After our nice breakfast with Big Al, Rachelle, Dave and Connie we headed out of West Yellowstone on June 22nd and headed back up to I-90. After 183 miles we ended up at Old West RV Park in Reed Point, MT with a campsite just in front of the post office:
It was a nice place on Passport America, we could see stopping again.
June 23rd we continued our journey. We fueled up in Billings, Montana and then headed through the Crow Reservation. There were some interesting sights here:
But our view was more like this:
That fuzziness was bug splatters, here is a close up:
The bug guts got too numerous to take photos. After 224 miles we ended up at Indian Campground in Buffalo, Wyoming in this nice large campsite.
While setting up someone said Bill's name and it was Rich Emond, turns out Rich and Diane were here with their friends Gustav and Michelle. We ended up running off to the store to get some nice stuff to grill and joined them all for dinner.
In the photo are Diane Emond, standing, Rich Emond in blue, Gustav intent on eating, and Michelle talking to Diane.
We had a small thunderstorm during dinner but we survived. However it caused the cottonwood trees to really put out the cotton. We were all cleaning out cotton for days. It was good to see the Emonds since we hadn't matched up since Indiana in October 2006. They were all going to the Escapade.
We were having occasional check engine alerts on the motorhome and didn't like it.
June 24th we left Buffalo and headed to the CAM-PLEX in Gillette, Wyoming for the Escapade. We were on staff, our title being "Event Services Team Leader" where we had ten teams reporting to us. Here is our campsite after a short drive of 75 miles:
Angie and Greg were to our passenger side with Cathy and Budd next to them and then Gabbie and Janice after them. We were among friends.
Our aircard was being flakey so we put up the dish. We didn't get the aircard fixed until after the Escapade. We were here before most of the attendees.
The Escapade was a very successful rally/convention with over 1,000 RVs.
We were very busy during the Escapade and didn't get about any chance to take photos. We saw many of our friends, mostly just a few minutes here and there, but it was great to see them. We did make it to a couple of the Boomers BOF socials. We even made it out to dinner with people, including a nice dinner with the keynote speaker.
Things were winding down July 3rd. After closing ceremonies was the Boomers BOF Pizza party. Here are a bunch of photos of party, catching people by surprise.
After the Pizza Party was the "Memories and Melodies" party where our coffee crew supplied the coffee. It was a much quieter affair and we spent much of the time visiting people.
Four of our six coffee crew:
July 4th was both Independence Day and the celebration of Escapees 30th birthday. There was a pancake feed early in town, then a parade, then a hot dog feed. Escapees float won second place in the parade. In the afternoon the 30th Birthday celebration was at the CAM-PLEX, here are some photos from it.
After we had our cupcake and ice cream we went back to the motorhome and Bill got up on the roof and took some photos of all the RVs.
July 4th (Independence Day) Fireworks
Odyssey at the Escapade. Sean and Louise's bus conversion is so unique people were using it as a landmark.
Dennis and Carol's cat. We had a nice BBQ with them one evening.
The potluck the last day we stayed. We and many others stayed two extra days to not travel on a holiday weekend.
We enjoyed Las Margaritas and Boondockers for dinner in town.
Bill talked to a guy at the local Cummins who said they were very busy. He suggested a couple things to do to hopefully fix the check engine alerts but it would take driving the motorhome a ways to know if they worked.
We took off on July 7th, planning to go to Reed Point, Montana again. But close to Billings we had check engine alerts again. While fueling up at Flying J in Billings we called Cummins Rocky Mountain in Billings and asked if we could stop and have it checked out. Here we are at Cummins with the rear towards the bay so they could hook up the computer.
Turned out the problem was a partially clogged fuel filter. Cost us $288. We spent the night but needed to be gone by 8AM. We had gone 242 miles. We took advantage of being in Billings and had dinner at Carinos and shopped at Costco. It was in the 80s so we ran the generator for the air conditioning. The location might have been "free" but it cost us $288 plus some diesel for the generator.
July 8th we had plenty of time to drive back to Jim and Mary's RV Park in Missoula, MT. It was 355 miles. We stayed here June 14th and 15th on the way east. This time we were in the trees.
Before we stopped at the campground we topped off our propane at Bretz RV and Marine, who sell it for $0.99/gallon in summer as good will and advertising. We did buy something from their store the next day.
We did not do much in Missoula. The only meal we had out was lunch at Cracker Barrel since Diane was looking for breakfast.
Our last night here, July 9th, there was a free concert by LeGrande Harvey and "The Professor" at the campground with huckleberry ice cream afterwards. We enjoyed it. It was our fifth year anniversary as ful-timers.
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