Date: 29 May 2001 (Teusday)

Start: KOA, Three Forks, MT

End: Lewis & Clark RV Park, Shelby, MT (243 miles)

It was a little windy but the temperature was 57f when we got up.

We had breakfast, hooked up, and headed north up US287.

As we went, it got windier, out of the northwest.

We stopped at a propane dealer in Helena to refill one 30# bottle that ran out last night. It left us only slightly cold on awakening, so it must have lasted most of the night.

We continued up I-15 since there were no suitable US highways headed north. The characteristics up here are that interstates are macadam-paved with few patches, the US roads are paved with many patches (as are single-digit state-numbered roads), and anything you turn off onto is gravel.

The high desert gave way to a belt of mountains just above Helena that had all sorts of scenery as viewed from the interstate. There was a narrow gorge with train tracks through it, the Missouri river paralleling the road at points, and then a belt of wheat country.

That was followed by a gradual lifting into another place of arid ground that continued the rest of the way here.

At Great Falls, we were passing the "International" airport and observed a "planesicle"; i.e., a fighter aircraft being exhibited on a stick (pylon). It looked as though it was rigged to be a weathervane, but I won’t know this for a fact until some expert verifies it.

A little later, Dolores saw a small herd of antelope in a depression.

We checked into the "Lewis and Clark RV Park" here in Shelby (everything in Montana seems to be named after them, like Stonewall Jackson is "the" name in northern Virginia). The wind had picked up to a continuous 40mph. The weather forecast said it would die down around dusk.

We drove into and around town, another dusty place but with all the amenities you’d expect. It’s a major railroad center. We filled up the pickup with diesel fuel, and bought groceries.

Dolores and I tried now and then to defeat a phone line that would only connect at 2400bps (ssllooooowwww) to get e-mail. Sure as the devil, a friend sent a big picture file that I couldn’t download in the time the battery still had remaining. I had to leave the rest of the messages to be picked up later. We did send a few.

We spent a half-hour or so watching the antics of some tan rodents that were acting something like prairie dogs, but were smaller. They were having a great time running around, but some birds would drive them away from bushes they got to close to; nests, I suppose. When we asked the campground owners about them, they referred us to a newspaper clipping on the bulletin board that showed the beasts to be "Richardson’s Ground Squirrels".

At dusk, we decided to take sunset pictures. You never know how these are going to come out, but we took a few. As we did, a coyote ran across the field across which we were shooting.

I’d give the pictures about a 10% chance of keeping. There just weren’t enough effects to make them unique.