We left promptly at 9 am as planned on Wednesday, August 10. Our goal was Haugen, MT, where we like to spend the night. The 50,000 Silver Dollar stop offers free electricity, which is hard to pass by for us RVers
Traffic going out of town wasn’t too bad. We were about 15 miles from home, heading east on I-90, when something happened. Roger was driving and all he could say was, “We don’t have a transmission. The transmission has died.” What that means for those who know as much as I about cars is that you could move the shifter to D or N or R – it didn’t make any difference, nothing happened. We were dead in the water to quote the famous Veggie Tales!! There was an exit right there (notice the timing of this). Roger immediately steered to exit and since it was downhill, we made it to the end. It was a right turn only at the bottom, but the road went uphill and we didn’t have much momentum left. The light up the hill was red, so there was no traffic (accidental?). Roger quickly turned left and coasted across the 4 lanes to the shoulder. He turned the engine off and we sat stunned. This year has been extremely expensive having an R.V., but we still think it’s the best thing for us to use to reach the family.
After turning off the engine, he prayed – not much of a prayer – just “HELP”. Then he turned the engine back on, and the transmission engaged!! It has not been an issue since then – no more problems!!
The next night was in Billings, MT. We love to shop there because there is no tax! One Walmart in town doesn’t want RV overnighters, but the second one welcomed us! While the days were very hot (close to 100o’s) the nights cooled completely.
We arrived at our son Josh’s on Friday afternoon. They were waiting for us to babysit! The bad news was that Josh would only spend 1 day with us before going back to work. And our son Alan would only spend 2 of the 3 days. These were the "local" family members! We had counted on them for additional transportation and guidance as to where to go and what to see.
Saturday we drove into town to finish up some details for the time together as a family. The first flight arrived at 6:20 pm. We rented 2 cars at the airport as we couldn’t get a 15 passenger van. When I researched online, there was nothing larger than a 5 passenger vehicle. But when we got there, they had a 7 passenger van that we could get. Besides people to transport, we had a large wheelchair.
2 hours later the others arrived and we were all here! That evening we played a few mixer/get acquainted games in our room. 24 of the 26 total were there. Our second oldest granddaughter chose not to come with her family. We all had chili in the room and most went swimming in the hotel pool (there’s a nice water slide, too!).
Sunday most of them went to church with us. The music is always exceptional and it was again. We enjoy the pastor – he uses a lot of humor and makes good sense. It’s a church we usually attend when in town.
After dinner, we all got together for a family picture. One of the granddaughters is into photography so she was our “photographer”. Then some went swimming in the hotel; some went out to a lake; some went shopping and I (Heather) laid down for a short rest!! I served bar-b-que pork for an evening meal.
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