{"id":5433,"date":"2019-05-30T17:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T00:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=5433"},"modified":"2019-05-30T09:43:56","modified_gmt":"2019-05-30T16:43:56","slug":"helena-mt-and-on-to-milk-river-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2019\/05\/30\/helena-mt-and-on-to-milk-river-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Helena MT and on to Milk River, Canada."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We were in Helena for 3 nights.\u00a0\u00a0 While there I visited the Lewis & Clark Brewery for a pretty tasty growler fill which came with a free pint!\u00a0\u00a0 I also found the most stocked hardware store I have \"\"<\/a>ever seen the following day.\u00a0 They had at least 5 long aisles filled with specialty hardware.\u00a0 I had never seen that much in one place.\u00a0 Reminded me of the McMaster Carr catalog in a store.\u00a0\u00a0 Lowe’s sometimes has about 20′ of those trays of special stuff.\u00a0 This place had over a 150′ of them.\u00a0\u00a0 There was a bunch I had no idea what they were used for, and I am a “hardware guy”!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was able to pick up all the remaining parts I needed to construct my rock guard for the drive to Alaska.\u00a0 I previously had purchased \"\"<\/a>the mesh and 50′ of bulk bungee cord, along with ends for them,\u00a0 but not the hardware to hold it all to the rear of the RV and the front of the car, as I hadn’t totally figured out how to do that; but during the first night in Helena I figured out how to make it work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We stayed at the Lewis & Clark Fairgrounds campground,\u00a0 22 spaces with \"\"e<\/a>lectric only.\u00a0\u00a0 There was water a few hundred yards away near the office building, so we filled the fresh water tank there prior to parking the rig.\u00a0\u00a0 What was odd is there wasn’t a dump station on the fairgrounds, so I started looking for one on the web and found three.\u00a0 I checked them out in the car the day before leaving and only one would work for us to get in and out of without driving over curbs.\u00a0\u00a0 It was just on the other side of the 1-15, a few miles away, and it was our first stop on the way to Canada the next morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While in Helena we got to visit the locals’ laundromat.\u00a0 Kathy got to hear the owner’s whole life story.\u00a0\u00a0 His dad owned the bar next door, which I popped my head into and it was truly a \"\"<\/a>dive bar.\u00a0\u00a0 Right around even with the worst ones I had ever been in.\u00a0\u00a0 There was an odd painting on the wall inside the laundromat, so I had to take a pic.\u00a0 \u00a0Here it is:<\/p>\n

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Below are a few pics of the fairgrounds campground.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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We got out of Helena before 10 am and proceeded north on Interstate 15 toward the Canadian Border.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily the rain waited till we were finished filling the water tank and dumping the other tanks before it let loose on us.<\/p>\n

It rained the whole day and only stopped once we crossed the border.\u00a0\u00a0 The crossing was interesting as they never asked about the dog or about food we were bringing in.\u00a0\u00a0 So throwing out all our fruit and produce was apparently not needed.\u00a0\u00a0 For lunch on the way we ate what was left in the fridge… not much..\u00a0 but it still was a lot to eat.\u00a0\u00a0 Reheated a large potato and topped it with spaghetti sauce with meatballs and leftover hamburger meat and leftover chicken tenders.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It was actually pretty good, but the rest of the drive we had that over-stuffed feeling like you get at Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

At the border they only asked for Passports, the RV registration, if we had any alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or guns.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Nothing about food or pets.\u00a0\u00a0 He also asked where we were from, and really wanted to know how long we would be traveling in Canada.\u00a0\u00a0 He wanted specifics.<\/p>\n

After the 8 minutes chatting with the Canadian border guard, we headed a bit further north to Milk River where I had spotted a campground on the map the previous evening.\u00a0\u00a0 When I had called, no one had answered.\u00a0 When I got there, I understood why, really laid back place.\u00a0 The office didn’t look like anyone had been in it for years.<\/p>\n

We spent one night at Milk River, 8 Flags Campground. (I counted 9 flags!)\u00a0 Right next to the not very busy highway,\u00a0 ( a car about every 10 minutes) and of course there was a not very busy railroad track just on the other side of that highway.\u00a0\u00a0 I only heard a couple of trains go by the whole time there and no train horns were heard.\u00a0\u00a0 So a pretty good spot for the night.<\/p>\n

There was a sign on the office to boil water, so I didn’t hook that up.\u00a0 I just connected up to the 30 amp shore power that didn’t have a visible circuit breaker.\u00a0\u00a0 I really needed to experiment with that power to see what exactly we can run in the coach at the same time when only connected to 30 amp shore power. \u00a0 In the states we always seemed to have 50 amp power.\u00a0 But we can’t do it here as we have no idea where the breaker is and if I guessed wrong, we would be unpowered till I could find someone that had access to the circuit breaker..\u00a0\u00a0 (Can we run the heat pump and the micro, toaster or coffee maker? )\u00a0 I am guessing we can run two of them at the same time, if they are on different circuits; but I currently don’t know which circuits anything is on.<\/p>\n

This campground only takes cash; so after finding a spot, I asked around where the nearest ATM was located.\u00a0\u00a0 Went there to get Canadian money as you could pay either 30 dollars Canadian or US.\u00a0\u00a0 Canadian money is only worth around 75% of US money, so it is a much better deal to use Canadian money.\u00a0 ($30 Canadian is about $22.50 US)\u00a0 And of course, most folks probably know this, but the best exchange rate you can get is\u00a0 from an ATM. \u00a0 Those money exchange places really take a big chunk of what you convert from cash. \u00a0 And of course, when you get home, deposit the foreign cash in your bank for a similar very good exchange rate.\u00a0 Last time, my bank wouldn’t take coins, only the paper cash I had when coming back from the Med Cruise.<\/p>\n

The first ATM (and only one I thought there was nearby) said my card was invalid.\u00a0 I thought I was going to have a real problem in Canada after seeing that message on the ATM screen as Google didn’t know of any banks nearby, and who knows, maybe my ATM card wouldn’t work anywhere in Canada…<\/p>\n

I headed off to replace the produce and buy some meat to restock the fridge.\u00a0\u00a0 Milk River is a very small town, which means a very small market. \u00a0 I guess they don’t eat a lot of veggies here in MR as the selection was lacking, and the meat selection was extremely lacking.\u00a0\u00a0 We will know more once we hit a larger town or city.\u00a0\u00a0 But the best part of going to the grocery store was they had an ATM inside.\u00a0 You know the ones,\u00a0 just a small kiosk.\u00a0\u00a0 Funny thing I found out, its fees were less than the bank’s ATM fees.\u00a0 I always assumed those kiosks you find in a 7\/11 or other places would really gouge you.\u00a0\u00a0 ($3 at the bank vs $2.50 at the kiosk)\u00a0 So I was able to get cash and pay the campground in Canadian dollars.\u00a0 Yeah!! \u00a0 Their money looks really odd.\u00a0 It’s got quite a bit of cellophane in it, so you can look thru part of their bills.\u00a0\u00a0 I guess it makes it more difficult to counterfeit.<\/p>\n

The WiFi at our campground was almost nonexistent.\u00a0\u00a0 I could see a lot of \"\"<\/a>AP’s from my roof mounted WiFi antenna , Mikrotik Metal AC Router (CPE), <\/a>but not actually connect to any of them.<\/p>\n

I must admit the Mikrotik has the most complicated interface I have ever seen.\u00a0 \u00a0Looks like something from the early ’90s.\u00a0\u00a0 My laptop could connect to one AP and it had very low power, but it was just enough access to look for the next campground.\u00a0\u00a0 None of the other devices could connect.\u00a0 (iPad or iPhones.)\u00a0 They couldn’t even see the SSID’s to try to connect.<\/p>\n

That next morning we were off to Claresholm, Alberta, Canada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were in Helena for 3 nights.\u00a0\u00a0 While there I visited the Lewis & Clark Brewery for a pretty tasty growler fill which came with a free pint!\u00a0\u00a0 I also found the most stocked hardware store I have ever seen the following day.\u00a0 They had at least 5 long aisles filled with specialty hardware.\u00a0 I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Helena MT and on to Milk River, Canada.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campgrounds","category-traveling-the-hiways-and-byways","category-venturing-out-and-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}