We Made it to Kalispell

Our plans are written in Jello for a reason! This week is one of them! As it turns out, we stayed in Garrison until Friday, driving around having fun and experiencing the attractions in the area.
We spent a good part of Wednesday in Deer Lodge, toured the old Montana State Prison, and Antique Car Museum. DH really enjoyed all that,some areas of the prison kinda spooked me out,
and we didn't get out of there until after 2 p.m. After a bite of lunch we headed up over McDonald Pass on Highway 12 into Helena, the state capital.
After a trip downtown and some pictures around the Capital building, we made a detour into WalMart and while I was looking around, I found the material for my new windshield drape!
That's one more job that I'm tickled to have out of the way. I mailed 12 yards of material to the RV Interiors place in Denver and I will pick up my new drapes when we go back to Colorado this fall. (Big sigh of relief!) In looking around at all the info about Philipsburg Montana, I decided that I couldn't leave without making a trip out to Gem Mountain and experiencing the search for Sapphires.
This mine has been in operation since the late 1800s, and today gem enthusiasts often find sapphires of two to three carats in the rough. Expert jewelry service in the area provides an immediate chance to turn rough stones to fine jewelry. We headed back to P Burg early on Thursday, and after a quick lesson on washing and sorting of gravel, I went to work.
DH helped and we ended up washing a sorting through 2 2 gallon buckets of dirt! I found quite a few sepphires, unfortunately, none were large enough or matching enough to go the whole route and process into jewelry.
It was a fun experience and I'm glad I did it...We wandered around the streets of Philipsburg. That town is very enterprising and has alot going for it with all the artistically painted and restored old buildings on Main Street and great candy store and jewelry/mining operation. We are amazed on how voracious the mosquitoes are here in Montana!
They are plentiful and mighty hungry, which is my first invitation to stay in the house! DH has already had West Nile Virus several years ago and I don't want that experience again, nor do I want it.

We got a good start on the 189 mile trip up here yesterday and got settled into our site a little before 3 p.m. This is a really nice campground, with both wooded sites for small campers and RVs and then another open area for larger rigs that don't enjoy trees and camp fires! We contacted our musician friend Bunky and went south of town to where he had his coach parked. As usual, we had a good visit and he shared his new DVD with us that he's had cut since we talked in Arizona. Today, we ran around and checked out some RV Stores. I contacted some Doggie Day Care people and we will go meet with one lady tomorrow and make arrangements for next week so we can spend some time in Glacier National Park and not worry about our Foofy Dog. I went out and washed some dust off one side of windows while ago and just waiting for the sun to go down so I can do the other side. We are enjoying Big Sky Country!