Teton Adventure-Day 7

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Today is Wedneday Aug. 6th

It's midnight.
Chuck is finally able to sleep.
I can see the tension leaving him. The air in the room feels clearer too. It's almost peaceful.

It's 2:30, and Chuck is sick again. He has been vomiting alot.
He almost passed out twice, but I saw him swaying, and caught him just in time and helped him back to the bed. It was pretty scarey. He's in terrible pain again at this point. I called for the nurse again, and they brought him some pain meds. All throughout this ordeal I have been having to remind Chuck to breathe. He is on oxygen, but the pain meds make him forget to breathe.

OOPS! It's 3:30a.m. and Chucky sprung a leak! He soaked everything, and still has to go.
The cold of the sprung leak woke him up. I called for the nurse, and nurse Lisa came to help him. She changed his bed, and got him extra towels so he could have a shower. I scrubbed him, and toweled him dry. He's so weak.

It's 5:30a.m., and Chucky is up needing to pee. He looks different - a lot more like normal. The grooves in his brow are gone, and his face isn't furrowed anymore. His breathing is normal again too.
I got him the urinal because he got grounded to the bed after the last episode of almost passing out.
He stood there going until the urinal was at max capacity. Dang! I didn't know a bladder could hold so much. Holy Cow!
I called the nurse and she came and took it.
Still no Walter, but she said she hadn't had to give him any pain meds for some time.
She just got off the phone with the doctor, and as soon as he comes in and checks him we may be able to resume our little journey.

Thank you God for healing my Chucky.

It's 6:15a.m.
Chucky is dozing while listening to country music videos. It's nice to have some good noise in here.

It's 7:00a.m. Chuck just got breakfast. He ate every bite of it like he was starved nearly to death.

It's 7:30a.m. August 6th, 2008, and Walter has just arrived. He was white, so that means Chuck didn't cheat after all. lol

Laugingly, Pat said, "Chuck got his rocks off in Dillon Montana so now we can finally get out of here."

Doc just came in and released Chuck, saying he is good to go as long as he takes it easy, and sees a doctor @ home within 1-2 weeks.
Chuck was up and dressed in no time, and wasn't giving anyone time to change their minds.
We thanked everyone for their compassion and care, said goodbye, and headed out of the hospital.

We decided to go just down the street and have breakfast at Sparky's Garage. It was awesome. It looked exactly like they described, and the service and food was great! It was really cool.

We were worried about Chuck pushing himself too hard too soon, so we suggested we stay another night here at the KOA.
Chuck said he was ready to go, so we went back to camp and tore down so we'd be on the road again.

We ripped down the road, and stopped around noon in Wisdom Montana for fuel and food.
We checked out the Trading Post. There were beautiful turquois necklaces, fishing gear, hunting items, clothes, shoes, and every kind of odd or end you could think of.
The most memorable was one Pat found. He hollared for us to come around the other side of the store and see the treasure he had come across. It was a "rear-wolf". Pat pronounced it a "rear-woof" which made it even funnier. It was a large deer butt, mounted on the wall with wolf eyes on either side of the tail, and wolf teeth by the bung hole. It was hilarious. The best part of all was watching Pat laugh over it, and try and figure out how to buy it and get it home. He's so funnny.

We left there without the "rear-woof", and headed over to the restaurant we had heard so much about. One of the guys Chuck knows told him about a 5lb. hamburger that Fetty's Restaurant serves. That's why we originally came to Wisdom Montana.
However, there is no 5lb. hamburger, the woman who runs the place was rude, the food was so-so, and the service was terrible.
We all decided never to recommend Fetty's to anyone EVER.

We headed out again, and stopped @ the Big Hole Battlefield. We touristed around awhile, then watched a very emotional video that made some of us cry. The history of it is something I think everyone who ever has the chance should see. It is humbling, and tragic, and so very sad. My spirit was moved to tears. If you ever get the chance, please go to Big Hole Battlefield. It's worth your time.
Pat hiked all over the Nez Perce battlefield while we went back out front and sat in the shade.
Chuck wasn't feeling too well, and I was getting over heated.

From there we took off again, and sometime down the road were just starting up a hill when I heard a strange noise. We were running about 75mph in staggered formation as usual. I knew something wasn't right, and the noise had been very soft. My bike felt a tiny bit different, but I wasn't sure why. I quickly checked my gauges, then looked up, and in my mirrors I saw something rolling down the road away from me. I was trying to make sense of what I was seeing when I realized it was my bags rolling down the hill behind me.
Corrie and Tammi were also behind me.
So was Pat.
All I could think was Oh my God, please nobody hit the bags and crash! I pulled to the side of the road, and Corrie passed me, and pulled to the side of the road in front of me. Pat had saw what was happening, and pulled over behind us.
I turned my bike around, and headed over to a wide spot on the other side of the road. It made me feel shaky that someone could have been killed because my bags had let loose and flown off my bike.
I could hardly think of what to do, so I started picking things up off the road. My tools were scattered everywhere, and one bag was lying in the ditch all blown out.
Corrie asked me if I was okay, and I told him yeah, but more importantly they were okay. I was afraid they were going to hit one of them. I could care less about the bags, I was just happy they were okay.
Then Corrie told me that he had to hit one of the bags, he didn't have a choice. He thought they might go down, but they didn't. It made me feel nauseous to know my bags would have caused it all. I hugged both Corrie and Tammi and told them I was so glad they were okay.

We checked out Corrie's bike, and a small area had been bent. It looked like it could be repaired easily. I was glad of that.
Then we checked out my bags, and found that the leather ties that laced the bags to one another had given out, and the laces that tethered them to the shocks were broken from the force of them giving away.
The force of Corrie hitting the one bag had blown the stitching out of most of it. Two of the straps were torn off, and there were holes and thrash marks in both of them from skidding on the pavement.

Chuck zip tied my bags back together, and strapped them on the trailer behind him. He started barking at everyone, and acting really grumpy. That's when we knew for sure he was pushing himself way too hard.

We all told him we were nick-naming him Grizzly because he was the only Grizzly we'd seen the whole time. lol

We decided to find a camp site soon, and settle down for the night so Chuck could rest.
We found a campground near the Montana/Idaho border called Indian Trees CG. There were grizzly warnings all over this campground too, so we'd take precautions as usual.
We set up camp in no time, and Corrie built a fire.
Chuck took a bunch of tylenol and ibuprofen, and laid down for awhile. It was evident he was in alot of pain again.

I filled the coffee pot with water for our freeze dried meals. We decided to make instant coffee tonight, as the campers next to us said there had been bear and cougar in the camp. There were deer and elk too. There was a bull elk hanging out kitty corner from our campsite, and Pat spooked a doe that came springing out of the brush through our camp. It was awesome.

Pat and Corrie went exploring a little, and came back awhile later and said watch out by the bathrooms because they had just had an encounter with a small rattlesnake at one of the restrooms just down the hill from us.

We all made sure to be extra aware, and then sat around the camp BSing, drinking coffe and mountain mochas, and eating freeze dried meals. Later in the evening Chuck emerged from the tent long enough to put a log on the fire, eat his meal, have some gatorade, take more pain killers then go back to bed. He was down for the night, and we were all worried about him.

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