Friday October 16 2009 by Leland.

Glenn and I walked over to the airport to watch the runway construction project.  Your federal tax dollars at work.  They had quite a process.  There was a concrete batch plant just off the end of the runway and they trucks were timed perfectly.  As one truck finished unloading, another was backing down the runway into position and another was headed back and another was headed out etc etc.  Wow.

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Thursday October 15 2009 by Leland.

Glenn’s town is on a route that some very heavy equipment travels.  This big thing was headed to the coal mines in Gillette Wyoming.  Count the wheels!  Wow.

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Thursday October 15 2009 by Leland.

Any knowing Glenn would surely expect him to grow up to be a biker dude!  Sure enough, he now travels all of St.F on his Motor Cycle called Harley. 

“Get the kids and little old ladies off the streets!  Here He Comes again!”

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Thursday October 15 2009 by Leland.

Today we arrived at Glenn and Vickie’s in Kansas.  The weather is nice and we decided to set up in the street in front of their house.  We’ve done this before and we have also stayed at the city park just across the highway.  The only issue with staying at the house is the crown on the street.  Getting us level requires raising the curbside tires about 8 inches.  Before we used wood 2X6s but this gets scarey at this much height. 

Glenn said he had these car ramps we could use.  I had my doubts but we tried it.  We put two under the duals and one under the front tire on the curb side.  The back did just fine but the single ramp under the front tire just crushed as we drove up. 

It did manage to hold enough for us to stay up there.  Sorta a one time deal though.  Next time we figure out something more substantial I guess. 

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Wednesday October 14 2009 by Leland.

fter the ruts we stopped in at Fort Laramie.  This Fort has a very interesting History along the Oregon Trail.  It was a “center” supporting operations north and south of here, as far as up into the the Dakotas and the Black Hills.  The fort is not a National Historic Landmark and is complete with some camping sites and an interpretative center.

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Wednesday October 14 2009 by Leland.

We headed out across the winter prarie, going South we crossed the trail of earlier wanderers who were headed West.  The Oregon Trail crosses Wyoming down near Wheatland and out towards Fort Laramie.  We pulled over at a National Monument interpretative area.  

Imagine traveling across here in a wooden wagon with steel rimmed wheels pulled at an agonizing slow speed by a couple of smelly animals.  Crossing this area, they had to stay in the higher bluffs south of the river otherwise they would get stuck.  These ruts are only about 4 feet wide but almost 5 feet deep.  Jillions of wagons, one after the other year in and year out.  Wow.  Those were the days.

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Tuesday October 13 2009 by Leland.

The family photos are on the disc, the water is drained, the power is turned off.   The gate is closed.  What else??

It’s been in the low 20’s for a week.  It has snowed and melted.  NOW it is time to flee the North. 

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Monday October 12 2009 by Leland.

One of the most important things we do each time we spend time in Billings is to get photos of the grand kids.  You saw the grouping at Michael’s Birthday Party in an earlier post.  Well this week we stopped over to Stacey’s to get a bunch there.  I’ll put this batch in thumbnail and you can click on the ones you want to see a larger view.

This is the process.  Of course you don’t see the dozen or two photos where Aaron squinched his eyes or Brittany closed hers.  Of course then, there are the ones where grandma was frowning because of squinched or closed eyes but we did finally get the job done.

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Monday October 12 2009 by Leland.

It’s mid October and we’re still in Billings waiting on things from the VA.  In the meantime the weather gods aren’t waiting for anything.  As you saw in yesterday’s post, there is snow on the ground.  YIKES.

With temps dropping into the teens overnight we are sorta hunkering down as you can Cinnamon doing in this photo. 

We have a good enough system going that the Motor Home is surviving well.  We have 75 watt light bulbs in the critical water bays for heat and we have the furnace set so that warm cabin air is circulated throughout.  We have covered all windows with stretch film “storm window” plastic and we hang blankets over them to insulate us a little better.  You just gotta know that with walls only 2 inches thick these things aren’t polar climate rigs.

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Sunday October 11 2009 by Leland.

One afternoon, while I was out mounting the bicycle on the back of the motor home in preparation for heading south, Kitten started banging on the bedroom window and waving like crazy.  I tried to figure out what she was up to and finally after watching her swinging arms and jumping up and down, I went around to the door to ask what was going on.  She says  “I was trying to get you to look out behind you at the Fox.”  Boy, sure didn’t look like that to me but oh well.  I went and looked and there was nothing.  I told her to slow down on the sweets for a while, which she didn’t think funny at all.

The next day when we headed into town to go to Michael’s Birthday party, here was the Fox.  He was in the next field to our place and was hunting mice.  What a beautiful creature. 

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