Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park – Cardwell, Montana July 1 to July 6, 2023

Saturday morning, July 1, 2023 we left the Prune Creek Campground in Wyoming at 8:08 am for approximately 300 miles of travel to our next stop, the Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park in Cardwell, Montana.

The first leg of our journey was making our way 30 miles down the opposite side of the mountain we had to climb the day before, dropping about 7,000 feet in the process. At about the 10-mile point we had to pull off to the side to let the brakes cool down. The downward slope varied between 6 to 10 degrees and the road was full of curves. I didn’t think I was using the brakes THAT much, but I guess I was. During the stop, while we were taking photos of the view down the rest of the way, we heard a hissing sound coming from the front of Voyager. I thought maybe the engine had overheated, but there was nothing leaking on the ground. When we got back in about 20 minutes later to pull away, my onboard TPMS reported that the front driver’s side tire was about half full. So I got back out, got out my portable tire inflator and was ready to reinflate it. But as soon as I touched the tire stem to unscrew the cap, I could feel and hear air hissing out. The inflator would be of no use if the stem was leaking.

So, I took a chance.

The tires on Voyager are super-good. Even with half the air out of them, they look and feel fully inflated. I decided to see how far they would last. I drove the remaining 20 miles doing about 20-25 miles an hour. The tire held up at half full all the way to the first signs of civilization in Lovell, Wyoming. There was an open tire repair shop right on the main road, and so $23 and 45 minutes later we were back on the road at full speed with a new sensor stem and the tire fully inflated.

Twice during the remainder of our drive we drove through severe thunderstorms with 40-50 mph gusts of wind shooting blinding sheets of rain across Interstate 90. By the time we got through those, my fingers felt like they were welded to the steering wheel as I fought to keep Voyager and Nomad on the road and in my lane.

We got to the campground around 4:30 pm after 8 1/2 hours of driving on what was supposed to be a long travel day of 5 plus hours anyway but stretched out to much longer due to brake cooling, tire stem repair and storms. I was exhausted from driving and Cindy was exhausted from being scared. Still, we got everything set up at our site which was a pull-through (yay, no backing in) made of gravel and mostly level. Our online connectivity was limited to two bars on our T-Mobile hotspot. After a quick meal these tired old folks were in bed by 7:30 pm and slept soundly through the night.

Sunday, July 2, 2023 – Happy 68th Birthday to me! I awoke to a Happy Birthday kiss from my wife and a birthday text from my Bestest Brother, so my day had a most awesome start! We mostly rested and relaxed through the morning and early afternoon, only taking Bella for her daily walk. My morning was brightened when I received a Happy Birthday call from my step-daughter and middle granddaughter 🙂

Around 1:30 pm we left the campsite because Cindy wanted to take me out for a birthday meal. The first place we tried was about 6 miles from the campground but didn’t open until 5 Pm. We drove another 10 miles to Whitehall but the place we walked into looked like a dive so we turned around and walked back out. We ended driving another 25 miles to Butte where we ate at Montana Rib and Chop House across from the airport. I had a filet mignon that was so damn delicious I could have eaten three more!

Thanks babe, for an outstanding birthday meal!

While we were there I got a Happy Birthday call from my daughter and oldest grandson, and then later in the meal a FaceTime call from my youngest grandchildren in Washington State (we’d be seeing them in about a week). All of the family birthday wishes made the meal all the more better.

I also enjoyed all the birthday text messages and facebook birthday wishes. Thanks to all of you who took the time to wish me a happy natal day!

On Monday, after breakfast and walking Bella I came back to Nomad and conditioned all the slide-out seals and cleaned/lubricated the slide-out rails. Then CIndy and I both fixed a longtime problem we’ve had with our sliding door on he bathroom by replacing the worn out plastic straps and screws with carefully applied Velcro Strips. I spent the rest of the day reading (I finished a Star Trek; The Next Generation novel and started reading Prince Harry’s book “Spare”) outside in the sun, napping and reading some more, lol. Cindy made a wonderful dinner of smothered pork chops with mashed potatoes and though I’m not a fan of either of those, she makes them both taste SO good!

We were going to have a fire outside and enjoy the Super-moon once it got dark, but that didn’t happen because it was a night of clouds and rain 🙁

Tuesday, July 4, 2023 – Happy Independence Day. My dad always said, “Son, if you had just waited two more days you could have had sparklers on your birthday cake!” But I guess I was in too big of a hurry to make my worldwide debut. After walking Bella we drove over to Whitehall so we could have some connectivity to catch up on some things online. While there we grabbed a quick bite at the KFC/A&W combo restaurant, then stoped along the road on the drive back to take a photo of a cave mouth we noticed on the face of a mountain. When we got back to the campground we decided to drive the three miles up the mountain to the Visitor Center/Gift Shop/Cavern Entrance.

I had been to the cavern years ago when I was deployed to this state. I knew, on the tour I took at the time, that Cindy would never be able to enjoy the cavern tour because some of the passages were extremely narrow and some were so short in height that you had to duck walk though them, so we never considered going through the caverns on this trip. But while we were up there we saw that they had another, easier tour. Cindy asked the information booth attendant how tight and narrow the tour might be and she replied that she could hold both her arms about from her sides and just touch the walls. We’re going be back at this campground in a few weeks on our trek back east and Cindy thinks she’ll try the easier tour at that time.

Wednesday- July 5 A day of just relaxing and getting ready to have two days of driving in a row.

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