The Road Home - Montana and Washington
17 September 2021
Our last 1-week stay this season is in tiny Garrison, Montana. This was planned mostly as a stopping point halfway to Spokane, WA, and we didn’t want to push through to Missoula because Henrys Lake was just water and electric sites, meaning we had to dump the tanks on our travel day. On top of that, the dump station at Henrys Lake was out of service, meaning we had to spend $80 on a 1-night stay fee at the private RV park across the highway… just so we could spend 20 minutes on site during our travel day to empty the tanks. Most expensive dump ever.
Garrison is hardly a town, as far as we could tell it’s just an RV park, a mechanic’s shop, and a few scattered houses. Deer Lodge is “town”, 15 minutes south on I-90. It’s got a good city playground, a historic prison (not doing that again!), a car museum and, unexpectedly, a national historic site.
The car museum was actually pretty impressive, with hundreds of examples spanning from very early Benz and Dodge models up through about 1980. The kids and I ran out of energy before running out of museum - Audrey gets credit for her patience going through there.
The national historic site is Grant-Kohrs ranch, the home base of a once-vast ranching empire spanning 10 million acres at its height. The Park Service maintains it as a working historic ranch, keeping cattle just as they did in the 1800s. It’s a hoot and absolutely unexpected in this quiet corner of the state.
We started school this week as well, something we did not expect to be doing when we set out last fall! So the kids will do two grades while on the road. It feels exciting to get to try again at homeschooling, Kristin is much happier with this year’s curriculum.
Our last week was spent with family. My sister moved to Spokane Valley, WA in 2020, and I haven’t seen her family or my new nephew Benjamin since probably December 2019! So we were excited to get to stay in her driveway and hang out with the cousins. My parents even came out so we could get my whole immediate family together again. It was a fun stay and Whitney’s family seems to have found a great little home.
The last part of the week was with my aunt and uncle in Walla Walla, WA. They have a really big yard and, interestingly, we’ve stayed there in RVs twice before for family get-togethers. They would rent a travel trailer for us and have it parked on their land because there wasn’t enough room in the house - so this was something of a full circle experience to stay there in our own rig! They were kind hosts and even watched the kids so Kristin and I could have a date night. The kids enjoyed a huge yard to play in and roam around, something they don’t usually get at RV parks!
So now we turn our wheels toward the last travel day of this season. Originally we planned to be in Portland for 3 weeks to take care of appointments, see friends and family, and check in on the house. After that we wanted to turn right around and hit the road earlier than we did last year. Florida is far away! But plans have since changed. The medical issues that I’ve been dealing with since June have not been diagnosed or effectively treated at all. It’s really affecting our life now, with me being so tired and having other weird symptoms. So our plan is to see as many doctors as necessary to get a diagnosis and treatment plan - however long that takes. We may be in Portland until next summer, or we may be turning around in 3 weeks as planned. We just don’t know. It is exciting to have the chance to get continuity of care, or to be able to schedule appointments with multi-week lead times. But that we’ll be “stuck” is a little sad. We’ll see!
It’s a rare thing to get to return home after being away so long. I hope to see it anew.
