Thursday, 11 through Saturday, 13 August 2022
I was so comfortable at this campground and had so many things I needed to do that I extended my original plans here by a day and wished I could have more.
On Friday, we left the campground to go into town. The first stop was at Lions Park, that I'd found on Google's map of the town. And what I found was that half the park got imploded. Really. It's a big park, covering a large city block, and half of it had been plowed under for a renovation of some kind. But there was still half left with grass and big trees, so I could give Dext a different place to walk around and sniff things. On the other hand, I was standing around waiting under a tree while Dext sniffed the tree, and I suddenly found myself under attack by a bunch of ants. Maybe a half dozen were climbing up my feet and legs, and doing it almost as fast as a tick can scuttle (which is pretty fast). It was unnerving. I don't know what kind of ants those were, but I dragged Dext away as fast as I could (which wasn't fast enough since he didn't want to go).
From there I dropped him off at the dog grooming place for a few hours, and then went on to the vet I'd found for Lily. By the time we got there, we were an hour earlier than her appointment for nail clipping, but they squeezed her in anyway, which was really nice of them. And they got her in and out really quickly and reported that she hadn't been much trouble. Well, she'd sure given me a hard time when I tried to get her in her crate to start with, and I don't know why she needs to confine her bad moods to me. Though this was by no means the first time vets' offices have told me that.
We drove around town a bit, and I accidentally came across the county courthouse, looking very impressive. I managed to find a vantage point where I could take a photo.
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| Cascade County Courthouse built 1901-03. |
They say it's 2 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and 2,048 square feet. That's double the size of my mom's house, but then I saw it had a full (though unfinished) basement and realized that's where the double square footage came from. It was built in 1938 and they were asking $238,000, though Zillow thought the price should be $215,000. In my book, that's still overpriced unless it's really really nice inside.
But I learned that Great Falls is growing fast enough that there's a bit of a housing shortage, which I guess is where that price comes from. Apparently, since the pandemic and the work-from-home movement, lots of Californians are moving up here (which might also increase house prices). Actually, I've found a lot of trouble accessing the internet in this state, though I know not everybody uses the same carrier.
I passed a church with a sign in front that said: "How does Moses make his tea? He brews it." I actually had to stop and think for a minute about that, which should give you an idea about how my brain was functioning.
I went to a grocery store, then picked up Dexter, and we all went to a different park. This one was getting watered while we were there, and I had a hard time finding a part of it where we could walk and have a little shade and not get wet. We didn't stay very long.
From there we went to PetsMart, mainly so I could get a new bone for Dexter. Now that I only have one dog, I can take him inside stores like this, which he loves. I couldn't do it when I still had Gracie, because there was always another dog there and one or the other of my dogs would end up snarling at the other dog and it was always a mess. So I just stopped taking them inside. Dext doesn't know that his new privileges are a direct result of his loss, but they are.
In the time we spent at the campground, Dext and I found a lot of different places to walk. This campground could almost call itself a resort and not be too far out. It had a fancy pool and waterpark with extra features, such as a giant bucket that filled with water and then tipped over to make a big splash on whoever wasn't paying attention and happened to be standing nearby when it tipped. They had great showers and a great laundry room. It was the only campground I found in Montana that accepted glass, aluminum and plastic recycling.
It had lots of cabins, lots of game areas, lots of tent sites, and a lot of RV sites, most of which were shaded with big trees. Every morning they offered free pancakes made with wheat from local farmers. I got some one morning and they weren't bad. I'm not able to cook pancakes in the RV because my smoke alarm always goes off long before the skillet is hot enough. I've tried. The only drawback here was the dog park, which was too small. They'd taken a decent sized area and partitioned it into a section for small dogs and one for big dogs, which made the big-dog side too small for big dogs.
I made reservations at campgrounds around the state for most of the rest of the month, and figured out driving directions that would get me through this next week. I knew my next campground didn't have electric hookups, so I charged all my devices.
On Friday evening we got rain and high wind. Actually, the wind started in the afternoon, stopped when the rain started, and then apparently decided to make it a duet. I haven't found anyone, including me, who wants to complain about the rain. We've been needing it badly around here.
Once when Dext and I were out walking, I saw some tree branches moving down close to the ground. Since there was no wind I looked a little closer and saw 3 little orange kitty furballs playing around with each other. I mentioned it to one of the staff a few days later and told her where I'd seen them, but when I went back to be sure I'd said the right place, I couldn't find the place. I walked all over and never could find that same place. I'm certain I wasn't hallucinating but so strange.
So in general, we were really comfortable here and I was sorry there was still so much of the state to see and the month was almost half over.
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