Friday, September 20, 2013

An Amazing Day!

Thursday dawned partly cloudy, but the weather guessers were guessing that it would be mostly sunny.  By the time I finished my blog post TLE was up, and we headed into Cracker Barrel for breakfast.  I chose the simple oatmeal breakfast with a blueberry muffin, and TLE had eggs and bacon with some biscuits.   I love breakfast at Cracker Barrel for so many reasons.....the food is consistent, it is good, and it comes quickly!


We were on the road by 8:15, but only for a short distance......Thursday it was time to "pay the rent".  The last time we put diesel in our tank was back in Columbia Falls, MT about 40 days previously.  We still had half a tank, but we had 610 miles to go to Sidney, MT, and diesel is not going to get much less expensive.  We found a Pilot truck stop just 8 miles west on I-90 so we exited there.  We have a Flying J/Pilot RV card which gives us 3 cents off each gallon, so we took on about 107 gallons at $3.83/gallon.  Using those high volume truck pumps is wonderful.....takes the same length of time it takes fill up the T-Bird.  

By this time the skies had cleared as promised, and the drive southeast was just beautiful.  We were steadily gaining altitude from the moment we left Missoula (3,000' elevation) until we arrived in Fairmont Hot Springs, Mt (5,000' elevation), but the grade was so gradual I hardly noticed it.  I only had to shift down to 4th gear one time, otherwise the Allison tranny kept us plugging along at our usual 60 mph.

Just east of Missoula

TLE needed to do some quick shopping to pick up a few things and said there was a Safeway in Deer Lodge, MT, so we exited there around 10:30.....the supermarket was just a mile, or so off the Interstate and we were back on and continuing our drive southeast by 10:45.  Our plans were to meet our good friends Tom and Darlene McCloud in Fairmont Hot Springs.  They are heading south to Arizona, and we to Sidney, MT so we managed to work out our schedules so we could spend a day together, and I am so glad we did.

Nearing Anaconda, MT

We arrived at Fairmont RV Resort just after 11 am, and were checked into site #59 within minutes.  Of course, Tom and Darlene were there to greet us, and we spent the next hour catching up before getting a quick bite to eat, and then heading over to Fairmont Hot Springs Resort to spend a few hours soaking in the indoor pools.

Our site, and the view

Around 1 pm we headed over to the hot springs resort.....it is only a short walk.  I never know what to expect when I visit a hot springs....sometimes what you get are a couple of crude pools in the middle of a field, but this resort blew my socks off.  They have spring fed pools inside, and outside.....it was in the low 50's so we chose to use the indoor pools.  Even though none of us is 65 (the age at which they give a senior citizen discount) the lady gave all four of us the discount....I'm not quite sure how to take that, but it's half price, so who's complaining, right?

The pool below is the bigger of the two and is kept just around body temperature....


The smaller pool (below) is kept at 103-104 degrees, and is where we spent a lot of time.


Tom took this picture.....it looks like the girls are getting ready to baptize me, huh?


We soaked, and talked until well after 3:30, then headed back to the coaches.  I had a little insurance work to attend to, and took a nap.  We reconvened over at Tom and Darlene's coach for dinner around 5.....Lasagna, garlic toast, and salad.  Of course the conversation continued unabated until after 7 pm when we decided to head back over to the hot springs for another dip.  We soaked, and talked until 8:45, then headed home in the 43 degree outside temperature.  The predicted low for the night was 33, and I can tell you with some authority it got at least that cold last night.

Of course, earlier in the day Tom had declared Thursday night to be "movie night", so we scrolled through the available movies and I chose "Hunger Games".  Only Tom had seen it before, and said he didn't mind seeing it again, so we settled in to watch the movie.  It was very interesting, while quite disturbing at the same time.  At any rate we enjoyed the movie, then bid adieu to our friends around 11:45.....we'll continue our journey eastward toward Sidney Friday, while Tom and Darlene will continue south into Idaho.

Once again the magic of meetups on the road produced an amazing day......one that will be remembered, and thought about until next we meet again.  I am so glad we arrived here so early in the day, because that enabled us to spend a lot of quality time with our friends.

Just a side note.....my Dodgers clinched first place in their division last night by defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 7-6....I am sorry that came at the expense of our friend's home team....okay....really just a little bit sorry.

Thanks for stopping by!

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