HAPPY FATHER’S DAY!

6/17: The day started off grandly. Robin let me sleep in, then the kids greeted me with a “Happy Fathers Day” hug, handed me a card, and gave me the ceremonial dad’s day clothes and breakfast bear claw. After a warm embrace from Robin, she nonchalantly delivered my worst nightmare in a short but sweet fashion, “By the way Wade, the toilet’s backed up.” Inwardly panicked, outwardly calm, I tried to calculate my alternatives. Without getting into graphic detail, I decided to take the problem head on (no pun intended). With surgical gloves and coat-hanger in hand, I came to an unsuccessful resolution. The backup plan: outsource the problem to someone else as the Slomes usually do. Unfortunately Sunday mornings on a holiday are not the best days to find hired help. The best I could do was find an on-call handyman two towns away who charged $125/hr + costs for travel time (that could be a time consuming and costly answer). Terror was beginning to set in. Time was ticking and the smell was building. What to do? Try your retired veteran RV neighbor who retired twenty years ago and lives in his coach – surely he’ll have an answer. “I’ve never seen that in my life,” he casually commented. Wonderful, I thought. “Have you tried a stick?” he suggested. Aha! It was genius - a simple but elegant solution. My high school Physics course confirmed that not only would I get a better grip but also better leverage in dealing with the issue at hand. His words of wisdom worked, and I was once again a happy father. The lesson to be learned: “stick”-to-it-iveness really does work.

Our plumbing delay did cut our Lewis & Clark tour short. The “Gates of the Mountains” in Montana is a small slice of Meriwether Lewis’ and William Clark’s 8,000 mile trip from St. Louis to the Pacific and back (1804-1806). Thomas Jefferson commissioned the men to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase to see if there was a waterway to the Pacific Ocean.

(Opening to the Gates of the Mountains)--------------------------------

Before moseying on up to northwest

Montana to Glacier Park, we stopped off at the C.M. (“Charles Marion”) Russell Museum dedicated to this early 20th Century cowboy artist with more than 4,500 paintings in circulation. One of his paintings (Piegans – 1918) sold for $5.6 million dollars at a 2005 auction.

(Goofing off at the Charlie Russell Museum)

***Guzzle-meter: $1,060.37