Back home again.....

may have to go sleep in the MH, can’t get used to the king size bed.  Can’t believe that weeds can grow so tall in just 2 months.  Spent about three hours pulling huge weeds out of the garden….had to do it to see if any tomatoes were left.  Plenty left, guess people didn’t want to have to pull the weeds to get to them.  Gosh, they are so good!

Ryan (our temporary grass cutter) hadn’t gotten around to a recent cut, so I fired up the Kubota.  Got about half done before the rain…..looks like we’ve had plenty rain while we were gone.

We last left you in Missoula Montana where we were at the local Freightliner dealer.  Got in early, and they assigned a Russian immigrant mechanic to check the alternator.  Didn’t take him long to find out that it was fried.  Poor guy had to climb down on top of the engine(from under the bed) to remove it.  He grunted and groaned, couldn’t get one of the bolts out.  Finally, he got a metal cutting wheel and cut it off.  It took him over two hours to get the old one out, and the new one in.  $90.00 an hour to work on a MH, $75.00 for a truck, after watching that exercise, guess I won’t complain..

Rest of the trip home was pretty unevental, boring…..just mostly sitting behind the wheel, guiding the Bus. I-90 across to I-29 south is a great highway.  Not many grades, even thru the Rockies.  We headed South on I-29 at Sioux Falls, then onto I-80 for awhile, then took I-74 down to I-70.  At Indianapolis we decided to take IN-32 (parallels I-70 around Indy), and that was a neat little 115 mile diversion.  We took a lunch break in one of the little towns on the route, and the waitress couldn’t understand why we were travelling thru there on the way to Maryland. 

At Columbus Ohio, I decided to follow the big trucks, and they went directly thru the city, just breezed right on thru, with us right behind them.  Good move!

Got off I-70 at Washington PA, down I-79 to I-68.  Stopped at a Cracker Barrell to fortify ourselves for the rest of the trip home.  I stopped at the top of the mountain just before Hancock, took about an hour’s break, napped.  Rest of the trip home was a snap.

Now I have to face the chore of trying to get rid of the dust that covers everything in the storage areas (and a lot of it inside the MH). 

Going to close down the BLOG until such time as we travel again.  It’s probably going to be awhile, we just shot our year’s fuel budget in Canada and Alaska.  Don’t ever expect to see diesel fuel under $2.00 again, more like $2.50. Gotta get used to it!