Big catch up

We moved from Ennis up to Anaconda, home of a large copper smelting plant and in 1919 built the highest, 585' masonry smokestack in the world, which is still there today.  The smelter was shut down in 1980 by the Atlantic Richfield Company.  It is only a few miles from Butte.  We arrived at the Fairmont RV Park and after a mixup with sites got it all straightened out and got into a decent pull through with nice views.  We had been told about a neat fishing area near Warm Springs so we went over to check it out.  Then went into Butte for a good lunch at Sparky's Garage.  Ran around a bit, went grocery shopping, and called it a day.

The next day we went over and fished in Warm Springs with no luck, said enough and went and had a great lunch in Anaconda at Donivan's recommended to us by Dave and Lingky, very good!

Decided to drive down to the Big Hole River, beautiful drive only interrupted by a 45 minute delay for construction, we were very glad we didn't have the motorhome as we were led for miles by a pilot car on rough, dirty, wet construction roads.  But we got there   and found a beautiful river with trout jumping!  We found an access and started fishing immediately, and what a time we had.  Caught many fish right from the bank, it was fantastic. 

The Big Hole River

Fish on!

My whitefish

Jan's trout

We moved up the river a bit, found a nice spot for a picnic.

Our picnic view

The scenery is awesome

We continued up the river a bit after lunch and found a cool access with campsites right on the river.  We scoped it out and although no hookups, some of the sites are big enough to accommodate us.  We giving it some thought to coming back here after our month in Missoula.  Then we drove up the Wise River, but it didn't have a lot of access and was very small so we didn't try to fish, instead we went back along the Big Hole for coffee and fished for awhile, then headed back.

What a gorgeous place

Jan managed to get her hair cut in Butte, and we were able to walk on a nice paved path near the campground out through the meadows.  Next we wanted to check out the Missouri River for fishing.

We had heard and read quite a bit about this river, all of it good.  There is a 30 mile section of river below the Holter Lake dam that supposedly holds a ton of fish, more than 5000/mile, and more than that they are supposed to be mostly large fish.  You hear a lot of stories like this along the way, so we wanted to go and see for ourselves.  We moved to the Prewett Creek RV Park near Cascade, MT.  It is right along the river in a very interesting topographical area, lots of rocky cliffs with the river meandering through. Up closer to the dam, upstream, but south of here, meadows are the predominant feature, with the hills and mountains in the background.  

The view from our site
We would watch eagles soar around the cliffs

View the other way with a storm coming in

We were surprised by the river, it is slow running, very shallow, very weedy, and not at all what we expected.  Our campground is about 50 miles north of Helena and 30 miles south of Great Falls, and we can attest to the fact there is not much here in this area, no grocery stores even, in fact other than fly shops and bars, not much else.  But we found the fishermen flock to this area, particularly in June and July for amazing dry fly fishing.  

First we took a drive to Helena, poked around, had a so so lunch at a pizza place there, made a Costco run, did some grocery shopping, and came back to check out a fly shop and drive along the river.  We had done some further research online and found that this time of year was usually pretty slow as the river tended to be warm in late summer, and the weeds were overwhelming.  We talked to a fly shop and asked about it and they confirmed that was usually true, and the fishing was slower than normal, but this year wasn't like most years, they had had more rain, cooler days, and for August the fishing was pretty good.  Not a glowing report.  Back to the campground where we were visited by 25 or so bighorn sheep!  The owner of the park said the ewes and the young ones come down out of the mountains most every day, meander through the campground, cross the road, go down to the river and then make their way back up for the night, meanwhile the rams stay up there.

We were also visited by several mule deer and their fawns, and our neighbor saw a black bear swim across the river and climb over a hill.  Pretty neat stuff!

We also wanted to make a run up to Great Falls, look around a bit although we had been there before, and found a neat place to have lunch, the Roadhouse Diner.  It is only open 4 days a week, everything fresh made, basically a hamburger joint.  Friendly, hopping, and very good.

Over our tasty lunch we discussed whether to take a float trip or not.  It seemed we weren't here at the optimum time, but for this time, things looked about as good as they could be.  We couldn't figure a way to come back easily at the best time, so we finally decided to just go book a trip if we could.  We also looked at the weather, especially for the wind report to try to find the best day with mostly calm winds, and picked Tuesday our last day here.  They were able to accommodate us.  On Sunday, the winds showed us what it was all about!  They roared in with a rain shower here and there, enough that the coach was rocking and a rollin.  It was awful and all we could envision was being out on the river trying to put up with it.  So we kept our fingers crossed until Tuesday, and sure enough the morning looked great, we met our guide at 7am with not a cloud in the sky and not a breath of wind.  ALL RIGHT!

Our guide rigging up getting ready for our day

We started right under the dam, nymphing, and were told there were rarely any weeds way up there.  We found that to be true, and just as we started our first drift, pow I caught a nice rainbow!

First fish of the day

Well that just started it, we caught fish after fish, our guide would row back up so we could drift back down, and fish after fish.  And, for us, they were big fish, and fighters.  Our guide kept saying these were small compared to what the river offered.  We had heard that story before as well.

Jan with perhaps the smallest fish she caught all day

We caught fish all morning long.  We pulled into a little spot for our lunch, then switched up to fish hoppers, grasshopper imitations on the surface, dry fly fishing, most every fly fisher's choice.  Also the weeds were getting prolific, so fishing a dry fly kept us out of most of the weeds.  As we drifted along with the sun high in the sky, and the water crystal clear, we could actually see the fish in the river, and now that we've seen them with our own eyes, they are huge!  And the river is teeming with them, but since they are fished so hard and they didn't get this big by being stupid, it is hard to catch them.  We gave it a gallant effort, each of us had a few strikes, but we never boated a fish that afternoon.  It was difficult, but really exciting to watch an enormous fish come up and eat your hopper, and yank like you couldn't believe.  If we hadn't been able to see the fish, we might have thought it was all a crap story, but I can tell you, somehow we will come back to this river.  Now we understand why many fishermen only fish this river, it sure spoils you bad, even if we didn't get one all afternoon.  We ended up not caring too much for our guide, but we will say he certainly put us on the fish.

You can see here how shallow most of the river is,
with the wader way out from shore

Pretty day

Some white pelicans taking a break

So today we move over to Missoula for a month, very unusual for us.  Last year we spent 3 weeks here and we wanted to go back.  We hope to do at least one more float trip there, although we both admit we are kind of spoiled now.

What a week!

Ennis, tough to explain, it keeps drawing us.  It sits in the Madison River Valley which arguably is one of the very prettiest valleys in the state, and let me tell you, that is saying something!  This made our 3rd year to visit, and each time it has been a bit longer.  Funny, because it is a tiny town, infatuated with fly fishing.  There are at least 4 fly shops in town, tons of guides, so it just exudes fly fishing, being right on the famous Madison River completes the picture.  Population is just over 900, but I'm sure it swells in the summer.  It has a nice, but small walk around downtown, numerous shops, bars, and restaurants, an incredible meat market that can compete with any we've seen anywhere, and a very friendly feel.  We stay at the Ennis RV Village which is just north of town, and we've been lucky enough to snag one of the stellar sites in the back, only 10 for motorhomes that look out unobstructed over the valley.

Our awesome site!

The row of motorhome sites

One of our goals while here was to take another float trip, so we went to see if we could get a reservation at Trout Stalkers and were able to set it up for Monday morning.  Walked around town and then stopped at Deemo's Meats for the first time:-)  Steak for dinner!

Beef, it's what's for dinner!
It was fantastic

Had some rain showers move through most of Sunday, cool, windy, a perfect day to stay inside, watch the showers with lightning and thunder move over the mountains, and make homemade soup.  Then off for our float trip.  We met our guide, Chris bright and early and drove to the put in spot, he got everything rigged up and off we went on a gorgeous day.

The Madison River

Chris getting Jan set up

Having a great time!

We caught so many fish we stopped counting, even got a few good sized ones, we had a wonderful day!

The next day we walked all over town, stopped in a bunch of shops, had a great lunch at the Ennis Cafe and I should mention something.  We noticed they had a Hawg Wing basket on the menu which is very unique, it is actually a piece of a pork shank that we have only seen one other place and that is in Venice, FL at Darrell's.  These things are meaty, tender, flavorful, and absolutely delicious, so we didn't really think they could possibly be as good as Darrell's, but we ordered them, and found out they were every bit as good, perhaps better!

These are the Hawg Wings at the Ennis Cafe

Then we went and stopped at the meat market the 2nd time, and believe it or not bought fresh caught shrimp and king crab legs for dinner.  Imagine that in the middle of Montana.

2 happy campers with drinks and shrimp cocktail

And over drinks and reconfirmed the next day we both said we need to come back next year for a month, so we made our reservation.  We're going to have to keep our fingers crossed until then to see if we get one of the stellar back sites.

Then we woke up to a very disturbing email from our mail forwarder that they were shutting down the business, effective...............IMMEDIATELY!!!!

Now before you wonder why this was so upsetting, for us full-timers, our mail forwarding address not only takes care of our mail, it establishes our residency in the state.  And when they shut their doors, our mail was being sent back to the senders, putting us at the very least in limbo until we could find another forwarder, get a new address, and change everything we can think of over to the new address, and I was expecting meds!  Unlike a normal address where you can fill out a form to change your address at the post office, that option is not available.  So our day that we had planned to go out exploring became one of finding, vetting, signing up for, establishing a new address, and changing over as many entities as we could think of.  

And while we were waiting to hear from this and that, we found out we could wash, so we washed the motorhome and the truck which needed it so badly.  We also took the time to try and wash our radiator stack with degreaser after our hydraulic pump fiasco.  I took the louvers off and after running water through, sprayed it down with degreaser with the engine running to try and suck the degreaser in, let it sit for awhile and then rinsed and rinsed with the engine running to get it as clean as we could.

It was a little difficult as our coolers are in a stack
The bottom is our hydraulic cooler and the top is the CAC,
the actual radiator is behind both of these

I will say though after driving to Anaconda today and coming up a long steep hill of several miles our temp never went above 204df, so I think our hydraulic pump fiasco is over and our new pump is a total success.  An aside here, I showed you our rock ding on the truck, well now after the cool water from washing the windshield, it is now cracked all the way to the top:-)

We knew we wanted to stay Florida residents, after all it has worked well for us since 2004.  So research began.  We found quite a few that fit the bill, Good Sam, Escapees, FMCA, and St Brendan's Isle.  We quickly ruled out Good Sam, we are reluctant members and didn't want to support them for various reasons.  FMCA would give us a mailing address in another state so we ruled them out.  Escapees which has been working with full-timers for years and has a mail forwarding business that has great reputation unfortunately gives you 2 addresses, one in Texas, which is their home state where most of the forwarding takes place, and one in Florida for your government mail, driver's licenses, registration, etc.  We weren't comfortable with juggling 2 different addresses so it brought us back to St Brendan's Isle, a company that has been in business since 1988, and was begun to meet the needs of full time cruisers and boaters, this expanded into RVers, contract nurse and doctors, etc.  After a couple phone calls and filling out some online forms, we set up a new address with them.  They have an excellent reputation and we found them friendly, professional, and informative.  So after a couple hours we had a new address.  And that just opened the can of worms to try to think of all the places that need our address, and then get online to change them.  Anyway it took most of the day, and we still have a few to go, and we keep coming up with just one more:-)  Then back to the meat market for fresh fish, our 3rd visit.  Yummy fresh halibut for dinner tonight and fresh King salmon tomorrow.

So on our last day we were able to get out to visit Virginia City, a historic landmark, and Nevada City, a living history museum.  It was a lot of fun and we had a nice picnic along the Jefferson River.  But all too soon we had to say goodbye to Ennis.  But I want to show you a couple interesting pictures that come under the title of taking your toys with you.

How's this for a rig?

Those are all rhinestones of every color

And per the license, "DIVA", it belongs to and is ridden by a woman

The moon rising on our last evening in Ennis

So after one more visit to the meat market for porterhouse, ribeye, and strip steaks, and short ribs for the freezer, and some fresh veggies, we called it a day, after all we wanted to do our part to keep their business successful:-)

A catch up on our doings

We left you in Wapiti/Cody area and we headed north into Montana, specifically to Moose Creek Flat Campground right on the Gallatin River, we had discovered it last year.  It is about 30 miles south of Bozeman.  Our drive was beautiful and uneventful until we made our turn south from Bozeman.  It looked like we were driving into a wall of weather, lightning crisscrossed the sky and the sounds of thunder were booming even in the motorhome as we drove.  Pretty soon we were in pouring rain, hoping we wouldn't see any hail, luckily we didn't. 

The Gallatin River flows north and for awhile the river looked good, nice and clear and excellent for fishing, but as we proceeded south, the effects of the storm became apparent, the river was noticeable higher and higher and cloudier and cloudier.  Oh no, we came to fish!  The rain continued for several hours.

Our boondock site

The next day dawned bright and clear but the river would take several days to recover.  

Luckily we had a whole day of errands to run in Bozeman, we figured maybe the river would clear in that time.  Off to get the first oil change on the truck, an excellent lunch at Starkey's, grocery shopping, cat stuff, Starbucks, and back.  Then about 2 miles from the campground, a huge, screaming dump truck goes by and WHAM, a big rock hits our windshield!  Man, are we jinxed with windshields or what?  It was big, but a star, so I put tape over it, hoping we could get it repaired in a few weeks in Helena or Missoula.  Well, by the next morning with the temperature changes, the star was now several cracks running out a foot or so.  No repair in our future, looks like a new windshield in Missoula.

Then just to make sure we felt snakebit, we opened the oven and.......

The handle broke off!

Oh well, something to keep us busy:-)

A lot of the allure of this campground that we felt last year wore off this time.  It for some reason was like being surrounded with bubbas, lots of noise, people coming and going right through the sites, there is getting to be less and less campground etiquette anymore, the traffic on the nearby road just never stopped, and no phone or internet at all.  Are we just getting older and less tolerant?  I don't know.  But the river did clear up and many, many rafts floated through, and we were able to fish a couple days.

The river is gorgeous!

We drove 15 miles down to Big Sky to get internet and marveled once again at the stunning Big Sky Chapel.

Wow, just wow!

So then we moved over to Henry's Lake State Park, one of our favorites, only 70 miles away, stopped and fished along the way, and arrived at our beautiful site.

The view from our site

Not bad, huh?

So off we went to go fishing on the Madison River, had a couple rise and had a good one on, but couldn't bring it in.  A typical fish story, but true, but with the views and wonderful weather who could complain?

The Madison

The other direction

Today we went and fished another section of the river, did get one in this time and we both had many lookers, certainly made us feel better.  We are going to try to get out tomorrow morning for a few hours before we move again north to Ennis.