Week ending Nov 3, 2016 Magrath to Fillmore

Sunrise in Magrath

On Tuesday, we packed up and headed south to Coutts.  The border crossing went pretty quickly.  The drive through the Missouri Breaks between Great Falls and Helena is very beautiful.  We keep saying we should spend some time in this area whenever we drive through, but it is a bit cool in early November, and again when we return in early April.  We saw some deer, coyote, and Joan saw a herd of antelopes.   By 2 pm, we arrived at Lincoln Rd RV park in Helena.  We didn't bother unhooking the trailer, as we plan on heading further south.  We were planning on staying in Idaho Falls again, but the forecast is for -5C the next morning, so we will carry on about another hour south to Fort Hall Casino, near Pocatello.

Wednesday morning, we got up early, packed up,  and headed to Walmart to refill the fridge and freezer.    Between Whitehall and Dillon, we couldn't believe how many sheep there were in the fields.   We even saw a few cranes.  This is the first time we have headed south through Montana with the trailer, so we stopped at a bunch of historic markers that we haven't stopped at here because they were on the wrong side of the road when we were heading north pulling the trailer.  We didn't realize that 'history'  was about 'tertiary mammals' that existed in this area between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the beginning of the ice age.   Other signs described the Lewis and Clark trip up the Jefferson River, looking for the Shoshone tribe to buy horses to cross the Rockies.  They expected to meet them at Beaverhead Rock, but did find them further south.   There was also a beautiful bronze of a couple of cranes.

Beaverhead Rock

We stopped for diesel at Safeway in Dillon, and talked to the attendant, who figured about 90% of Canadian customers couldn't use their credit cards because of the zip code.  I said I would try it anyway, using the  first 3 digits of our postal code followed by 00.  It worked just fine. South of Dillon we saw many antelopes in several herds. We parked at Fort Hall Casino's RV park.  A few other RV's pulled in shortly after us, including at least 3 that were at Lincoln Rd in Helena last night.   This reminds us of our trip to Dawson City in the Yukon when we saw the same group of people at each park.  One of our neighbours told us that he was heading down to Las Vegas from Twin Falls through Ely.  We have heard other people recommend this route, but will have to leave it for another time, since we want to return to Fillmore this trip.

On Thursday, we got up fairly early again. It was a bit below freezing, so things were a bit stiff.  We got our thermometer station that monitors the temperature inside the utilities in the trailer so we could see if the wind chill from traveling was cooling off the trailer too much.  We managed to get over Malad Summit just north of Utah, without it getting too cold.    We stopped at Red Robin in Provo for a Bonzai and a blackened chicken burger, before carrying on to Fillmore.    We are staying here at Wagons West for a week to check out some things in the area that we read about when we stayed here in the spring.