Leaving Helena

We left Helena this morning and have about 150 miles left before arriving “home” in Spokane. Here are a few photos that I took this morning as we are driving. Montana is gorgeous. 

Our home away from home. The lived in look!😍





Dennis and our son Jamie at dinner last night at “The Grubstake.” Great food, but an even better time. We miss this kid. He may be 40 with his next birthday but he’s still my baby. This Mama sure hung on tight to him with every hug. And he got several.

Zoey helps Dennis drive from her car seat but likes to nap on my lap.

We had a wonderful time visiting with our son and grandchildren while in Helena and are looking forward to seeing everyone in Spokane. Sorry I haven’t been commenting on blogs. I can’t use my phone or iPad for commenting so it has been difficult. I am reading your blogs though. I’ll be back soon.💜

Blessings and hugs,

Betsy

Black Hills of South Dakota

We’re on our way. Let the adventures begin! I don’t know how often, or if, I’ll have time to post for the next couple of weeks, but this is our first stop. We’re at Fort Welikit outside of Custer, SD.  We have a BIG spot that we love. In fact we have already made reservations to stop here again for a few nights on our way back home. The only issue is there has been no water all day in the campground because of a burst pipe. It’s supposed to be fixed in the next half hour!

Here are some photos of the Needles Hwy we drove this morning. Of course, pictures don’t begin to do justice to this beautiful area. I think it’s my favorite place on earth. Until we moved to Spokane, we vacationed here with our kids every year. First we tent camped and then had a pop-up camper. We took that camper all over the west!

You can barely see one of the driving tunnel entrances in the center of the photo below. We had just driven through it!

Another tunnel as we drove through. We had to put the mirrors in on the truck or we wouldn’t have fit. No RV’s allowed here. 🤪

You can see forever!!!

Twisty, hairpin roads that are so much fun to drive. It’s where I learned mountain driving over 40 years ago. 



So gorgeous and perfect weather today with low, low humidity and 75F. Can you ask for anything better?

When I see stunning vistas like these I always think of this verse. It was my Mom’s favorite. 

It was 104F in Rapid City as we drove through yesterday. The truck and camper did great except for a few broken plates and bowls because the cabinet came open.🤷‍♀️

Tomorrow we leave for Helena where we’ll see our two oldest grandkids and our son. I’m SO excited.

Be good and stay well, we’re trying to as well.

Blessings and love,

Betsy

Whew! Busy days!

Busy days at the Queen house! There are are lots of photos in this post.  I won’t write a lot, just enough to explain the photos. 💜 Here we go!

First and foremost we finally got the theater seating, or recliners, for the trailer. We are thrilled with them and they are very, very comfortable to sit in.

The oven at mom‘s house is finally installed. She has been without an oven for at least five years. We finally tracked one down and Dennis finished installing it last week. It is an unusual size oven. Very small, so it was hard to find one to fit in the hole that was already there from the original oven from the 1960s.

The first harvest from my teeny, tiny garden last week. Four zucchini and one bell pepper! I was so excited.

The zucchini quickly became this. I shredded them into 2 cup Ziploc bags for baking. Into the freezer they went for winter time baking.

The blanket for our bed was finally completed. Please don’t look at the messy bed. I had stripped everything off to wash when I decided to take a photo.

It is so large that it does hang down a decent amount on each side. Dennis says it’s almost like an optical illusion and if you stare at it too long you’ll be dizzy.

I made two more nine-patch mitered squares. This has been a neglected project for many months. It was fun to make these two blocks and start another. Someday when I have enough, they will be put together into a blanket.

Some dish cloths were made as we drove around town or sat and chatted.

And two more.

Here are some of the family that were at our house Saturday for brunch. Piper took the picture so she’s not in this one.

Here’s one with Piper in it, minus Mandy. We all had a great time. Everyone wants to make this an annual event.
 
A bit of concerning news. Our son and his family in Montana are dealing with Covid right now. Our son is still pretty sick, but the others are on the mend. We are supposed to be there on Sunday for a few days visit. Please pray that they will all be healthy by the time we arrive.

That’s it! If you’re still around, I sure appreciate it. This is going to be a busy week too. I have to take Mom to several doctors appointments. Papa is taking Piper to her tennis camp every day and she and Lizzie will be spending the nights with us. Then Friday we leave on our adventure westward. Busy times ahead.

Hope all is well with you and you’ve had a good and restful weekend. Take care!

Blessings,

Betsy

Missing In Action

Sorry I've been absent for a week! It's been busy around here and we have lots of family visiting for the weekend.  Three of Dennis's cousins and their Dad are here for a few days.  A houseful and feeling very blessed with them here. On Saturday we're having a brunch here at our house for all of the family that lives nearby.

I'll try to check in with you all over the weekend, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive and haven't completely melted from the heat and humidity. I actually have a few completed projects to show you.🧶🧶🧶

I thought this was appropriate.

😍

Take care and I'll be back soon!

Blessings and love,

Betsy

Wildlife and Regular Life

Hello everyone! It's been a busy week. Jenny arrived from Spokane on Sunday afternoon. On Monday, the 4th it was well over 100F so we didn't want to do anything outside. We opted to take her to the Drive Thru Wildlife Safari Park. The wolves and bears were hiding somewhere cool, but other animals were happy to show themselves to us.

A male elk posed for us. Another is laying down as you can see by the rack on lower left in the photo.

A female and a few more male elk.  All were taking advantage of the shade.

Here is a young guy resting in the shade too.

The pelicans were enjoying swimming around in the presumably cool pond.

These guys were all fishing together just before I snapped the picture. 

This heron definitely looked as if he was posing for us.

These two were taking advantage of the lunch buffett. A few more were hiking at top speed down the road to get there share but I accidentally deleted their photo.

The buffalo, or bison, were taken turns wading in the pond and then...

they would roll in the dirt to keep the insects away.

It was a lot of fun driving through with Jenny. We also drove through the State Park that we like to camp at. We had lunch with Brad, Mandy, Piper and Brad's Dad, Dennis, at their house. Brad is in the process of replacing their decking with the permanent decking, trex deck. It makes it where there is no upkeep whatsoever.  That evening we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. The food was a bit disappointing but we had a great time visiting. The next morning Jenny left before 5:30 a.m. and was almost in Pennsylvania by nightfall. Today she picked up a friend in New York and they're driving to Maine for a lobster dinner. She does love to drive.

I'm still crocheting on the "Modern Granny Rectangle Blanket". It's coming along but each round is taking a long time now. Its big enough for our queen size bed so I'm just going to do one more series of the different colors and then a border of some sort. I do like the way it's turning out.

Here's my Piper with a self portrait. She said the emojis are supposed to tell you something about you.

Here is the picture she took of me. :-) You can see just how short my hair is here and I love it like that.

Jenny was riding in the front seat with Dennis so she could see the animals better. She put Zoey to sleep while petting her. She is such a sweet puppy. I can't imagine not having her now.

We finally started pushing the RV dealership about our reclining chairs for our camper. We bought it in January and it was supposed to have the "theater seating" which are two recliners. Instead it had a sofa sleeper.  We've been very patient while the dealers service dept. promised them in February, then April and then June. We were called yesterday and they said another 8 weeks. They also were very rude about it and said they couldn't do anything else for us and wouldn't take one out of a camper on the lot. That was it. We drove straight to the dealership and the actual salesman who we bought it from met us at the door. He didn't remember us at all until Dennis reminded him. Long story short, we paid cash for the brand new camper in January. They would like us to buy from them again. They had a recliner available for us today and will install it next Wednesday. I think that is crazy. Sales apparently cares. Service doesn't.  We really needed the recliners for my back as we're leaving for a 3 week trip to the Black Hills, Montana and Spokane in a couple of weeks. I have to have a recliner for my back issues.

All is well that ends well. I'm looking forward to seeing it in the camper and getting it all packed up for the trip. We have someone taking care of the house and plants. The teenage boy across the street will mow for us. And we get to see our friends soon.

Take care and I'll be back again soon. Sorry about all of the photos, but I thought you would like to see the animals at the park.

Blessings and love,
Betsy