Divergent.....

7:05 am - Saturday - July 18th - Harlowton, MT - 52° F, 86% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the southwest.....clear, blue skies this morning with a forecast high of 78° F.  We roll our wheels in two hours!

I neglected to write about a couple of 'fixes' I took care of on Thursday.  A few weeks ago when we were removing the VW from the trailer on uneven ground at Yellowstone Hot Springs the weight of the VW cracked the ramp which folds down at the end of the larger trailer ramp.  I have been thinking about how to fix that short of replacing the entire hinged board.  While we were at the Napa Automotive/Hardware store on Thursday I found they had a 4' long piece of flat steel, which when cut into four 12" strips could be used to reinforce that crack, so I bought it.    Upon our return to the Newell I set about first cutting it into four equal strips, then drilling 7 holes in each piece....that took a long time even though I clamped the four pieces together in my vice so I was able to drill one hole, but through all four pieces at the same time.  Once that was done I laid out the four drilled pieces and began to fasten them to the board with 28 self tapping screws......

.....once all the screws were in the crack was no longer unstable.....we'll see how it reacts when we reinsert the VW on Saturday.  Another fix was to reattach one of the two rubber bumpers on the tailgate to keep the metal off the ground when the ramp is down for removal, or insertion......

.....I noticed the other day that the right one was quite loose, and ready to fall to the ground.  The screws which attach these rubber bumpers are also self tapping, so I just reattached it in a different spot using a nut driver in my Porter Cable impact drill.  Okay, that catches us up on Thursday, so on to Friday!

When you travel with someone there come times when you each decide on divergent travel plans on a given day.  Sometimes one leaves way before the other with the agreement to meet at a destination certain at the end of the day.  Sometimes you both decide to take divergent routes to the same place, but arrive there on different days, and that was the case Friday.  Claude and Gail wanted to travel northwest to a Montana town called Choteau where Claude, as a young child, visited back in the late 50's....they wanted to leave Friday, but we wanted to stay one more day before heading to Lake Frances, MT, where we will once again join forces.

Around 10 am TLE and I decided to walk into town to a coffee shop (Sun Dog Café) we had walked by on Thursday when we did our 3.21 mile loop walk for breakfast while Claude and Gail were putting their stuff away for a planned 11:30 am departure......

....it's about a mile to the coffee shop walking our loop in a clockwise fashion, and we arrived there within 20 minutes after a brisk walk.....

.....we both had coffee while TLE had a scone, and I a bagel.  I've had better bagels, but he coffee was very good......

.....we continued our clockwise walk through 'old town' back to the Napa Automotive/Hardware store to buy some fluorescent tubes for the trailer lights.  It's been a few years since I replaced them, and two of the three fixtures were starting to flicker like they do when they are about to burn out.  I needed two 28" tubes, and two 36" tubes (thought), which they had.  As it turned out the tubes in the longest fluorescent fixture are really 48" in length, which I found out upon return home....doh!

Shortly after we arrived home Claude and Gail were read to roll their wheels......

....we'll see them again Saturday afternoon.....safe travels Claude and Gail!

The high temp for Friday was to be 88° F, and by 1 pm we had to turn on the A/C....thank goodness for reliable 50 amp power!  The one thing which wasn't reliable Friday was the local cell phone service....we lost all broadband around mid afternoon, and it just returned sometime during the early morning hours.  One tends to forget how reliant we are upon good, uninterrupted cell phone service until it disappears....you suddenly feel cut off from the world, and wonder if you are missing anything important.  Well, the chances are you are not, and we did not.  The world was still turning on its axis this morning when I got up to find service had been restored.

It began to rain about 3 pm, and rained on and off the rest of the afternoon, evening, and early morning, but we will have clear, cool skies as we continue our way northwest through Great Falls to Lake Frances....thanks for stopping by!

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