Mountain Flying Museum

It's at the Missoula airport.  Underwhelming but still worth the visit.  This replica of the Red Baron's plane was based on a scale model; the builder was unable to locate the original plans.

I recall seeing pictures of this in some magazine, don't recall who made it or what it's called.

The venerable DC-3, military version C-47.  This one was refurbished and flown across the pond to celebrate the anniversary of D Day.

 I rode in these several times, first in the forest service en route to a fire in the Seven Devils Wilderness.  Indeed, it was a Johnson Flying Service plane and may have been this one.  Johnson was an aviation pioneer and pilot trainer, trained several thousand air force pilots.

C-47s were one of the workhorses in Vietnam, flew in them several times.

This is the front end of the plane above.

Missoula, MT

Young love with Griz on the University of Montana Campus.

Caras Park - as in carousel.

 Hiyo Silver!  Or: Trigger, Bucephalus, Man o' War, Secretariat, Buttermilk.

Cool rock sculpture of daredevil kayak dude that dared one too many in South America.

Smokejumper Tour

Missoula, MT has a smokejumper base that we toured yesterday.  Very impressive, real-deal, facility for training, outfitting, maintaining, etc.  The chap below is wearing the typical jumping outfit.

5% of smokejumpers are women.  They have to be as strong as their male counterparts, able to carry well above their own body weight for several miles.  Treat 'em with respect or get your butt kicked!

I've never been inclined to jump out of a perfectly good airplane for any reason whatsoever.  But - I would seriously considerate it if my jumping companion looked like the one below.  Typical on-the-job equipment is displayed here.

Chute packing.  Jumpers pack their own chutes so they're very careful, takes 45 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on level of expertise.  The woman on the left was our tour guide.

This is precisely how I feel about 'chuting'.

The Twin Otter plane is used for jumping.

The Sherpa aircraft is becoming the new favorite, retired military planes that have lots more space than the Otters. 

Pickleball in Usk, WA

LHC friends David Rossing, Grant and Kathy Brock own RV sites in a campground in Usk, WA.  Where the hell is Usk, you may ask.  I certainly did.  It's a small village 50 miles north of Spokane.  Trish and I stopped there for 5 days to visit - and play pickleball!

The Brocks had a 60' by 30' concrete pad laid on their large corner lot.  On August 10th, we chalked court lines and played PB there for the first time.  Next year, there will be permanent lines and most likely a painted surface also.

Many thanks to the Rossings and Brocks for inviting us to visit and arranging a free site for our RV!  And thank you, Trish, for your sport photography.

God's Country

A blurb I found online:
Wisconsin, a state in the United States of America, commonly referred to as "God's Country", with many businesses throughout the state using some form of the nickname. Otter Tail County, Minnesota, a county in rural Minnesota containing over 1,000 lakes, commonly referred to locally as "God's Country".

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Otter Tail County, never heard it called God's Country.  About as far from it as you can get in my humble opinion.

Trish and I returned to our definition of GC when we hit the Rocky Mountains and Glacier Nat'l Park a few days ago.  GC for us means interesting terrain, sun, warm, dry - with darned few flies and skeeters.  After 6 weeks of  the flat, rainy, buggy, humid Midwest we were delighted to be back in our favorite part of the world.

This monument to Teddy Roosevelt welcomed us back to GC.  It is on US highway 2 in Montana, at Marias Pass; highway 2 is known as the Roosevelt Highway.  The bronze chap to the right of the obelisk is the guy that surveyed the area for the railroad. 

Great Plains Dinosaur Museum

Malta, MT has a small dino museum.  Not impressive, mostly small pieces of bone and a few casts.  These colorful guys (gals?) are fun, though.

This critter reminded me of Star Wars character, Jar Jar Binks.

Rustyjunkosauros.

Combine!

It's the talk of the town and a must see, according to our hosts, Tom and Louise, LHC friends.  The town is Willow City, ND, population 162.  We stopped there to visit, parked the RV on their lot - with full hookups, no less.  The combine is new, cost $650K, and it's a huge mutha.

Kevin, proud owner of the combine, and his 2 sons, have 5,000 acres in crops.  Incredible that 3 men can handle that much acreage.  They couldn't do that without the help of this tractor, though.

Just kidding.  The old tractor still runs but the one below is the current edition.

This little doohickey is called a header; it fits on the front of the combine, cuts a 40' swath.  We got our first combine (on the family farm in MN) in the early 60s.  It could pick up one windrow, the result of a 6' swath.



My, how the times have changed!  I spent 100s of hours on tractors back in the day.  They had hard metal seats with hardly any springs, no cabs - sore butts and a dirt diet.  Now: enclosed cabs with cushy seats, A/C, fridge, microwave, stereo, computer.  As far as I know, they haven't added toilets yet.  Maybe next year's model.