Roslyn Washington Trailer Rally

June 13,2013

Sandy and I have been planning a trip to this rally for about a year and we were able to make the trip using her 2007 Saab 9-3.

We bought the car with hopes it would be a good match with the 1980 Buro trailer.
I have to say the two seemed to be made for each other, the trailer did much better behind the Saab than behind my Dodge truck. I can only guess it is due to the softer ride of the car.....Sandy even left a paper cup with her soda on the front seat of the trailer and it stayed there even after a few miles on a dirt road.

We averaged over 18 miles per gallon and that included many hilly windy mountain roads and over 50 miles of slow driving on dirt roads....I think interstate driving could easily have produced 20+mpg.

Clean and ready for a 2500 mile trip!!

About 20 miles from Bozeman Montana we ran into a bit of wet weather and then this little storm.

It does not show in these photos, but the hail was hitting the car hard enough that I expected damage......luckily no damage to the car.

The road was white with hail, but the photo does not really show it

We got to the rest stop where we met up with Gary, our Crossfire friend who remembered my offer to buy his Crossfire if he ever wanted to sell it.

Gary's ( now half mine) is a beautiful Candy red Limited with 8k miles........we ran up his way first to drop of deposit so he could purchase his dream car.....another Crossfire, but this one has less miles and is supercharged and it is the blue color he has wanted for as long as I have known him.

We had a great visit, got to see his Class A motor home. He and his wife have done a great job redoing the interior of the motor home.....I might just copy what they have done.....theirs looks so much better than my Christmas wrapper looking wall paper, brown shag carpet and the orange seat covers!

We got to check out a Lazy Daze motor home while at the rest stop. I liked the paint scheme on this class C

I kind of like the paint scheme.....this is about the size of my 1977 Ford motor home.

 We got treated to a very nice dinner in Bozeman.....Venison meat loaf!!!
Sandy had never eaten meat loaf from a restaurant before, but she also enjoyed it.

We spent the first night parked in front of Gary's new home....rained all night, but we were warn and mostly dry........ the fiberglass really sweats we have been rained on inside the trailer on clod damp nights.

Breakfast was a little shop that reminded me more of Seattle than Bozman. It was nice and it is owned by one of their neighbors.

This is my idea of a great drive.

 Photos of the Montana woods...every turn is a new adventure.....I really miss the northern woods.
We headed up north and drove up into the far northern part of the Idaho panhandle.
We crossed the Clark Fork River a number of times up near Sandpoint Idaho. The Clark Fork River played a very big part in the Formation of the antiquated Lake Missoula. The lake was formed durring the ice ages a number of times and as the ice feilds retreated the lake flooded the states of Oregon, Idaho, Montaina and Washington. 

Clark Fork Valley
When it burst through the ice dam and exploded downstream, the waters of Glacial Lake Missoula ran at a rate of 10 times the combined flow of all of the current rivers in the world!

For years I have been telling Sandy how interesting the whole region is with the forest which I love so dearly and the strange landscape left by the ice age floods.

Here is a great link I have found, please check it out and also the other parts of this web site.
http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/story.html


We were in a bit of a hurry to get to the rally so we really blew through the Eastern part of Washington where I used to live.

I did manage to get lost a time or two....even in area I used to know like the back of my hand.....TBI sucks!!!

We did head south in order to get gas in Loon Lake Washington, but did not take the  hour or so it would have taken to drive over to Deer Lake to see my old lake cabin.

Our next night we pulled off just a few miles from the Two Rivers Casino were I used to deal blackjack.

We spent the night near my old friend and Spokane Tribe Chief Roger Dennison's home and drove around looking for his home, but I was just not able to drive right to it so we drove over to the Casino.

The place has grown and changed alot.....they have added this very nice gas station, enlarged the marina and added a large campgrounds.....very nice!!!!!

I like to tell people I have made lots more money at the blackjack tables than I ever lost....it is true I never played......I just dealt blackjack right here.

I used to think to myself just how much I liked the dealing, I was getting paid to play and enjoyed it every bit as much as the players (maybe more.....I was not loosing my hard earned money).

I met Roger here at the casino, he was my boss, we became great friends and he taught me a lot about his culture....even invited me to his sweat lodge, on hunting trips and introduced me to many members of his tribe . I later regretted turning him down on the sweat lodge ( was afraid of the smoke ).

I found out at the casino that Roger Passed on a few years ago.......He left behind a great loving father, mother,daughter who I know and other family I did not. He was a Christian who believed in Christ.

We headed up into Creston, the town where We first moved when we moved to Washington.
Here is the first house that was purchased by my ex-wife using my money without my knowledge....long storey.
The house had a great lot for gardening, but the basement would flood and water would flow like a river.....this thing was impossible to heat in the winter.
My ex sold it to her boyfriend and then refused to move out, so he had it condemned.  Once she was out he tried to move into it, but the city would not let him. He is now living in it and it is for sale.

Most of the people I wanted to see are no longer there, so we moved on to Wilbur, Washington.
I attended this cute Four Square Church and really grew as a Christian from my friendship with Pastor Larry Sutton. He left the area shortly after I did and I have been unable to make contact since.

 

One of my many memories of this church was a spring Saturday morning when we got together to paint the old wood building. We had only a little paint, but decided to do what we could with what we had and see what came of it. We had a little prayer to bless the day and then I got onto a ladder and painted the bell tower while others painted from the ground. We sang songs laughed and shared many stories of our walks with Christ. When we were done we got into our cars and drove off.........it was not till later that I realized we finished up the day and never ran out of paint!!!!

Sandy and I headed over to Coulee City and had lunch before driving over to Dry Falls.

Dry Falls is the site of the worlds largest water fall......at one time the falls carried 10 times all the water that flows in all the rivers on earth today.....WOW!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_Falls

Sandy and I drove through many areas on this trip where signs of the ancient floods both heading to and from the rally in Rosyln.

We crossed the Great Columbia River at Vantage where we stopped to dip our toes in the river and enjoyed watching the boaters launch their  boats.

We got close enough to Mt. Rainer to take this photo. You can see from this view the side that blew off in the eruption and just imagine  1/3 blew off the top of this mountain!

In all fairness to the Rally I am going to start another post.