Saturday, July 2, through Sunday, July 9, 2011: Bozeman and Missoula:
The 151-mile trip to Bozeman was easy and quick (I-90 all the way).


We arrived at the Bozeman KOA in early afternoon, and were assigned to a nice site. We had decided to stay at the KOA for only one day and move to another local park for the remaining three days of our time in Bozeman. The decision turned out to be very prescient. The KOA was loaded with families (read: noisy children).


We left early on Sunday morning and arrived at the Bear Canyon RV Park (14 miles away) to find a lovely, quiet park with terrific views of the surrounding hillsides.
Before we left the KOA, we noticed (I don't know why it took so long) that when the bedroom slideout moved out on Saturday's arrival the bed did not go with it all the way. The bed assembly had torn loose from the outside wall. On arriving at Bear Canyon, I hit the local Ace Hardware for parts and spent the next two hours reattaching the bed to the wall and beefing up the substructure. I hope it holds better.

Monday was Independence Day, of course, and I put out both a flag and an appropriate banner.
I now have two flagpoles, since Becky gave me a portable one on my birthday to add to the one I have permanently attached to the ladder on the rear of our trailer. After a nice breakfast at a very popular, traditional cafe ("The Western Cafe"),
we headed to Bridger Bowl, a small, local (16 miles away) ski area catering to local folks, including students at the Montana State University ("Go Bobcats") campus located here. The ski resort was quiet, of course, since it's summer, but the scenery was lovely.
We spent the rest of the 4th quietly, cooking hamburgers and drinking beer (at least I did) and eating potato chips. I also started reading a book ("Innocent" by Scott Turow, a sequel to his "Presumed Innocent" from 20 years ago) I bought two weeks ago---and almost finished it in one continuous sitting. It's very lively reading. On Tuesday, I finished it.

Bozeman has 1/3 the population of Billings, and is charming. The old parts of downtown are very well preserved and the new parts have been nicely integrated architecturally.

The trip of 220 miles to Missoula on Wednesday was uneventful (again, I-90 all the way). We are staying at Jim & Mary's RV Park,

a nice place with, though, owners who are very picky about what one puts on the grass. (Our special step so Daisy can climb into the trailer without help is prohibited because it encroaches one foot onto the grass.) My immediate project on arrival was tracking down splash guards for the rear wheels of the truck. (I've noticed that the lower front of our trailer is quite pock-marked from flying gravel---something I never noticed on our old trailer because it was white with white primer and the new one is black with white primer.)
The first GMC dealer I called had what I needed and I installed the guards with only a few minor mishaps. I hope they help. Installing the splash guards was about the only thing of any significance I did during our three days in Missoula.