black bear cub running from some one's campsite across the street from us!  I saw it when it was running up the hill behind our site and into the tall grasses.  That was so cool to see!  I made dinner and then we went up to the pavilion where they were serving ice cream.  They had huckleberry ice cream!  That was soooo good.  Apparently huckleberries only grow wild in Idaho, Washington, and Montana.  They will not grow in a greenhouse.  We had a chance to talk to some of the other campers, all really nice people.  The woman serving the ice cream said the bear had come from the opposite direction that it had run to, and it had gone into someone's house, and then proceeded through the campground.  She also said they've never seen a bear here before this early in the season.  Well we retired to the camper, and tonight we get to watch a movie!  The whole movie to be exact because we're hooked up to electric!  Last night we tried watching a movie and the computer battery died before we saw the end.  Tomorrow's agenda: relax!  Hey I already know what your thinking, that we're already on vacation and relaxing.  Reality is we've driven more in the past eighteen days then we did relax!   Truth is we're in much need for some rest and relaxation!