Greetings from Moscow! Moscow, Idaho that is. We're here for a week of RV Life on Wheels conference. It's like going back to college for a week, but all the classes are about living in RVs. The classes are held at the University of Idaho, and they start tomorrow. Today, we're just getting settled in and oriented. To get here, we drove over the Lolo pass and down the canyon created by the Lochsa river. What a gorgeous road - also called the Lewis and Clark Highway in Idaho. Once we got to the bottom - we had to go back up again. Very different landscape as we got closer to Moscow. Back to fields and farmlands again. There are supposed to be 650 RVs registered for the conference, and they will all be parked on campus. Here's where Diane & Andy and 'Odie's roadies' are parked: So different from the Hutchinson rally where thousands of RVs arrived in the rain. Here the weather is gorgeous and there are lots of folks giving guidance. Once we were guided to our site and hooked up to the electric, we went to the registration tent and then went on an orientation tour around the campus. Pretty huh? One of the first events that will happen tonight is 'Open House' .. or, rather Open RV. How much better to see RVs that are already lived in and talk to the owners, rather than look at brand new ones and talk to a salesperson. Anyone who is willing to have people come in and visit their RV puts a bright green sign in their window "I love to talk about my RV!". When you see that sign tonight, you can visit. I love it! There's one problem though ... "I love to talk about my RV!" But, I also want to visit others. I guess Jim and I will have to take turns or something. Later.

Traveling Companions We had a pretty short day planned today. We're going to travel together to Moscow, Idaho for the conference and we'll take 2 days to get there. Here are our rigs, all hooked up and ready to go. We're traveling over the Lolo pass today, going to Idaho. This was one of the roughest segments that Lewis and Clarke had to traverse. I figure it's not often you can get a photo of your rig on the road. And we were on such a pretty road. So, I took lots of photos of Diane and Andy's Itasca Spirit towing their Honda Element. We found nice spots at the 'Gateway to the Wilderness' campground in Clearwater National Forest. Look at this nice river that's just behind our site. We took a walk to an overlook. And, before you know it, it's happy hour time!

Friends! Diane and Andy (see their blog here) left Fort Lauderdale in their motorhome this past January. We left in April. They traveled west, then north. We traveled North, then west. They tried to escape ... but we caught them!! We told them about the conference (RV Life on Wheels) that we're going to ... and they decided to go too!! Cool! We arrived in Missoula yesterday afternoon and we had been assigned the campsite right next to them. They were out and about, but they left us this note, aren't they cute?! Here they are, arriving home a little later: We had a fabulous time just chatting, and chatting, and drinking, and chatting some more. If you read their blog, you'll see that they are much more active outdoors than we have been, and they had already checked out a whitewater rafting trip for us all to take today. Hey! We're game. I guess we just need someone to push us a little. It is SOO great to be with friends! So, here we are at the outfitters. Actually, this is after the river rafting. We couldn't take our camera with us on the trip for fear it would get drowned! So, you can see we made it! Here are a couple photos we purchased from the outfitters. Pretty cool, their photographer knows just when we would be running the best rapids and made sure to be in place to catch these great photos. I know we're not readily identifiable here so ... Jim is in the bow of the boat on the left, Andy is on the right. I'm behind Andy and Diane is to my left. When we started out, Diane and I were in the front of the boat. I have done this before, so I knew that the front was the most fun. Yes, you also get the most wet - but it really is fun. So, halfway thru we switched places with they guys. And I dare you to find any of us in this photo! What a great day! We're all off tomorrow, headed towards the conference at Moscow, Idaho. We will be traveling highway 12 which follows the Lewis and Clark route. Oh ... the river that we ran today was the Clark Fork .. named for guess who??

Greetings from Montana (via Tetons and Yellowstone) Yep, Montana! The last thing you read in this Blog was about Thermopolis, Wyoming. I'm 2 days behind! We've been busy going thru Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks. We took over 100 photos. That's a lot to sort thru! OK, let's see if I can remember where we've been and what we've done .... After leaving Thermopolis, we thought it was going to be uneventful until we hit the parks. We were wrong. Soon we were in the Wind River Canyon. It was spectacular. Reminded me a little of the Cheddar Gorge in England. We went thru 3 tunnels in a row. You can also see the railroad tunnel on the other side of the river: So, we're on our way to Grand Teton National Park. Yes, Emily, we rearranged our route a little to see them! But, I'm afraid you still have to go there in person because we only spent 1/2 day and our photos do not do justice! You have to see for yourself! But, here goes ... We crosed the continental divide before seeing the Tetons and saw some pretty spectacular Rocky Mountains. I was almost beginning to wonder if I would recognize the Tetons when we saw them, when we came around a corner and they smacked us in the face! It was such an awesome sight that it brought tears to my eyes! The photograph doesn't come close. You have to be there. Then they got closer and closer Then we pulled into our campground and CRASH - unbelievable!! a national park maintenance crew in a van backed into our motorhome. They obviously didn't see us ... we're only 12 feet high and 9 feet wide! Jim even honked the horn as they backed up, not believing they would really continue to back up and run into us. We were at a dead standstill just waiting to pull into our campsite. AaAaaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh. Well, it sounded a lot worse than it was. They broke our front license plate (the Odie's Roadies that Lynne and John gave us :-( and bent the bumper in so it rubbed the front tire. They were very apologetic and the reporting procedure was quite efficient. They sent us to a service station nearby to bend and cut the bumper so it doesn't rub and we will visit a body shop soon to deal with whatever front end damage we can't see. Anyways ... after that, we drank heavily and went to bed. On to Yellowstone ... We don't have much time, so we knew our main stop was Old Faithful. We just had to see that famous geyser, and we did. Click on the link to see a little video - it'll probably take a while to download. Old Faithful.MPG And, here are some photos: The area around Old Faithful: Notice the Yellow Stone (thanx to Andy for pointing this out to us .. Yellow Stone = Yellowstone!) And, here's the only Buffalo we saw all day: What is really amazing about Yellowstone is how the thermal activity covers such a large area - steam was coming out of the ground for miles and miles and miles ... Yellowstone isn't just about thermal activity, there's some beautiful rivers too. And wide open vistas. We crossed the continental divide several times. There was a time in my life I would have wanted to go backpacking along the Continental Divide Trail. Now, I am perfectly happy looking at it from the comfort of my motorhome! And saw beautiful wildflowers: Then we had to leave on this beautiful but kinda scary road. This is the road to the north entrance. That's all folks! Here's a map of the route we took thru the area. As you can see, we barely scratched the surface. We will have to come back sometime when we have more time. I'd like to maybe get a workamping job in Wyoming and stay a whole summer sometime.