A Little Bit of Everything......

Monday was an amazing day, and our third day in the RV ghetto at the Super Walmart in Kalispell, MT.  Now that the weekend is past the ghetto has begun to thin out a lot.  By early afternoon the number of RV's in residence had dropped to a dozen.

Since we were going to stay here a couple more days I decided to tilt up the solar panels to get a better angle on the sun.  We are parked facing almost directly east, and the sun passes along the passenger side of the coach, or south side.  Since it is a little more in the southern part of the sky tilting the solar panels toward that direction allows the sun light to hit the panels more directly, and we get more amps into the batteries more quickly.

This turned out to be a good decision, because in spite of the fact a lot of clouds came in later in the day we got the batteries back to 100% with a little help from the Honda 1000 watt generator.

Next up on the agenda was to get the bikes out and take a ride around the neighborhood, and stop in at the local Starbucks for coffee and a pastry.  We headed out around 9 am along the bike path that borders the entire shopping mall, crossed US-93 to the Starbucks and settled in for a nice breakfast......a apple fritter for me, and an "everything" bagel for TLE along with coffees.   We haven't been to a Starbucks for breakfast in a long, long time, but it is always nice.

From there we continued riding the bike path south on US-93 to a point where it crossed under the highway and went into a large sports park......I mean a LARGE sports park.....8-10 baseball diamonds, 6-8 football fields, and an enormous soccer park.  The trail wound around the interior of the park, and eventually we found ourselves back out on the street near the local high school.  On our way back to the coach we stopped in at Radio Shack to pick up a couple of items I needed for my shop.  By the time we reached the coach we had traveled just over 6 miles.

Then it was time to do some work on the coach.....you will recall we had the water incursion into the kitchen area of the coach back in East Glacier during the torrential downpour, and I needed to remove the wood flooring to get everything dried out.  Fortunately the wood floor is Pergo Interlocking Engineered Wood, and you can take it apart like a puzzle.  Once you get the first board out it is easy to unlock the others.  I had to remove 8, or 9 boards to expose all the wet area.  You can see how Newell puts down a linoleum moisture barrier on the entire interior of the coach.  This keeps water from getting into the wood subfloor.

Once the old padding was exposed I used a Stanley knife to cut out the padding so I could take it outside to dry where I stacked the individual flooring pieces.  Then put the fan on the floor to blow air on the wettest area.  Ultimately I had to move the boards inside the trailer late in the day when it began to threaten rain.

Once everything is dried out I'll put back in the padding, then snap the individual floor pieces back in place.....I'm sure it will be a little more difficult putting it back together, but within a couple of days that will be done, too.

By this time it was getting on to 3 pm, and after all that sweaty work we decided to shower, and then drive down to Bigfork, which is on the east side of Flathead Lake.  Of course, our reason for driving 23 miles was to visit Flathead Lake Brewing Company.  The drive down was beautiful, and it began to rain intermittently.  By the time we arrived a little after 4:30 it stopped raining, and we sat down outside quickly ordering a couple of pints of their Buffalo Brown Ale.....no, TLE is not two fisting the beers!  Yelp gives this micro brewery 4 stars, and we would have to agree.....a solid 4 stars for a very nice beer selection, and wait staff!

We ordered an appetizer plate to go along with the beer, and quickly noticed we had some unwanted visitors.....about 3 yellow jackets that would not leave us alone.

Of course the fearless small game hunter, TLE, quickly employed two empty pint glasses to capture two of them, and dispatched the third to insect heaven.  I sat there trying to help, but the only thing I captured was a piece of salmon from the appetizer plate.  TLE, you are my hero!

The captured yellow jackets

Once the pesky yellow jackets were contained the rest of their compadres hovering just out of reach, apparently in fear of their safety, vanished.  The view from the deck was very nice!

Flathead Lake across the street from the deck

We sat there for over an hour enjoying the late afternoon air, and breeze before it was time to head back home as it was getting on to 6 pm.  As we drove back around the lake to US-93 it began to rain again, and this time quite hard.  Just as we were coming back into the southern part of Kalispell we spied a liquor store and decided to stop in.  Like many other states, Montana taxes hard liquor quite heavily.  A half gallon bottle of Dewar's White Label costs almost $51! Back in California it costs around $29.  There are a lot of things I don't like about California, but alcohol prices are much, much lower than most other places we have been.

When we got back to the RV ghetto it was obvious it had rained quite hard for some time while we were gone, and it was still sprinkling a bit as we exited the T-Bird.  By this time it was after 7, and time for an early evening nap!  At 9 we watched the finale of the Bachelorette, and really liked the way it came out.  My Dodgers won their 15th consecutive road game against the Cardinals, so all is good in the world.  It has been a lot of years since I've followed the Dodgers very closely, so it's nice to see them doing well this year.

Thanks for stopping by!