Snowmobiling The American West, 2015

As students of this blog know, we took up snowmobiling in our latter years in Missoula, purchasing a 2003 Bombardier Grand Touring Skidoo, two-up, 1000ccs, totally-duded up with saddle-bags, winch, and many other amenities and paraphrenalia. Between 2003 and 2008, we covered most of the groomed trails of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, many of them more than once. From these travels, I did several posts with a number of pix from the Sherouse Family Digitization Project, in 2012, and these may be found at http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2012/05/snowmobiling-american-west-2003-2008.html, and later posts.

We put our snowmobile in storage, along with everything else we either held dear or couldn't sell or give away, in 2008, planning, after a year or two of retirement travel, to come back to Missoula and snowmobile the winters again. Plans change, of course, and after six years now we were back in Missoula trying to dig our old trailer out of a friend's snowy and frozen back yard and trying to get our dormant snowmobile up on it and to a Skidoo dealer for pre-season maintenance and resuscitation. The details of all this, re-wiring the trailer, and further work on the camper, took a week. We also played some and visited friends. Eventually, the dealer we took the machine to was in West Yellowstone, the same one from whom we bought it in 2003. The Missoula dealer was busy, and the weather was "improving" in West Yellowstone. Happily, the snowmobile fired up perfectly well after its six year sleep, and we've driven several hours now on the trails near West Yellowstone, trying to re-learn the sport and get everything back into shape. So far, so good. More pix and posts will follow.

Outside our storage unit in Missoula

En route to West Yellowstone