Missoula MT to La Junta CO

 After a year and a half in one place, our longest stay since our workamping years, we are on the road again, heading east and south from Missoula MT to La Junta CO, 1,000 miles. This is super exciting for us! We wondered if our rig and our BigTruk would remember how to roll. They did! This scene is somewhere between Missoula and Bozeman.

 Mr. Keith and I were anxious to stay at the Bozeman KOA, where we worked in 2013, and to see our former managers there. The park has been expanded and improved, which was fun for us to see.

 Here's Robert, enjoying some coffee with us and catching up with our families' news. The best part of our RVing lifestyle is the people we meet and have met and stayed in touch with. We may not ever see some of them again, but some we do, and it's always a pleasure.

 Somewhere on the road to Hardin MT.

 The Hardin KOA is a small, but pleasant park out in the middle of a farming area. We enjoyed our stay here. At this time of year, autumn, there are not many RVers staying. We thought about visiting the Monument to Custer's Last Stand, but have seen it several times, so we reluctantly passed it up this trip.

 I love this "fence" at the Hardin KOA. There were old bicycles circling the entire perimeter of the park, a unique and humorous idea for a fence. South of Hardin we passed through some very beautiful country, at least till we reached Buffalo WY and exited I-90 for I-25. Unfortunately, I couldn't snap pictures while traveling down the highway behind the 5th wheel.

After Buffalo the scenery changed to dry, mostly flat and treeless, not so pretty. Douglas WY is a nice little town known for the famous "Jackalope". Their town center features this cute statue. We stayed at the Douglas KOA, a fairly large, very well kept park.

 We were excited about visiting the Denver East/Strasburg KOA where we worked for two winters. After battling some pretty tough traffic heading south towards Denver, we got off on a toll freeway skirting the metropolis, then onto I-70 going east. It was almost like home, getting to Strasburg, especially when we found we'd been assigned Space #68, the very spot we occupied both winters, a fact unknown to the gal who put us there. For dinner we ordered chicken wings, which we had cooked numerous times, along with pizza, at the KOA when we were employed here. Yum! The next morning we had a joyous reunion with our former boss Tracy, breakfast and a wonderful visit at her house. We were sad to leave, but we were ready for the final leg of our 1000 mile journey.

The last leg of our journey was the shortest, and also the hardest, south from Limon on Hwy 71. The road was bumpy and things inside the RV spilled all over! This was a desolate road, but we came out on Hwy 50 and on to La Junta, our winter abode. Here we are at the KOA, in our spot for the next several months. We toured the town, population about 7,000, and found it to be neat, clean, and very attractive. We will love it here!

I Meant To Do It!

 Yes, I meant to write a blog post every day of our trip from Cheyenne to Wenatchee, but I didn't quite make it. I did post about Casper WY and about Custer's Last Stand, but I hardly even took any photos after that. We spent 6 days out and traveled just over 1200 miles. After Hardin MT our next stop was in Bozeman MT. We were particularly excited about this stay because we have a job here at the KOA for next summer. We met the managers and paid special attention to the facilities and the beauty of this park. We will love it here! The downtown is beautiful and picturesque and the surrounding mountains are awesome!

 One of our favorite parks is the KOA at Missoula MT. We worked here for 2 summers in 2009-2010. The park itself is big and beautiful, but an added perk to being here is that we still know and stay in touch with some of the folks who work here. It was a joy to see them and to go out to dinner at Applebee's with some of them.

Our 5th night out was spent at the Spokane KOA. I failed to take a photo of our rig in this very nice park. We met an interesting couple here when they brought their little boy over to see our kitties outside in their kitty tent. It turns out the man is a writer and a pastor, and they are living simply in their RV while he writes another book. We bought his latest published book and are enjoying it very much. It is "Keys to Your Future" by Dan Hayne.

 Sometimes when we come across Washington we stay a night in Ephrata so we can visit my sister and bro-in-law. This time we left our rig in the church parking lot next door to their apartment building and spent a couple of hours with them, including lunch. My sister is a health food aficionado. She put together this gorgeous salad with flowers and other more unusual greens from her garden. Yum! We really did enjoy this meal!

 Home at last! After we set up we grabbed a granddaughter and took her out to our park for a few hours. Here is Natalie by the Wenatchee River. We had not seen the kids and grandkids for 14 months, so they were sights for sore eyes.

 Love!

We've stayed in many, many RV parks in our 8 years as workampers, but we can truthfully say the Wenatchee River County Park is the most beautiful. Of course, it always helps that we seem to be here in September or October when we get to see the gorgeous poplars, locusts and other trees in full autumn glory, with the Wenatchee River flowing serenely by. The layout of this park is unique, too. The RV spaces are in a circle going out like spokes in a wheel. It makes each space seem farther away from the next one while still getting maximum use of the available ground. We love it here!

Well, we have a few more days to visit and share our love with our family and friends. We're also getting some much needed RV repairs, then when that's completed we're off again. We'll be crossing the Cascade Mountains over Snoqualmie Pass and journeying on to Lost Lake RV Resort near Olympia WA for our winter work. I'll post again soon!

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

We traveled 228 miles on Monday between Casper WY and Hardin MT. I like the colorful red roads in Wyoming.

We found an adequate RV park in Hardin, with the intention of touring the site of Custer's Last Stand. Though we've been there at least a couple of times in past years, we wanted to go again. We were pleased to discover that they now have a memorial to the Indians, Lakota and Cheyenne, who died in this battle, as well as the Cavalry soldiers. This is one headstone, dedicated to a Cheyenne Indian named Limber Bones.

The memorial is a a large circle of stones with artwork, dedications and names on plaques inside the ring. We loved this metal sculpture looking out over the plains. One quote from Crazy Horse, a Lakota, said, 

"We did not ask you white men to come here. The Great Spirit gave us this country as a home. You had yours...We did not interfere with you...We do not want your civilization!"

Another new display, a tombstone for the faithful horses who were killed and buried at the site of the battle. So appropriate!

This is the memorial itself, with the names of all the 7th Cavalry soldiers who died here. A nearby plaque reads:

 "The remains of about 220 soldiers, scouts, and civilians are buried around the base of this memorial. The white marble headstones scattered over the battlefield denote where the slain troopers were found and originally buried. In 1881 they were reinterred in a single grave on this site. The officers' remains were removed in 1877 to various cemeteries throughout the country. General Custer was buried at West Point.

Gravestones are scattered throughout the area. This is where Custer fought, renamed Last Stand Hill, and it's just below the memorial in the photo above. Some of the other gravestones are at the site of the Reno-Benteen skirmishes, 5 miles away, with many others along the way. We watched a video inside the Visitor Center which showed the military strategies and what actually happened.

The area where all these battles took place is very beautiful at this time of year. The sun was right on the horizon to the west so I was surprised that some of my photos turned out fairly well. We are on the ridge looking down on the Little Bighorn River where all the Indian tribes were camped. We couldn't see the river from here because all the trees in the photo are along the banks of the winding river, hiding it from view from this angle. At the time of the Battle, June 25-26, 1876, the hills and prairie were green.

Here we are looking in the opposite direction, to the east. More gravesites are seen here, and all along the battle route. We are saddened by the bloodshed, but more saddened about how the Native Americans were treated by the "white man" who thought he had a right to take possession of the lands. Enough said!

 

After our tour, we ate some delicious Indian Fry Bread at the Custer Battlefield Trading Post, an excellent restaurant and store run by the Indians, probably the Crow, since the whole historical site is on the Crow Reservation. Our waiter told us he was part Crow, Cheyenne, Scottish and French! We ate at this restaurant about 12 years ago, and found it was just as wonderful now as then.