Hello Everyone!
Well it has definitely been a tough week out here in Montana. The bad news is that I’m stuck in Missoula waiting for parts for a major and expensive repair to Shadow Catcher’s rear end. The good news is that at least I’m in Missoula which is a lovely city with a lot to keep me occupied.
When I wrote last week I was on my way into Missoula with an appointment to have someone look at one of my air shocks which still wasn’t working properly. On the way into town, I started feeling some vibrations coming from the rear end. When they looked into that issue, what they found was that the bearing which had been replaced in Idaho a few weeks back had failed completely causing major damage to my axle which now needs to be replaced. Finding the parts has been challenging and time consuming and so even though they are ready to move ahead with the repairs there’s not much else to do but wait.
I find this all incredibly frustrating. As I mentioned last week, I don’t mind paying for work that needs to be done, but when I do, I expect the work to be done right. I truly believe that the guys in Idaho tried their best to fix my van, but at the end of the day they did more damage than good. On top of all of that, I have come to find out that even though they were located in the same building as a Napa parts store, they are not actually a Napa service center, so there is no warranty to their work. They certainly didn’t say that they were affiliated with Napa and I didn’t ask, but I assumed that since they were in the same building that they were connected. I don’t walk into a Burger King and imagine that it’s actually Steve’s Burgers making my dinner. Since it appears as though I will be on the hook for the entirety of the coming repair bill, I’m pretty devastated as I will have put more into repairs in the last 2 months than I paid for my whole van in the first place.
Of course that begs the question as to why I’m going ahead with the repairs. I believe that with the repairs I will still be able to sell my van at the end of the year and recover that investment. If I were to scrap it here, I definitely would not. I’d also have to deal with the fact that everything I own is in my van and I am 2,000 miles from home. My summer plans would be pretty much shot and the part of the country that I’ve been looking forward to exploring the most for a decade would slowly slip out of reach. So I am going ahead with the repair which I have every assurance will be 100% guaranteed for two years and will just keep my fingers crossed that nothing else goes wrong for the rest of the summer.
Shadow Catcher has done an incredible job for me over the last 9 years, despite being stuck idle for long stretches during the pandemic and while I was at home with my uncle. We’ve traveled 90,000 miles together around the country and we’ve been to so many amazing places. She’s as much a part of this journey as I am. I love that van and it’s been my home for a long time and the only home I’ve ever owned. When I bought her, this trip was only supposed to last four years and then I planned to sell her and move on with things. And then life happened and so many things changed and here we are almost a decade later. I obviously know that vehicles don’t have feelings or any of that and they only last for so long, but I know I’m not the only person who has grown attached to a vehicle. So we’re going to push forward and hope for the best. I hope when I do go to sell her that someone else will take her and enjoy her for several more years to come.
So I sat in the shop all day on Thursday and at the end of the day I had most of the news that I described above. I was looking at more than a week if everything went well and my van is stuck up on a lift in the back of the shop, so that meant I was on my own. I took a room for the night at the Motel 6 just up the road from the shop so I could settle in, take a shower and be able to figure out what to do next. The first thing I looked up was hotel prices around town which were reasonable during the week, but quite pricey on the weekend. Thankfully I found a campground just northwest of town where I could set up my tent for $40/night. I made a reservation for Friday through Monday and then wandered down the road to a friendly little bar called The Stone of Accord. The bartender was sweet and I had a nice long conversation with a guy sitting at the bar and felt like I had regained a little bit of control by the time I went to bed.
I wandered back down to the shop on Friday to see what was going on there and not much had changed. In the early afternoon I caught an Uber out to the campground and set up for the weekend. Granite Peak RV Park is a lovely full-service campground out by the airport. It had all of the amenities of a nice campground including super clean bathrooms and showers, a pool, miniature golf, laundry and even a nice recreation room by the office. I got set up and then spent some time hanging around the pool and reading my book. As luck would have it, my friend Renee was passing through town that night, so she came out and picked me up and we went and got some dinner with her friends. We had some delicious ramen, a nice cocktail at the Montgomery Distillery and then a beer across the street at the Top Hat. I was definitely happy to have some company that night and it made me feel better all around.
On Saturday morning, I wandered up the road from the campground to check out the local options for the time I was there. There was a McDonalds, a Taco Bell, two truck stops and a bakery. I eat fast food like once a year at this point, but it was fast food or no food for the weekend. I’ll say the McDonalds wasn’t bad, the Taco Bell was way overpriced and not good at all, and the bakery was actually pretty good. On Saturday afternoon, another friend, who lives in Missoula, came and grabbed me at camp and showed me around town a little bit. We went out to meet Iris the Osprey who lives out at the mouth of Hellgate Canyon on the edge of town. Iris is apparently the oldest known living osprey in the world at over 30 years old. She has been coming back to Missoula every year since 1999 and is known as “The Queen of Hellgate Canyon”. She has her own webcam (which you can watch here) and for many years the local minor league baseball team was called The Osprey. It was fun to learn about Iris and to see her in her nest. Bidding Iris goodbye and good luck, we went for a nice walk up Rattlesnake Creek and then went and watched some live music at the Union Hall. This was a fascinating and cavernous venue in the old Labor Temple and the people watching was almost as good as the music.
I had a pretty quiet day around camp on Sunday. I read my book and played a round of mini-golf and generally just took it easy. In the evening I took a long walk up and over the freeway to a little bar called Marvin’s. It seemed like the main clientele were truckers parked at the nearby truck stops, but they were friendly enough and the food was actually pretty good there. It’s definitely the culinary highlight of The Wye neighborhood.
On Monday morning, I packed up my camp and caught a ride back to the shop. I got some updates on some of the parts and then switched out my camping gear for some city stuff and headed downtown. I managed to rent a lovely Airbnb room for the week in a cool old hotel right next to the old train station and just across the bridge from the heart of downtown Missoula. The price was way cheaper than a hotel and it was nice to be able to move in for a few days. Once I had checked in, I wandered up the river to Albertsons to pick up some groceries and my body was definitely happy to get some fruits and vegetables back in the system. In the afternoon, I took a nice long walk in the other direction and made my way out to Western Cidery for an open mic night. I was happy to find something to do on a Monday evening and I think it’s great that a lot of evening events in Missoula seem to start around 6pm. This was a true open mic night with a dozen different performers of varying degrees of talent who went up and did a song or two and then sat down again. It was a good vibe and a pleasant evening to be outside - and the cider wasn’t bad either. They were winding down around 8pm, so I wandered up the street to Draught Works Brewery which had some excellent beers on tap. From there, I took a loop around downtown, stopping in here and there for a beer. It’s been easily 20 years since I last spent any time at all in Missoula, and I was surprised to see so many bars that I remembered. The Rhino Bar, Stockman’s, The Missoula Club and Red’s all look pretty much how I remember them. I definitely appreciate the old neon signs at these places, too.
Yesterday was rainy and cold and I was glad to not be in my tent. I spent much of the morning in the library which is brand new and incredible. It’s really big and has lightning fast internet which helped me get my work done pretty quickly. I was happy to catch up on my photo essays and get a few more things done while I was there. In the afternoon, I went to check out the national headquarters of the Boone and Crockett Club which is right next door to where I’m staying. The Boone and Crocket Club was established in 1887 by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell (among others) to protect wildlife and the wild places they call home. Back in 1992, the club purchased the old Milwaukee Road railroad terminal here in Missoula and moved its national headquarters west. It was definitely an interesting place to see and the building itself is great, too.
Today has been rainy and chilly as well. The rain stopped for a little bit this morning allowing me to have a nice walk around town to take some photos to accompany this post. Missoula actually has a nice mix of old and new architecture and seems to be doing pretty well these days. The university helps considerably in keeping the economy rolling here and also makes Missoula pretty liberal by Montana standards. The county courthouse is a beautiful old building and I loved the ghost signs over at the old Labor Temple. Missoula is also rightfully proud of its carousel, the figures of which were hand-carved over a stretch of four years and requiring 100,000 volunteer hours to complete. It’s beautiful and it goes faster than any carousel I’ve ever seen. I also enjoyed watching surfers and kayakers on “The Wave”, a small rapid in the Clark Fork River which creates a standing wave. There seem to be people out there all the time, rain or shine, catching waves and enjoying the water which must be really cold at the moment. On my way “home”, I stopped at Big Dipper Ice Cream just around the corner for some Huckleberry on a sugar cone. I’m going to finish this post up now and am very much looking forward to a songwriters’ round this evening.
And that’s where I’m at. I sincerely hope that I’m out of here by this time next week, but only time will tell. I’m trying to be patient and hopeful and make the most of my time while I’m here. I really do want to get out and see Montana and Wyoming this summer and I really hate to lose two weeks to this, but I can’t go anywhere without my Shadow Catcher, so I’m just going to have to sit tight and wait. At the end of the day, this is not a tragedy, just a setback. I’ve had two dear friends lose a parent in the last couple of weeks, which definitely puts some unexpected vehicle repairs into perspective. Soon enough we’ll be rolling again. I hope you’ll come back next week to see if we’ve gotten out of Missoula. Have a good week out there and thank you, as always, for reading.
-Mike
