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:-)