Richland Again

Mountains reflected in the water
Mountains reflected in the water
This was our view from the highway
More wheat fields and beautiful landscapes
Horn Rapids RV Resort (our rig is the first one on the left)

Just after I posted this AM I looked at my pics from yesterday’s travels and thought I’d include them The pics of the mountains reflecting in the lake were taken by Kim while moving down the highway. While traveling from Clarkston to Richland we saw thousands and thousands of acres of wheat and other small grain crops. The landscape is so beautiful with the beautiful rolling hills. Just as we got here we started seeing more vineyards and wineries with wine tasting stations – some crude, some very stylish. Most of the wineries aren’t all that big of set ups. The rivers and lakes we passed by were very beautiful.

Richland, WA

Kim likes to dip her feet in the water when she gets a chance.
Yep, it's cold!
Petroglyphs supposedly 2500 years old (see note below)
This is a Yurt that a man built on a big deck. He did so because he wouldn't owe property taxes on it. (See note below)


We are on our way to Silver Creek, WA to spend a week there to see Mt. St Helens and MT Rainier. We stopped for a night in Richland at the Horn Rapids RV Resort. It is just three years old so it is easier to maneuver in than most parks and the trees aren’t big enough to be a concern when parking. We decided to spend and extra day here so we will be resting, shopping and probably playing cards today. I would like to go to a chiropractor today and get my neck adjusted and the office has made a recommendation.

In the last post I told about the Hell’s Canyon tour. At that time we were staying at a RV park in Clarkston, WA. Just across the river is the town of Lewiston, ID. These towns’ names derive from Lewis and Clark who made a big impact on a lot of things in the area. There are a lot of tourist things centered on their trail and history.
Last night our neighbors brought their dinner over to our picnic table and we ate together and talked several hours. Their names are Stu and Jean. They are from Saskatoon. Saskatoon is centrally located in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada. The city lies 780 kilometers northwest of Winnipeg, a little over 520 kilometers southeast of Edmonton, and just over 300 kilometers north of the U.S. border. A little over a year ago they sold their company that manufactures equipment for highway buildings (asphalt plants, etc). They were very nice and we had a great time. They left early this AM for a Monaco rally in Oregon.
Petroglyphs are images created by removing part of a rock surfaces by incising, pecking, carving, and abrading. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs are found world-wide, and are often (but not always) associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek words petros meaning "stone" and glyphein meaning "to carve". The term petroglyph should not be confused with pictograph, which is an image drawn or painted on a rock face. Both types of image belong to the wider and more general category of rock art.
A yurt is a round tent like housing that originated in Mongolia. It is used by Russian soldiers and we have seen quite a few of them at campgrounds on our trip. People can rent them like a cabin. Most that we have seen have a clear dome that is three or four feet in diameter.

Hell's Canyon Boat Tour

Whitewater on the river
Our boat - 40' long, 2 - 400 HP motors that each burn 12 GPH of diesel fuel and 200 gallons for the day. The boat has no steering wheel as it wouldn't be fast enough to maneuver the rapids. It uses a lever to steer.
Morning sun in the mountains
Small sand beach
Yesterday was our 26th wedding anniversary and we spent most all the day on a boat trip to Hell’s Canyon. The ride is on the Snake River and borders Idaho, Washington and Oregon at different times. Hell’s Canyon is 1000 feet deeper than the Grand Canyon. The pictures just don’t do justice to the rugged beauty we saw.

There were a few interesting stories. One fellow along the river got an advertisement for a mail order bride. He sent for her and she said that she would be afraid of the animals and the only way she would marry him is if he built a fence to keep the animals away from the property. He built a stone wall fence (it looked at least a half mile long) and when he got finished she told him it took him too long and she was marrying someone else. It had taken him three years to build the fence. He then became a hermit and lived very secluded from others.

A rancher had an upper ranch on the mountain and built a lower ranch on the banks of the river for winter use. He supposedly did this without his wife’s knowledge to surprise her. When she saw the completed ranch she said that it was beautiful, but there is no way she would live there without a telephone – so he built a telephone line over 3 miles long with poles and wire. It is still in use today.

There were some other oddities. The mail only goes on Wednesday and that is by boat. If you click on the picture blog at the end of this blog you will see a mailbox or two literally in the middle of nowhere! There are many miles where there are no roads so everything you see built was brought in by boat. There was a 55 foot mobile home that was brought down a mountain trail with a bulldozer and placed in the wilderness.

The boat we rode on is 40 feet long and has two 400 horsepower diesel engines. It uses jet propulsion that takes in water from the bottom of the boat, pressurizes it and then shoots it out through nozzles that can swivel left to right. It steers the boat by turning the nozzles left to right – like a jet ski. There was a lot more maneuvering through the rapids than we had anticipated. There is no steering wheel as the pilot would not be able to steer the boat quickly enough in the rapids. Instead, there is a long lever on the left side of the pilot that moves the jets from left to right and steers the boat. It travels at 45 MPH with full load and only drafts 12 to 14 inches of water when at speed. We used 200 gallons of fuel on the trip and transported 40 passengers 100 miles each way on the river(200 miles total). Kim and I sat in the back on the right side. We had no side windows like the other passengers, but the view was great. It was a little chilly in the morning but beautiful the rest of the day. We left at 8 AM and returned at 5:30 PM. We would recommend this trip very highly. We used the Beamer service but there are others. I saw some of the other boats and liked the layout of the Beamer boats best.

I think this was a time of great trust in the pilot. We went through stage 4 rapids and the maneuvering was very quick to miss the obstacles at 45 MPH. The pilot said you basically have to memorize the 100 miles of river. We went 100 miles each way. There would be times when he would maneuver quickly and there would be large rocks on both sides of the boat maybe 30 feet away. It was fun and exciting. There is no way we could put all the pictures on this site. Click here if you want to see them all. http://picasaweb.google.com/kimitchpics/HellSCanyon

West Glacier, MT to Clarkston, WA

McDonalds Restaurant in Whitefish, MT with Cross Country Ski locks. We don't have these in Indiana.
This is the pulpit Pastor Don preaches from at the church we visited in Whitefish. It is a beautiful table.
Beautiful Montana. Note the train tracks between the road and river. In the mountains they use three engines pulling and two pushing the train.
We stayed at the St Regis Campground in St Regis, MT. We counted 35 stumps that had been carved into critters.
Beautiful southeast Washington. This was the scenery for over 100 miles today. We saw caterpillar tractors pulling equipment and the hills were so severe we saw a big Versatile 4 wheel drive tractor pulling a 5 ton fertilizer spreader. Back home we use a tractor a third that size. I have never seen farming on hills so severe. It was a beautiful landscape.

Tomorrow (Sept. 12) is our 26th wedding anniversary. It is really a blessing to be able to take this time to tour with my best friend.

We left West Glacier Sunday AM and stopped by the church we had visited the week before in Whitefish. It was good to worship with the believers there. We took Sunday and Monday to travel 270 miles to Spokane, WA. We had an appointment at a Cummins Engine Service Center to check out a problem. I had a Check Engine light that had been coming on intermittently and they connected the coach to a computer that reads the fault codes in the system. The computer said it had observed low fuel pressure so they replaced the main fuel filter. The problem could be the filter, electric lift pump or gear pump, so they started with the filter. Hopefully that will take care of it. The Cummins Engine dealership was a Coach Care facility so we got to park there and they had hookups for no charge.

We traveled from Spokane to Clarkston, WA today and have signed up to take a river trip to Hell’s Canyon tomorrow. We leave at 8 AM and return at 6 PM. We just finished a nap in our hammock. It was a nice day to lay in the shade and take a nap.

We will leave here Thursday and go to a campground between Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainer and travel the area from the MH in the car for a week and then travel to the west side of the state for another week or so. Coach miles since June 3 – 5000. Car miles since June 3 – 3500. Coach mileage has been just over 8 and the car gets over 33 just driving around. The coach mileage should go up to around 9 when we get 20 to 25 thousand miles on it and it gets broke in.

Leaving Glacier National Park Area for Washington

The closest helicopter is the one we toured the park in.
If you plate an ATV you can drive it on the roads. Here's one at a mall in Kalispel, MT.
I think this guy likes bumper stickers.
We wanted to go here as we left the area today but they meet tonight (5:59 PM) is what the sign said
Kim with the 4.5 ton clearing ball.

It has become a habit to journal when we leave an area. It puts a wrap on what we have experienced. Today we leave the Glacier National Park area. The temperatures her have been ideal. Temps have been about 75 to 85 in the day and 50 at night. This is great sleeping weather. As I write, it is 44 degrees at 6 AM. Our MH has two rooftop air conditioners that also work as heat pumps. The heat pumps are efficient down to 40 degrees and then the electronics automatically switch to the LP gas furnaces. We have two of those also. Because it is 44 degrees the heat pumps are running constantly now. The heat pumps are efficient in that they operate off the electricity that the campground (or our generator) provides. There is no additional charge for the campground electricity so we get to heat for free. Other than cooking with the stove top and using our gas grill (which I plumbed into the coach tank) we use very little LP gas. We left home June third and a few weeks ago I filled the LP tank and had only used 8 gallons. I believe it is about a 30 - 35 gallon tank. I probably won’t have to fill it again till we get home in the spring.

Here are a few more things about the area that interested us. There is a town named “Hungry Horse” down the road a few miles. In the winter of 1900 – 1901 there were two freight horses named Tex and Jerry that wandered away from their sleigh and when they were finally found, they were so weak they had to be fed and nurtured before they could be led back to civilization. Hence the name of a mountain, creek, lake, town and area are named Hungry Horse.

The Hungry Horse clearing ball (see picture above) weighs 4.5 tons and was pulled with two tractors using cables to clear land. The reason for the ball is that it allowed the cables to maintain a height above the stumps and still kept the cables low enough that they pulled down trees. This was much faster and more efficient than cutting all the small trees. It was used in 1950 to clear 6,207 acres for the Hungry Horse reservoir.

We went hiking again yesterday but as usual we came to some fresh bear droppings. This makes Kim want to turn back. The local people caution us travelers about the dangers of bears. The two big dangers are startling the bear or finding a mother with cubs. They have a newspaper article on the counter of our campground that tells about a father and 19 year old daughter that got attacked. They walked around a turn on a trail and walked between a mother bear and her two cubs. The mother bear was only protecting her cubs but I guess that doesn’t make the people any less injured. We did purchase a can of pepper spray at the information station at Glacier National Park.

This is an area we would highly recommend to visit and we know we will come back to see again. We would recommend coming earlier in the year as many of the streams and waterfalls are either running low or have stopped altogether. Probably the highlight of the area was the helicopter ride. Well, we're off to Washington.

Glacier National Park by Helicopter – and Iraq

The Continental Divide at about 8,000 feet. The pilot said it takes about 100 inches of snow to make a foot of glacier icepack.
Beautiful mountains and lakes

Today we took a half-hour helicopter ride of Glacier National Park. It was just so beautiful! The pictures don’t do it justice. I sat up front and Kim, KC and Nathan (another couple we met) sat in the back. I think I was put there because I was the heaviest. It sometimes pays to be overweight. Our pilot stays in the same RV Park that we are in. It’s hard to believe that the continental divide for the northern USA is here in western Montana. The continental divide is the place where some of the water flows west to the Pacific and some to the east to the Atlantic Ocean. We flew at 90 to 100 knots (about 80 MPH) and topped out at about 10,000 feet. There was one point where the pilot was heading towards a mountain and turned away when we seemed very close. It was fun! Our pilot pointed out a lot of interesting glacier formations and history. He showed us a chalet that was 13 miles up in the mountains and was only accessible by horses or on foot. He showed us where he once spent a summer building a lodge that was later wiped out by an avalanche.

Nathan who rode with us said he is in the US Army and going back to Iraq for his second tour. He said the heat is usually about 130 degrees for 9 months of the year. He said when you go outside it is like when you open the oven door. There is usually wind and there is virtually no humidity. After his last tour he came back to the US and it was 87 and high humidity and he struggled more with that than the heat in Iraq. He said the Iraqi troops we are trying to train are not military as we know it. He said they are volunteers – like militia. The US soldiers take them out for a five day patrol and after a few days they announce they are going home to family. I asked if many people rested in the afternoon heat and he said they have become so dependent on their oil sales that many of the people just don’t work at all. He said they are not a working type people.

We moved the RV today in the park to a much bigger and nicer site. We plan to stay here till this Sunday and then we are off for Washington. We hope to spend 3 weeks in Washington, 3 in Oregon and then 5 in California. That should put us into Arizona a few weeks before Christmas.

Church Visits and Mormons

Today is Sunday and we went to a Calvary Chapel Church in Whitefish, MT. It was a great time to be with other believers and to just worship with them. Their pastor loves the Lord and is energetic and sincere. I haven’t always written about where we visit because sometimes we just don’t sense the Spirit of God. In some of the churches it seems the people just come in and go through their ritual of “worship” which is really nothing more than a habit or duty. There are times when virtually no one speaks to us and we wonder what an unbeliever would feel like if they attended there. It makes us take a look at ourselves and think of how we treat visitors at our home church. I really believe that visitors are made to feel welcome at Grace Community Church in Goshen. I think a few of the things that we do well is to not judge others. We are all a mess and have all sinned against God. At Grace, we haven’t gotten pompous or pious and we are real people.

I had an interesting experience a week or so ago. I have this little quip that I use on waitresses when I’m feeling ornery. It goes like, “This is my first wife Kim”. It is just a way to say that this is my wife. The other day a girl looked at me a little funny after my comment and it hit me – Montana has a lot of Mormons. I’ll bet she thinks I’m Mormon (the statement around here would probably imply I have more wives). OOPS! When with the Garber’s, they mentioned that there are some Mormons here. They gave us a DVD to watch that their church had shown. It is quite interesting. There are basically two groups of Mormons – the mainline and the fundamentalist.

Joseph Smith started the Mormon movement when he wrote the Book of Mormon. Both groups believe him to be at least a prophet of God. Both see his writings as the foundation of the Mormon Church. Another forefather of the church is Brigham Young. Here’s the deal. They both taught and practiced polygamy. Joseph Smith was even married to other married women in Illinois. They both made it clear that to be a Mormon you need to have multiple wives. Here’s the difference between the fundamentalist and the mainline church.

The mainline Mormons have taken out the wording that demands polygamy in the writings of Smith and Young. Smith and Young said that a man could not be Mormon without multiple wives and now the leaders of the Mormon Church do not have multiple wives. According to the very founders of their faith, they are in serious error and won’t see heaven (a planet where they go to populate when they die with their earthly wives). Yes, the goal for a good Mormon wife is to be eternally pregnant. Oh, by the way they believe Jesus not only was married to multiple wives, but fathered many children here on earth.

The fundamentalist denounce the mainline in that they have changed the doctrine of the founders of the faith and these people practice polygamy. The man marries one wife and then the leaders in his church tell him who he will marry next – with less than 24 hours notice. Forty to sixty year old men have been married to a girl as young as 14 to 18 years old. I’ve talked with Mormons about these things and their answer usually is, well it’s not like that in our church. I don’t think most of them even know what they really believe. Chuck and Mary gave us a really good DVD to watch that explains this. It is put out by a church that witnesses to Mormons and leads them to Christ. You can watch the video online and I would strongly recommend it. It is called Living Hope Ministries and their web page is: http://www.lhvm.org/. There are several DVD’s and I plan on purchasing the set. The one we watched is “Lifting the Veil of Polygamy. The stories are told by the people who came out of the Mormon Church and have found salvation and freedom in Jesus Christ. They tell of the jealousy among wives and how unnatural it is to share a husband. They tell of men that have so many children that they don’t even know all their names. They tell of boys growing up and not having a male figure in their lives. Chuck and Mary said that the men support their first wife and then have a ceremony to marry additional wives and don’t do any legal work so as not to get in trouble with the government. The additional wives draw welfare and live off the government. They said that one county arrested and prosecuted the men and the financial strain of supporting all their wives and families bankrupted the county.