Labor Day at Lewis & Clark Caverns

Montana is a beautiful state and we've lived here for over 15 years. But like everyone else who works for a living, we don't often get out and see all the great tourist attractions there are in "Big Sky" country.

Lee and I had to be in Bozeman Monday morning for a meeting with a doctor for one of our cases. So I suggested since it was a three day weekend maybe we could go somewhere touristy/fun down that way in TBH.

"Yeah," Lee said, "we could pack up on Saturday and leave right after church Sunday."

So our plan was to drive maybe down to Ennis, MT and check out Virginia City, site of the Gold Rush craze in the 1800's.

All best plans go astray. Grandpa had an episode of low blood sugar Saturday morning. We didn't know that was the case and took him to ER. Grandma thought he was having a seizure. Lee thought he was having a stroke. Low blood sugar was the best of all possible bad things.

Saturday night Lee finally went out to start TBH ... when it struck again!

It wouldn't start. So Lee tried to charge it over night.

It still didn't start on Sunday. He finally bought 2 new batteries.

It started.

We feverishly loaded the bus and headed out.

Sunday we stayed in Three Forks, favoring less driving as Ennis is another 50 miles south of I-90 and we would add 100 extra miles on our trip.

Monday morning Lee got out and found we had a flat tire! Of course all the trucking type repair shops were closed on Labor Day. Fortunately it was one of the tires on the "tag" axle and Lee found out we could drive with that tire up.

We invited Debbie & Andrew to go to the caverns with us, but they had other plans. So off we went looking for the Caverns.

We eventually found the Lewis and Clark state park at 2:30 pm - about 2 hours after we started out.

No, we're not idiots. There was road construction and they didn't have a sign pointing out an essential turn off the road we were traveling on!

We got to the park entrance and noticed a parking lot full of trailers and buses. The sign said "You may leave your trailers here". Apparently the park was another 3.5 mile up a windy mountain road from there. We were contemplating just going up in TBH, when a truck pulling a fifth wheel stopped to ask about driving up the road. They were 2 women on vacation. The driver was a little nervous about driving up the narrow road and offered us a ride up if Lee would drive them up and down.

Problem solved.

FYI if you're pulling a long trailer, it does have a couple of switch backs, but it's not bad! They even had a large parking lot by the Ranger station and several truck/trailers parked there. We could driven up in TBH (although it may had done something else to us in retaliation)



It's a 3/4 mile hike up to the cave entrance. This was the most walking I've done in over 2 years - my butt hurts today! On top of that I'm allergic to the Bozeman area vegetation and sneezed a million times.



With all that said, we had a nice time doing the tour! I'd do it again without all the extra little problems!



Maybe next time we can visit Virginia City....

And fun was had by everyone

The day of the family reunion dawned cloudy and windy. They had about 50 plus relatives show up. Dad came from a family of nine. He's only got on living sibling left. that's Aunt Ida in the middle with the sunglasses on. She's 91 years old, Dad is 90. It was pretty great to see all of the first cousins and first cousins once removed and second removed and so on.


Here's Lee and Dad with a couple of his first cousins once removed. We had a good time getting re-acquainted with his relatives.

Madson Farm Visit

Here's a little video about the milking operations. They milk twice a day and rotate 2 shifts of cows through. This is the first shift. It was noisy, stinky and you really have to careful not to stand too close to the back end of the ladies!



They don't hand milk them any more. It is a vacuum type system. The milk travels up through a pipe into the "well" house where it is cooled and stored in a refrigerated tank.

A tanker comes once a day to haul the milk to processing plant.

MOOOOOve out of the way!

Several of Lee's cousins live, own and run a farm. A couple of them run a dairy operation. The recession has affected them too, but they're hanging in there.


This lady is one of the milking cows as you can see from her udders. She is actually getting ready to give birth.

We visited Lee's cousin Natalie Madson who Mom always "Lives out in the country". To be exact she lives on a farm in Oconto, Wisconsin. Actually, her son now lives on and runs the family farm and she and her husband Russ built a nice new house away from the barns, flies and animals.

They have a lot of calves. The brown ones are jerseys and the black and white ones are holsteins.

Jersey are a more energy efficient cow according to Russ. The a smaller, eat less feed and produce just as much milk.

They also have an assortment of other farm critters. These are pygmy goats. Aren't they cute?



I seem to recall my oldest wanting one of these things when we first moved up to Montana.

We visited the milking barn. There are a lot of cows to be milked. They say a cow can produce 10 gallons of milk a day.

That's a lot of feed, hay, poop and maniure!

As we were discussing all of this, one of the cows baptized me!

Technology you must have

Josh bought a refurbished Garmi Nuvi 360. Before he got it we discussed that he would lend it to us on our trip. It also plays audible books which I think a great added benefit.


The unit did a great job getting us through Wisconsin, but directed us through ALL of the TOLL highways. It cost us around $15 to get around Chicago and Indiana. Although we have it set for fastest time I think it took us a long time to get around the Chicago area going that route. I don’t think this unit has the capability to figure out the best alternate fast route.


After the fact I saw that there’s an option to avoid Toll roads, duh!

Another thing we did was add broadband connection onto our Verizon plan. It’s $60/month but it’s a month to month option and we can discontinue after our trip.


The best thing about using cell phone as a modem is you can be surfing the internet as you go down the road. I wouldn’t advise driving and surfing simultaneously.

On the road again

We’re on our way to Wisconsin today for the Henning Family reunion this weekend which will be held in Peshtigo, Wisconsin this Sunday.

I think that Grandma and Grandpa are enjoying their travels.


Us, not so much but it’s a lot better than traveling in a car.


Lee's back has been hurting him for the last couple of days but today it was really pretty bad. Good thing we're at the midway point!

Bay City Recreational Area

Before we left I got online to search for a site to 'camp' at. Surprising, Michigan and Wisconsin doesn't have a lot campgrounds - at least not in the area that we were heading to.

This campground is state run and got high marks on www.rvparkreviews.com.
I have to say, the reviewers were correct. This is really a nice campground. You're not on top of the other campers, it's clean and very pretty. It's also by the bay and there is a beach here. We haven't even been over there yet but maybe tomorrow....