Once we got back to the trailer, we called Koodo to get Joan's phone unlocked so we could get a USA prepaid plan to use on Joan's phone.
Sunday, the weather forecast was for snow starting on Tuesday, the day we had planned on heading to Milk River. We decided to leave Monday morning to get ahead of the weather, and spend an extra day in Milk River. We did a short walk around town, then watched the Nascar race.
On Monday morning, we checked the weather in Helena. It was good for Tuesday, but 1 to 3 in. of snow was expected for Wednesday. We got the trailer hooked up ready to leave. While we were finishing up, the town guys were already at the campground to turn off the water (we had run into one of them on our walk around town on Sunday and told him we were leaving Monday morning). Then we went over to the Centre Street Eatery for breakfast (with enough to take away for lunch). We stopped in Lethbridge for diesel on our way south. Once we got to Milk River about 12:30, we phoned our travel medical insurance people and found out that we could get our trip start date changed from Nov 1, to today, and since we also asked to move the return date 2 days earlier, it didn't cost us anything to change it. So, we headed for Helena. Around Great Falls we saw several herds of 20 to 30 antelopes. Through the Missouri Breaks, we also saw several large herds of deer, with one sharing a field with cattle. We arrived at Lincoln Road RV in Helena about 5:30. We didn't bother unhooking the truck. Then we got a 30 day plan for our t-mobile hotspot. Fortunately Joan has good problem solving skills after a long day, and was able to figure out that we could update our plan, by first actually turning on the hotspot device (not just connecting it to the computer to get it charged), which enabled us to connect to the internet on the t-mobile site, and then figuring out that the day pass option didn't just mean one day, but one, seven or 30 days.
Then we tried to add the 30 day ($45) roaming add-on to Koodo for voice and text in the USA. They no longer offer this plan. They have 'Easy Roam'. You add this option to your plan (at no charge), and then only pay $7/day for only the days the phone is used in the USA. Potentially much more expensive, but it is capped at $100 per month, so only a bit more than twice the cost of last year. However, if we are careful, and limit the number of days we use the phone in a month, it could be cheaper.
Tuesday, we got up early heading for Fort Hall Casino. We took a different route from Helena, taking highway 12 up the Missouri Valley to Three Forks, where the Jefferson, Madison and Gallitin Rivers join to form the Missouri. Near Townsend, we saw a moose crossing a field toward the river. At the junction of highway 12 and Interstate 90, we stopped at Wheat Montana Bakery and Deli. We picked up a whole wheat loaf. They have one of the widest selection of cinnamon buns we have seen. We opted for one apple flavored bun. It was large enough that we each had a quarter of it each for breakfast for the next two days.
We carried on to Dillon and stopped at Safeway for diesel and restocked the fridge with meat and vegetables. Then we stopped at Fort Hall Casino RV Park in Idaho. Again we didn't unhook.
On Wednesday morning, we headed off in the dark to beat a windstorm into Utah. When we got to Provo, we found out that they were just closing the Utah Lake State Park, so we stayed at Lakeside RV Park next door. Although this park has a lot of trees, we were able to get a satellite signal between them. The leaves are starting to fall here, so that helped.
Thursday, we headed to Best Buy to get the scoop on prepaid cell phones. They recommended the Verizon sim card ($10) and a $60 prepaid monthly plan, which gives us unlimited international talk, text and 10GB of data (2.5 times what we had on Koodo for $60 CDN). Hillary, a nice young lady, went through the process of unlocking the phone, with the code we got from Koodo. This seemed to work okay, but when she called Verizon to get a number for the phone, it would get Verizon service for a few seconds, then 'no service'. After a Verizon tech tried a few things, they concluded there must be something else in the way Koodo had set up the phone that was keeping it from getting service, perhaps because it was setup as a 'Canadian' phone. The other option was to buy a new 'prepaid' Verizon phone. They had a $40 clearance discount on the Samsung J1 that took it down to $32. Then Hillary found out from Verizon that they had a $30 prepaid discount. The new phone, including sim card, only cost us $2, less than the sim card for Joan's phone. After Verizon got the new phone activated, Hillary kindly set up our Google account on the phone and imported all of our contacts from our account.
When we got back to the trailer, we used the Verizon phone to call Koodo to take Joan's Koodo phone off our plan, and put it away for the winter. When we mentioned the problem getting the phone to work on Verizon, they said it must be something wrong at Verizon's end. Figures!
We spent part of the morning looking at the best route to get to Moab from here tomorrow. Both routes take us over the Wasatch range east of the valley, and according to Google Earth, over fairly long steep passes. We will decide where we are headed by tomorrow morning.
When we started the truck to head to Best Buy, we the check engine light was on again. After lunch, John used the vehicle diagnostic tool he had bought in Canadian Tire after the last time the light was on. Another glow plug(#2) problem, the 3rd in the last couple of months. Since these aren't critical, we figure we'll wait another couple of months and see if we can wait and get a few more fixed at the same time. We'll just have to check every once in a while to make see if any other problems crop up.
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