Eight days on the road. An update.

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Sorry I didn't get to the update until now. These past 8 days have been a mixture of good, bad and ugly. We had some coach engine issues that caused us to make a scheduled stop this first day just 100 miles north of the house. They didn't fix it and we headed west anyway to pick up a part ordered for me to replace in Fargo, ND.

We stopped at a Upper Peninsula casino the first night. We stopped in Saginaw, Mn the second night. We crossed the Mississippi River on Sunday morning. It was about the size of the Muskegon river in Muskegon where we crossed it. Very neat.

Before we got to Fargo I determined that the engine part wasn't the problem. We had to wait in Fargo until Wednesday AM for an appointment at Freightliner for further diagnosis. They worked on the coach until the middle of the afternoon and said that I had to take it to the Allison transmission dealer. I drove it there for them to look at on Thursday AM. Before noon they said it was an Anti-lock Breaking system issue that Freightliner had to fix. So at noon I am back to Freightliner. They had it fixed and We were finally on the road west again about 6PM Thursday.

Ruth Ann and Mom ran into our nephew Aaron Evans' and his family at the Subway sandwich shop beside the hotel we were in Tuesday and Wednesday night. They just happened to stop at that exit to eat and Ruth Ann and her Mom were in eating a late lunch. This was great. I got to see them to. They were on their way back from Glacier and Yellowstone NPs.

We drove on west Thursday evening until about 10PM. We drove 408 miles Friday to Havre, MT. We finished our drive into the West Glacier area today arriving in the campground about 3:30PM. We saw many antelope in the fields along the way. We are now back on our original schedule having just missed seeing Roosevelt NP since we spent these days in Fargo.

We got set up this afternoon and afterward we took our first drive into the west entrance of Glacier National Park. We entered about 6PM. We drove a 80 mile circle but it got dark for the last hour or so.

We say some game. Ruth Ann had said that she sure hope she saw an eagle this trip. The first game we saw was a beautiful bald eagle flying past. I got a long distance picture of it only. Next we saw two mule deer bucks. I told the ladies that the first person to see a bear gets $100 from me and then can take all of us out to dinner. We drove on and Ruth Ann spotted something black running in the road about 60 yards in front of us. I got a very short look at it. Not sure what it was. We drove on and were hurrying down this narrow winding dirt road when we rounded a corner and there running in front of us was a very large black bear. We both said BEAR about the same time with me barely beating Ruth Ann. We raced after it and I tried to get a picture but it dove into the underbrush before the shutter went off.

Soon after we say a doe mule deer grazing along side the road. This drive was nice with lots of water, river and streams and lakes but less than 10% of the time could we see more than 20 feet into the sides of the road it was so thick.

We finally got back to the coach and had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for supper about 11pm local time.

We are all well. Mom Mitchell is doing fine. The coach issues are fixed. My internet satelite is working here where we will stay through this Thursday AM when we head further west to the Oregon coast for a week there.

Bye for now. Ted

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Photos

Mississippi River bridge
Jacobson, MN