Today is Tuesday, August 21, 2018, and Judy and I are going to make an extended trip around and through the Rocky Mountains including the states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and end up in Texas for Thanksgiving. Now this is not to be the “All American Vacation,” where you can look at your watch and say “Oh! it’s Tuesday, we must be in Denver.” Instead It will be a “Meandering.”

Here is my definition:
Meandering Vacation: To drive a hundred miles or so and find a place to stay. If there is interesting things to do, stay a couple days. Then pack up and do it all over again. Have a general idea where you want to end up, but make your decisions on where to go based on chatting with fellow campers and your bucket list.

Today’s goal is St Regis and we are going to ride the Hiawatha trail tomorrow. We will be following in Judy’s dad’s wheel ruts as we traverse Lookout Pass. Pat Starr drove for PIE and liked to bid the Lookout Turn or Missoula Run. The Lookout Turn had the Spokane and Missoula drivers start at the same time and meet at the top of Lookout Pass. They swapped trucks and returned to their home base. Home every day. The Missoula trip went all the way, layed over for rest and returned home the next night. Home every other day.

How my Blog works:
I upgraded my website this weekend. It is acting kind-a strange, however. I installed a new reCAPTCHA routine so I can open up the comments function again. However, I did not get the defunct reCAPTCHA removed properly so if you just make a comment and then try to post it, the new reCAPTIA gets trumped by the ghost of the old reCAPTIA and you can’t leave a comment. However if you are a member and you have signed in, you get shuttled around the whole reCAPTIA thing and your comment goes right in. Trouble is, the reCAPTIA guards the registration too. If you are already a member you can comment, everyone else will have to wait until I figure out what to do.
I expect to try a number of styles for the web pages themselves, feel free to leave comments either here or on Facebook. I will continue to post a text only version to e-mail. I have recently been posting a link on my Facebook page also.
Ending note: We have stopped in Wallace to visit the historic NP Wallace Depot. I will write a few highlights and include a photo and then send this Blog to the publisher.
The Wallace Northern Pacific Depot museum was built in 1901 so it is 117 years old. It has been moved several hundred feet and across the river to make room for I-90.

It is beautiful and very worth the time to stop and see. W took up three full on street parking stalls right on the main drag. We spent a good hour in the museum. I still think the Ritzville NP Depot museum has done a better job of representing the look and feel of a railroad depot. Wallace has too much stuff displayed out of context. Besides, they forgot the crowning touch. Ritzville has a genuine Prince Albert Tobacco tin jammed down behind the telegraph sounder. Every depot when I was working the Northern Pacific had the exact same thing. An empty Prince Albert Tobacco tin wedged between the sounder electro-magnets and the wooden back of the sounder box. This is thought to amplify the sound of the telegraph so you can read the code easier.