This is it!

Well, this is it. The last day to get ready for the big trip. Cementine (that's the RV) is packed to the gills, well not really we try to travel as lite as possible. Shadow (that's the tow car) is just waiting in the wings to get attached.

Being away for six months requires a lot of thought. I always worry that I have not thought of everything. But, going a long way toward helping to alleviate those concerns are my good neighbors Doug and Joan Ann who will be looking after the place and making sure I didn't forget anything. Amongst the myriad of things I love about where I live is the sense of community and having good neighbors that look out for one another. As they say in the credit card ad "priceless".

So, today we do those last minute things. One last pass by the dump. We have no garbage pick up where we live you have to haul it to the dump. Actually, I like this because you don't have to remember to put the can out and pay for it once a year through property taxes. For about $80 a year we can dump as much as we want whenever we want. Of course, our first priority is to make as little waste as we can. But, even so, I think it's quite a good deal.

Next up is a last visit to the Post Office. We don't get mail delivery either so we must go to town to collect it. This is a bit of a pain in the patookie because it makes us have to go to town (about 8 miles) when we really don't otherwise need or want to. But, if we don't go regularly the Post Office gets mad and crams the box so full you can't pull it out with a pair of pliers.

A quick stop at the grocers for bananas and a quart of milk and back to the ranch for the final push which much to my chagrin includes getting bookkeeping up to date so we can file whist on the road. Yuck! You gotta do what you gotta do but boy I don't do it without a proportionate amount of kicking and screaming.

The above photo is of our rig on the road. As you can see we are diminutive. But, this outfit is really easy for me to handle by myself and we are easy on the environment. Clem has a Mercedes diesel and gets 18+mpg whilst towing Shadow. Shadow gets 35 mpg whilst we zip up and down those roads less traveled looking for natural marvels to photograph.

When I bot Clem I had envisioned short trips around the Rockies and into Canada. Never occurred to me that I would want to do anything like six month at a stretch. It was with great trepidation that we did our first long trip last year on the Pacific coast. As it turned out we were snug as bugs in a rug. Clem has every convenience you can imagine. In fact, it's quite remarkable. We could have a bigger rig for less money but this compact little unit suits us to a tee. It's easy on everybody.

The gods willing we will be in Dillon, Montana tomorrow night. Not this summer but the one before we spent a couple of weeks in and around Dillon. It's a great place to explore. There are ghost towns and all manner of interesting things to see. Here are just a few shots that we got on that trip. Great place to shoot old buildings and barns.

If you should see us rumbling down the road be sure and honk!

Ciao for now,

Koty & Kinsey