Refitting, Outfitting, Upfitting, etc...Accounting for the Past Month

We are at a campground near Neskowin, on the Oregon coast, enduring the gale brought here by winter storm Astro. We got here from Roundup, MT, driving all day Saturday and Sunday and then some Monday, past Portland, hoping to escape the worst parts of the storm. At least it's dry and above freezing here on the coast. We amused ourselves today by downing a mediocre but cheap repast at the nearby Chinook Winds (!) casino and then winning $70 on the slots. Life is good here in America.

How to account for the past month? Well, our time in Missoula was busy, busy, busy. We got to see a few friends, but missed many others. (We'll be back in January). Mostly, we worked on the new truck and camper, adding steps, tie-downs, suspension up-grades, tire-upgrades, many little additions and alterations on the camper interior; and then a complete solar electrical system. All this took much research, trial, and some error, too. And when we weren't doing that, we were out at our storage unit in East Missoula, going through stuff, selling stuff on Craigslist, taking stuff to Goodwill, etc. When we departed Missoula in 2008, our intent was to be on the road maybe two years, then buy a condo and live a more settled life. Consequently, we put way more in storage than suits us now. The condo is nowhere in our foreseeable future. And there is still plenty more stuff to go through and deal with.... Anyhow, our autumn visit to Missoula is now done, and we are onto our later autumn travels in the western US, familiar country that we have always loved.

More than a month has passed--and 5,000 miles--and I have very, very few photos to show for our recent "travels." We'll be back on all these roads soon enough, however, and I'll do a better job.

Dear Missoula, weird as ever...here we are in
Bob Ward's, looking at a "concealment suit";
huntin' season is just about to begin; the best
news, apart from getting our work done, was
that friend Willis Curdy got elected to the
Montana legislature...after knocking on 4,500
doors this fall; the bad news was that the
Montana Festival of the Book passed on, after
a fifteen year run; sic transit, Gloria...

The owners at Hellgate Canyon Storage very kindly let us
use #47 as an annex/overflow unit, mostly from which to make
our Craigslist sales

On Amnesia Lane...here I am modeling the
smoker's jacket Vicki made for me some time in
the 60s; she couldn't bear to give it to Goodwill
(!), though I am unlikely to take up smoking
again

Lest anyone think I've always been strictly  a
Two Buck Chuck devotee

We probably have a hundred (two hundred?) T-shirts between
us, and we were unable to part with many of them--most were
travel or other mementos; here, a professional memento, the
sentiment expressed never more true nor a more distant hope...

We left our main storage unit in better shape than ever...and
ready for our snowmobiling adventures in January

Camping at the Walmart in Helena, en route to Roundup; we
had dinner with the Sehestedts later that evening...they had to
be impressed with their new in-laws...

At HandyBob's near Roundup...the guru of RV solar power

Mise en place...solar controller, shunt, circuit breakers, fuse,
inverter, etc., for our new electrical set-up; not pictured: the solar
panels, cables, the all-important Tri-metric monitor, and
HandyBob

Probably the last good fall day on the Mussellshell...

And now, via Missoula, Lookout Pass, Smelterville, Spokane,
eastern Washington, the Columbia Gorge, and Portland, we 
are on the Oregon coast, watching Astro's easterly gales blow 
the Pacific waves back out to sea...