Been there, done that

Mountain View RV Campground, Hungry Horse, Montana
We spend the day in Kalispell, looking for tires. Close calls on many accounts, but most of the places want us to stick around until Tuesday for the tires to come in. We are torn: we ARE on the way into Canada, and people warn us about terrible roads in British Columbia. We expect a lot of Alaska to be pretty rough. I'm pretty sure that Danali is all gravel...On the other hand, I don't want to blow four days (even in this beautiful area) waiting for tires to come in.

Eventually we settle on Costco, which can order our tires (5-7 days). The tires are very good, better than what we have on now, and a good price, even after we buy a membership. Funny thing...we call the Costco in Anchorage (I love the name...Anchorage...something in one of my sailing ship lives makes me nod approval in my very soul) and they actually have the tires in stock. The tire guy warns us to check our spare to make sure it's good before we venture into British Columbia, because the roads are so rough there...

We grocery shop, visit the Verizon store where they clean the contacts on my phone and update its software, find a junk yard with YET another gas cap (Skip makes a habit of leaving them), hit WalMart (I hate them normally, but you can't beat the prices when you're on the road, on a serious budget, or addicted to their inexpensive but amazing Trail Mix), buy gas, buy groceries, get some filtered water for the pups (tired of their sick tummies from all the different areas' waters). We are freaking EXHAUSTED and bitchy by the time we get out of town. We still need internet access and showers and laundry.

Cue the lovely Mountain View RV Park and Campground. Lovely showers, free wi-fi, amazing views. All they have left is a tent site, which is fine with us, even though $20 is actually pretty damn steep. We sit at a picnic table, dogs leashes around our ankles, and fight over the computer (MY laptop, dammit). We spend three hours drinking rum and cokes, laundering our clothes, uploading our photo albums and new stuff for the webpage. Amazingly enough, even though we're in Hungry Horse, Montana, we have three bars on the cell phone (if you stand in the right spot), so we make contact with our families and a few friends. OK, we end up drunk-dialing the last set of friends, but we have a remarkable time. The sunset (at 10 pm at night) is hellacious. CHeck out the pics from Montana...The view is amazing. The laundry all gets done. We upload a ton of pics. Yay! Success. Also, we shower. Shower. Shave. Clean, fresh, with make-up on and contacts in and wearing my absolutely best dress, we leave the next day.