Let's visit on the Porch II (Billings, Great Falls: best deal, sewer, walk)

[MaBonnema]

I wish I did not have to plan a route and could afford to take the scenic route. However, old Nellie is an 89 Mercury Marquis and she will be carrying 2 old farts with health problems.. so it's gotta be "planned". All those places are where we are stopping to top off the tank, stretch our legs and make a potty break.
According to the news.. gas prices are on the rise. Hope mom's piddly 800 bucks in SSI is enough to get us there. It's gonna take about 10 or 11 tankfuls to get there...And pray that Old Nellie makes the trip. We are going with just bare necessities and 2 cats.
Not planning on eating much but what we have in the cooler. Spammiches and Water..
I really wish I could sight see and take my time. Would be wonderful. Too bad I didnt have a job or career that would allow me to travel... Ohhh I love to travel!!!
Hopefully I can afford to buy batteries before we leave so I can take LOTS of photos and upload them to my facebook page for ya'll to see. I got a note book so I can take notes of things I may snap a photo of.

[ElkHunter]

If you haven't loaded "Gas Buddy" yet, do so. You can look at it on your computer, or download the free app. You can type in a town and it will show you all the gas stations, with prices, in order of the cheapest first. If you click on a station, it will show the map and you can see if it's worth pulling off the road there. It's a great application and I use it all the time. It makes planning stops much nicer. Specially when you can see, in advance, that this station is a dime cheaper than the station next to it, before you even get there.

[MaBonnema]

WOW... Thx Eh... you always have such great advice.
xoxoxo

[Reziac]

I got an "RV loyalty card" from Flying J/Pilot that gives me 2 cents off per gallon. Not a lot but everything helps, and they're usually the cheapest place to get gas, outside of Costco.

Stopping at a grocery and buying fixins on a long trip can probably save you $300 over the cost of fast food! I take bread, canned meat, and cheese, and sometimes some fruit in those little containers. And chocolate, of course. Can't travel without chocolate. Sometimes I'll get a whole pizza somewhere (Flying J's used to be great but they switched vendors and now they suck) and that'll last me a couple days.

Elk, what's the name of that topo mapping program you've got?

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by Reziac

- snip -


Elk, what's the name of that topo mapping program you've got?

Been a while since I've had the originals out of the box, and I couldn't boot up the desktop. hahahaha I have to correct it, it is 7 CD's and it is Topo USA, by Delorme. Says it works on NT 4.0, SP4 or Windows 2000. It is broken into the following CD's:

Mountain States
Pacific West
SouthWest
East
Great Lakes and Plains
SouthEast
Install

Very detailed, can even go into a 3D mode and tilt it to see the best way to drag an Elk out. Of course, only if you carry a laptop while you are hunting. It has the elevation rings that are marked, but they don't mean a lot when you are dragging an elk and the topo map said, 15 ft in elevation increase and when you get there, it is 15 ft of rimrock. It's nice to see it in 3d and know what you are up against. Actually, having a laptop in hunting camp gives everybody something to talk about on "If I shoot one here, I can take it toward FreezeOut Point and then take it....." I alwas say, "When I shoot one here, I'm going to hike out this way and take the 4 wheeler back and 3 buddy's with their 4 wheelers." Back when I bought it, it was less than $100. and I got that much use out of it the first year I had it. It shows trails that I can't find unless you actually get out and walk a bit and then dig down a bit and you can find the old road bed. Fire Trails, Fire Roads, Service Roads, Streams, Springs, Potable Springs, Potable creeks, are all marked on it.

The first year I had it, I printed it up 9 sheet's and laminated it. I took the map up to Elk Camp and had all the guys add too it, as far as "Hanging Cliff, small seep, good walkable trail, etc..." Then I brought the map home and sat down and added all of those points. Well known points. If one guy give me the data, I would check with trappers and a lion hunter buddy of mine and get them to verify, just to make sure it wasn't something that only a single person called it, not knowing the proper term. I put them all in the computer and saved all of that data. That is what is on the desktop hard drive that got a virus. I would love to recover that and get it up and running. If you remember, 2 years ago, you and I communicated pretty extensively and exhausted several avenue's on recovery. But since then, I am hoping that virus profiles have changed and maybe I can do something with it now. I have a Terrabite drive that is almost a forth full of CD's that were installed for the NT platform and I can't use any of them in this Vista crapola pinball machine I call a laptop. I have all the CD's, factory originals, but I don't have all the upgrades, ini mods, etc... See, all of my software, I have copied to the big drive, and then installed and modified to run there, without ever inserting a CD. That's the stuff I would like to see running again.

[jasper12]

I bought this book, Montana Waterfalls by Larry and Nathan Johnson - Riverbend Publishing - Helena, MT, we are going to do all the hikes, and take our own pictures of the waterfalls. We did three hikes over the 4th, at Glacier.

Enjoy the trip Ma! Jasper says he will be glad to never travel cross country again. It is a road trip, that is for sure. I did it coming here 2 years ago....I am never leaving Montana again. This is my home.

[Reziac]

Here's something interesting...

Montana History Wiki / FrontPage

[historyfan]

The Montana Historical Society is our biggest treasure. The photo archive is amazing in itself. It is worth a trip to Helena. Some of the holdings are digitized. The Chronicles of America link on the society's research webpage will take you to the early Montana newspapers they have contributed. It is an ongoing project. I have found people that I was researching in old Yellowstone Daily Journal newspapers that were next to impossible to locate in censuses.*

If you are research minded and are traveling with someone who is not interested in spending hours in the library, they can go through the museum exhibits while you are looking at old records. If you do use the research center be sure to take a thumb drive to copy any computer files onto. The staff is very knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

The society's facebook page mentioned on the wiki page is always full of interesting tidbits.

[MaBonnema]

Today was kinda rough... mom's cat was looking for her "buddy" and meowing like crazy because he wasnt there. I got up to feed him and it hit me that he wasn't there anymore.
Then mom's cat... she is strictly mom's cat... doesnt like for me to pet her or cuddle her... the only time she likes me is when she is hungry or wants to go out... well she came up to me and head butted me and just laid her head on my arm and purred then just lay there for a few minutes.
Animals are not stupid!!! She knew I was sad. Then she reached up with her paw and touched my face.
It's hard.. but I did what was best for Bruno.

Onto a lighter note:
@Rez... I looked and there are Pilot/Flying J's all along our route.
So I will be trying to make fuel stops where they will be.

I did manage to get the yard with the weed eater and will mow the grass later this evening when the sun has set some.
Repacked the trunk of the car and purged things again. Now down to 4 plastic totes that I will fit in the trunk and what things I can stuff around them. Then we will tie the trunk lid down. Mom's walker I will bungee to the top of the trunk. Now only just a few things left out that will fit in the back seat and floor board.
If mom's money is in the bank on the 2nd @ 10 am.. then we are pulling out of here at 10:05.

[Reziac]

Went into Three Forks (on an otherwise fruitless trip) and noticed a banner on this old building... seems a couple years ago they moved the old rail depot from Trident. Pretty much all that was saved of the whole town. It's a neat building... the old wood smells very nice. It's right next to the visitor info center in the old caboose.

The big red barn from Trident was moved down to Nelson Road back around 1976 (I lived just up the way at the time, and got pictures of the barn enroute... cost the guy $25 for the barn and $8000 to move it, still a bargain!) but seems to have been built over to the point that now you can hardly see it!

MaB, you be in touch, hear?