September 17 - Kathy

My sister, Kathy, came to Mountain View for a two-day visit and we crammed in as much of the MV experience in those two days as we could: Hanging out in the office first thing in the morning, shows at the Folk Center, and lunch at JoJo's with the gang.  We enjoyed it and hope she visits again next year!

September 8 - Updated map

Here is our updated map.  All we added this year was Kentucky.

September 1-2: Iola, KS to Mountain View, AR

We arrived in Iola, KS to visit Valerie, Jason and Shep in the middle of the afternoon on 9/1.  I must have been too tired by then to even think of taking photos because I never took even one.  :-(  We had a short but good visit and it would have been nice to stay longer, but we had already postponed our arrival date in Mountain View once and didn't want to do that again.  Plus were anxious to get off the road after a long summer of moving around so much.  In the past six months we have traveled 11,070 miles and spent $2,276 on fuel.  Cost per mile was 21 cents and average MPG was 14.10.  I know this because I have an iPod App that keeps track of such things.   :-)

We arrived in Mountain View on September 2, and spent the first couple of days recovering from five long days on the road and reorganizing and cleaning the rig after six months of moving around quite a lot.  But we are settled in, friends have been arriving, more friends are on the way, and we are having so much fun playing music and hanging out with these people who are so much fun to be with.   Galen and I are scheduled to play music at church on Sunday.  We've been hanging out at the Folk Center for free this year since Galen is considered an employee.  We've gone with friends to JoJo's for grilled catfish, other friends to Joy's Cafe,  and will soon be going to Tommy's with the gang for pizza.  Got my dulcimer restrung and had the frets dressed.  So many simple pleasures and I wake up each morning happy to be "home" again.

August 29 - Missoula to Billings

On the road again, this time from Missoula to Billings where we visited Fran, Doug, and Bia.  They made us a wonderful dinner and let us spend the night parked in their driveway.  We saw the Galen, MT sign and the strange formation below and smelled the smoke of a forest fire on the way to Billings.  This was the first of five long days on the road to Mountain View, AR.

August 26 - Missoula Carousel

Our friend, Hoozie, from Butte, gave us a book about Montana which is how we found out about the Missoula Carousel.  I retyped the sign which told the heartwarming story about how the Carousel came to be.

There is no canned music at this Carousel.  A real man plays a real organ while people ride the Carousel and the dragons watch over them from above.

This playground is like nothing we've ever seen before and it is difficult to believe it was built in just nine days.  Not surprising was how many kids were enjoying this magical place. 

August 26 - Missoula

Jim and Mary's was home while we were in Missoula.  We didn't really expect the RV park to be busy this late in August but were glad we had reservations because it was full and they were turning people away.

The sites were pretty large and shady and the park is away from town so it was quiet except for a train that came through now and then at the top of a steep bluff at the back of the park.  No train whistle though so we barely noticed it.

There were flowers everywhere in the park.  The park had its own greenhouse and grew their own flowers - something we'd never run across before.  All those flowers and trees sure made this a lovely place to stay.

August 23 - Dillon, MT

This is Grace UMC in Dillon where we attended church and so enjoyed meeting the wonderful folks there.  Karen, the pastor, made cherry pies from cherries picked from the tree in their yard and shared them with all of us during the coffee hour following the service.  We just heard that her husband was pretty badly hurt in a fall and are keeping him in our prayers.

Dillon to Missoula - The road started out looking like this.

Got to looking like this after a while...

...and eventually turned into this.  We were glad to be going down these 20 mph curves instead of up them!