First a few photos of scenes from along the way…

Today was a fairly long day for old guys.  We left the RV location for the closest attraction to our RV park yet – the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site.  This is a working cattle ranch with a fascinating history – created, originally, by immigrants from Canada and Germany.  It at one time encompassed more than a million acres, but after most of the descendants were deceased or uninterested most of it was sold off except for only 20,000 acres.  It was sold to the National Park Service in the 1970s. Did you know that a single cow in the arid west needed 10 acres to graze?  Read the website for more information.

The volunteer docent was really excellent.  She said from the beginning that she would tell the story of the people, not so much the architecture or furniture – something Scott, in particular, appreciated.  After hearing the stories of the two main characters and their families (not surprisingly Grant and Kohrs,) we walked around the ranch and learned about implements and lives of ranchers and cowboys.

Then we drank some cowboy coffee and got an in-depth lecture on cattle drives, chuck wagons, and life on the cattle drive road.  This too was very interesting, and the volunteer docents described what it was like to be trail boss, cook, and the different tiers of cowboys rounding up and driving the cattle 12 miles a day or so.

The cook worked from his Chuck wagon, which was different from a regular Conestoga wagon by the addition of a “Chuck” cabinet for food supplies. The cabinet was named after its inventor, Texas rancher Charles Goodnight in 1866. Chuck of course is for Charles. Woodrow Call, the fictional character from Lonesome Dove is loosely based on him. You can see the Chuck Wagon in the photos above.

After a couple hours of this history lesson, we started on the road to our campsite in West Glacier – the North American RV Park and Yurt Village .  We needed (as seems to always be the case) a few items from Walmart – DEF, paper products, etc., and plotted a course with the Walmart Supercenter that was close to the our route and which we would hit around diesel refueling time.  As we were entering the Polson, MT (Which Tom first described it as Poison) Walmart (on Memory Lane,) we saw signs for the Miracle of America Museum practically next door to the Walmart.  We looked at the reviews and decided to give it a shot.

This was a difficult museum to classify – part Bills Bike Barn, American Treasure Tour, Antique Store and Junkyard, and for good measure a sprinkling of UFO Welcome Center (which, tragically, was destroyed by fire in May.)  One common thread with Bill’s Bike Barn is that we met the founder while there – Tom even bought a box of airplane models and miscellany at the weekly “garage sale.”  If you want to visit either place while the founders are still alive, we suggest you do so soon, as both are at advanced ages.

The OWGRV team spent two hours here taking in the very wide assortment of old stuff and weird stuff (alien autopsy, anyone?) and military stuff and farming/motorcycle/laundry equipment/printing stuff – as with Bills Bike Barn, there was little that would have been excluded.  There was even a linotype machine!

There were lots of places to take pictures, so we did…

At 4PM, we were both getting tired (as always, Scott beat Tom in fatigue,) so we reluctantly left to drive to our campsite.  It seems nice – sparkling clean showers, if they must say so in their website.  Pretty low occupancy, which is always nice.  It stopped raining just before we got here. We had planned to spend two days here. Due to the weather forecast calling for more rain Sunday, but clearing Monday, we decided to stay here for an additional day so we can explore Glacier National Park in better weather.