Darby, MT

Saturday, October 8, 2022

Today was our last morning in Seeley Lake, Montana. Andi’s parents, Janie and Jim, & I spent the morning packing up the remainder of our groceries and personal items. Janie and Jim’s trip to Montana had come to an end, and they planned to fly back home to MN later today. We loved spending time with them the past two weeks and made so many memories we’ll never forget.

It was about an drive to the Missoula airport from Seeley Lake. Andi and I decided not to hook up the Jeep to the back of the RV since we’d have to unhook it again once we arrived in Missoula. So, Janie decided to ride along with me in the Jeep while Andi, Jim, and the kids piled into the RV. It was a foggy, cool morning in the Swan Lake valley which made the scenic drive into the big city look magical.

Once in Missoula, our train of vehicles parked and conversed in the parking lot of the Southgate Mall. Janie and Jim’s flight didn’t leave until 3:00pm, so they offered to take Tory and Aden to a movie while Andi and I took the RV to a tire service / repair shop in town. Our RV desperately needs new tires, and Andi wanted to get this done before we make the long drive back to Wisconsin. We agreed that Andi would drive the RV to the tire shop and I would follow him in the Jeep while Janie and Jim took Tory and Aden to a movie at the mall. Then, Andi and I would take the Jeep to COSTCO to load up on groceries and by the time we finished, the RV would be ready to be picked up. Phew! It was a lot of logistics, but our plan seemed to work out accordingly.

When Andi and I met Janie and Jim at the mall a few hours later, we learned that the kids picked going to the arcade over the movies. Poor Janie and Jim had spent the last few hours inside a noisy, neon-lit mall arcade. Oy, the headache! Tory and Aden had smiles a mile wide though and, with fountain sodas in hand, begged for us to continue letting them play there. There were in kid heaven.

I can’t possibly imagine Andi willingly spending time in a kids arcade, so instead he convinced them to go to Scheels and play games there while I drove Janie and Jim to the Missoula airport.

Before we left the mall, Andi had a surprise for Janie and Jim. Andi’s cousin Laura and her husband, Shaun, decided last minute to drive from Minnesota to Montana with their camper & join us for the last few days of our road trip. Laura is Janie’s niece, and it just so happened that Laura and Shaun made it to Missoula before Janie and Jim flew out. Janie knew Laura and Shaun were coming to Montana, but she didn’t know that their time here would slightly overlap. Laura and Shaun met us at the mall, and Laura pulled her ball cap down low as she approached Janie. She got close enough to bump shoulders with Janie, but Janie didn’t recognize her. Then Laura lifted her hat and said, “Surprise!” Janie was shocked to see that it was Laura standing beside her and she was so excited she nearly cried. Laura and Shaun’s arrival probably made leaving for the airport a few minutes later even more difficult for Janie and Jim.

Andi, Tory, Aden and Laura & Shaun said their good-byes to Jim and Janie, and then we were off to catch a plane. The drive from the Missoula mall to the airport was an easy 20 minutes.

While I drove to the airport, Andi bought Tory some new tennis shoes at Scheels. The poor child’s toes were scrunched up in the top of her old pair which made hiking on this trip very uncomfortable. Andi nearly choked when he learned the New Balance tennis shoes she picked cost $85. Expensive, yes, but exactly what this growing girl needed.

Aden didn’t walk away empty handed. He learned to ride a bike earlier this year, but Andi and I weren't sure how committed he’d be to cycling since Aden’s been so opposed to riding a bike up to this point. Therefore, he had a cheap Wal-Mart bike that hardly worked. The gears were stuck in one position and the chain kept falling off. It also didn’t help matters that the bike was being bounced along on the back of the RV for hundreds of miles.

Anyway, Andi decided to buy Aden a nicer bike while they were at Scheels. Andi, Tory and Aden went to the bike area of the store and picked out a bike for Aden. There weren't many left by the end of the season, but they were able to find one in the correct size. The friendly employees at the Missoula Scheels even agreed to take Aden’s old bike, fix it up, and donate it to a local child in need. They told Aden they tuned his new bike up to make it “super fast” which he loved.

As I pulled into the mall parking lot after returning from the airport, I saw Aden riding toward me on a new bike. “Mom, look what I got!” he exclaimed. He was so excited as he rode circles around the empty back parking lot. “Cool, bud,” I replied to Aden while also whispering to Andi, “it’s pink.”

“No, it’s red,” Andi responded.

“No, it’s pink,” I replied.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a boy riding a pink bike but I questioned if that was really what Aden wanted. Andi called Aden over and we examined the bike more closely. Sure enough, it was pink. Or, magenta, to be more specific.

“Huh,” Andi said. “I’ll be right back.”

Andi went back into the Scheels bike shop and asked the nice guys in there if they had any more bikes in Aden’s size. It just so happened that they had one more black & neon blue/green hiding somewhere in the rack of bikes. Andi asked if we could switch out the bikes, and the employee agreed to do an exchange.

Aden rode the pink bike back into the store and left a few minutes later with a black one.

Around this time, Laura and Shaun had finished up their shopping and met us in the parking lot with the pull-behind camper. Andi and I hooked the Jeep onto the back of our RV and the six of us traveled south toward Hamilton, Montana. Shaun was interested in doing some trout fishing, so we offered to take them to the spot we’d gone last week at Bailey Lake.

Andi guided us to a dry camping spot along the Bailey Lake Forest Service Road. We pulled our campers in and made ourselves at home there. It was dinner time by this point in the evening, so I pulled out my Instant Pot and a pre-made stir fry dish I’d picked up at COSTCO earlier in the day. Shaun and Laura contributed a table, homemade cowboy caviar, and some cocktails to the meal. We sat together in camp chairs with plates on our lap and toasted to the start of our week-long adventure.

After dinner, Aden made friends with a little girl about his age who was camping with her dad nearby. Those two rode bikes all around the campsite while Tory FaceTime’d her friend Abby inside the RV. Tweens gotta be tweens, and staying connected to friends back home has definitely been a priority for Tory on this trip. Meanwhile, Laura, Shaun, Andi and I sat out our campers and caught up on life. It’s probably been a year since we saw these two last. Such a great ending to the day, and the start of our travels with Laura and Shaun.