Our first stop was Alexandria for David’s mother (Clara) 90^th birthday party. We boiled crawfish and all the trimmings. Most of the Howell clan were there. We had a great birthday celebration for MawMaw. She really enjoyed the crawfish and almost made herself sick eating too many. However, she was doing fine the next day when we saw her.

Thanks to Lisa & Dave for opening up their home for the party. Thanks to Wynn for all his hard work….THE CRAWFISH WERE GREAT!

We are now in Arkansas at our cabin, spent the day yesterday working in ...<< MORE >>

We have a slight change in plans. Kristy, Chad & Anna are no longer meeting us at the cabin. We are disappointed but understand. Chad is having some bad headaches and had to see a doctor. Please pray they find out what is causing these headaches.

They will however meet us in Southwestern Iowa at Viking Lake campground for the weekend. It is only 5 hrs from them. It is on our way to Mt. Rushmore. We have never camped in Iowa and are looking forward to trying this campground. We really got excited when Kristy told us ...<< MORE >>

We had a great weekend with Kristy, Chad & Anna. Even though it took us about 10 hrs to get to Viking Lake State Park Campground, it was a fairly easy trip. It was a very family oriented park. It had a lake and a lot of trails. The weekend was beautiful, the temperature was really nice. Cool enough to enjoy a campfire. They even delivered a Sunday paper to the campsites……what great service, we’ve never had that happen before.

What a great time playing with Anna……she is so cute. At nine months old she’s crawling and trying ...<< MORE >>

As we left mid South Dakota the countryside changed from hilly to rolling grassland prairies and eventually to peaks, gullies, & buttes of the Badlands.

We arrived at Badlands National Park on Monday. We camped at Cedar Pass Campground in the Park. There were no hookups, but that was ok because it was beautiful and was great to be in the park. We drove the Badlands Loop Road. We stopped a lot to look at the views of the buttes, prairies, canyon & jagged peaks. As you can see from the pictures it has a beauty of its ...<< MORE >>

We arrived at Custer State Park on Tuesday and camped at Game Lodge Campground. Our campsite was overlooking to a beautiful creek on one side and the mountains on the other.

For those of you who are geographically challenged, Custer State Park is located in the Black Hills of western South Dakota. The park is around 71,000 acres of is very diverse in its landscape. As we drove the different scenic roads, we went through open prairies to pine forests to aspen groves and pristine mountain lakes.

We drove the Needles Highway which is a 14 ...<< MORE >>

We left Game Lodge Campground and headed for Horsethief Lake Campground in the Black Hills National Forest near Mt. Rushmore. This is a national campground so there were no hookups, but it is a beautiful campground near Horsethieft Lake. We really didn’t have much time to enjoy it because we were sightseeing a lot in this area. The campground is only about 5min. from Mt. Rushmore.

It was raining when we got there so we decided to check out the town of Keystone. It’s a quaint little mountain town near the monument.

We went to the ...<< MORE >>

Sorry this update has taken so long. We have been "snowed in" for a couple of days....the connection to outside world from over here has been down!


Ok......we finally made it to Glacier National Park. Words cannot describe how beautiful this place is: Awesome, Magnificent, Majestic, are just a few words that come to mind.

We are now staying at St. Mary National Park Campground. We have no electricity or water, but the campsite view is incredible! It’s worth a little inconvenience. When we woke up this morning it was about 35. I talked to my ...<< MORE >>

Thursday morning we woke up to rain, but it cleared quickly and turned out to be a beautiful day. After all the rain & snow we had it was great to see sunshine!

We decided to drive north to Many Glacier and hike around there. We saw some mountain goats near the entrance to the park. They appeared to be very used to people and just meandered around us. In this area the mountain peaks appeared to be more massive and snow covered from the recent snowstorm.

We hiked Redrock Falls Trail which was about 4 miles ...<< MORE >>

The drive down towards Yellowstone was much easier than when we were going to Glacier. We had a strong head wind all the way to Glacier, and some spotty showers, but coming back there wasn’t as much wind. The weather was beautiful and we stopped along the way to take a lot of pictures. We saw plenty of pronghorn antelope grazing in the fields along the interstate.

We really enjoyed the day and decided to take it easy for the rest of the afternoon.

We will be heading to Fishing Bridge ...<< MORE >>

It was a beautiful morning as we left for Yellowstone. The drive was great , the weather was wonderful and there was no wind.

We stopped by Madison River Canyon Earthquake Visitors Center in the Gallantin Forest area. The earthquake happened about midnight on August 17, 1959 and at that time, it was one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded on the North American continent. It measured 7.5 on the Richter scale. It was really interesting to hear how the area was changed because of that event, causing a huge tidal wave throughout the canyon, winds as ...<< MORE >>

We got up early because we were going to drive Beartooth Highway and Chief Joseph Scenic Highway. Beartooth Highway is a National Scenic Byway and crosses the highest elevations in both Montana and Wyoming. Beartooth Pass reaches an elevation of 10,947 ft.

On the way to Beartooth Highway we had several good wildlife sightings. We saw two elk on the side of the road with large racks. Next, as we were heading east we saw a lot of cars pulled over so we knew we had to stop and see what they were looking at. It was a ...<< MORE >>

Hello all…..we are now in the Tetons. What an incredible beautiful area! The Tetons are the youngest mountain range in the Rocky Mountain chain. The mountains are more jagged and steep. We dropped our camper off at Colter Bay RV Park. These sites are not as close together and much nicer than Fishing Bridge.

We were all very tired and at a much slower pace today. We rode down to Jenny Lake to get a feel for the area. Jenny Lake is a beautiful greenish color, high altitude mountain lake with lots of trails around it. We found ...<< MORE >>

Hello all....

We decided that we would hike Taggart Lake Trail, but as is common, on the way to Taggart Lake, there was a traffic jam. We found out it was a grizzly bear that had everyone’s attention. We stopped and watched for a while and took lots of pictures. This grizzly bear happened to be tagged so we knew she was #399 and that she had just kicked her 3 cubs out and was looking for a mate. The cubs were about 2 years old. We didn’t see them, but saw pictures of them later and they were ...<< MORE >>

HELLO TO EVERYONE......We woke up to another beautiful morning. I slept in a little while David took early morning pictures. We were able to extend our stay one more night. It is so beautiful here we hate to leave.

We walked back to Swan Lake and Heron Pond that are 2 trails right here at Colter Bay. The trails were great and we walked about 4 miles. Swan Lake was almost full of water lilies and they were also in full bloom with yellow flowers everywhere. We saw a beaver dam and a lot of Canadian geese.

Hi all, yes we are back in Montana and loving it!

We slept in a little and then worked on our blog a while before going into Livingston, Montana to check out the town and buy groceries. Livingston is a small picturesque western town. We enjoyed looking around the town.

Then we headed back to drop off our groceries and go see Castle & Linda. We had met them in the spring when we were camping at Lake Fausse Point State Park near St. Martinville, LA, they were escaping the brutal Montana winter and enjoying the ...<< MORE >>

Hi all......

On our way to Glacier we passed several cherry orchards near Flathead Lake. In fact, these orchards line the hillsides of this area. I (Jeanie) love cherries so we stopped and bought some. They were so delicious!

Flathead Lake is the largest lake west of the Mississippi River. It is very clear and bluish green in color. This side of the Glacier Park area is much more populated and commercialized than the east side. It is still very beautiful and we are looking forward to exploring it.

We woke up Wednesday morning and it ...<< MORE >>

We celebrated the evening of the 4^th at our campground. They were giving out free Huckleberry ice cream and we have really come to love it. They had a fireworks display but it didn’t start until 10:30 since it doesn’t get dark around here until then. We went to bed thinking there wouldn’t be much too it, but were we surprised! We woke up to a great fireworks show and watched from our camper window.

We started heading back down on Saturday morning. We have gone almost 7000 miles so far and still have a long way home. ...<< MORE >>