After a complete tour of the Westby, Montana area we continued west through the county seat of Sheridan County, Plentywood, and then on to Scobey where we turned south to Wolf Point, down by the Missouri River, picking up US-2 to Glasgow, and after a few other towns strung out along the route, we arrived in Shelby, Montana, where Marilyn has a cousin that was expecting us for a visit. 

Her cousin Dorthy and her husband, Walt (who is 92 years old, and gets around excellent!) invited us into their lovely home in Shelby, where Marilyn reminisced and along with Dorthy they 're-visited' times in the past and the growing up years around Westby.  We enjoyed dinner out with them, and finished the evening off with some cards.  We joined Dorthy and Walt the next morning for breakfast at their home, and then we were once again on our way west.

We are currently in Kalispell, Montana at the Elks Lodge RV Park. We have made a visit to some of our local friends and family in the area and as always it was good to see them and catch up on what has been happening.

We did make a visit to the Jeff Fleming “Bearpaws” shop where ‘bears’ is the word. There are a kinds, types and styles of bear carvings found there. His work is well known among those who know this type of wood-work. We stopped to check on a specific style that Jeff had a shop model of back a couple of years ago when we were here with our friends, Dave and Helen Altstadt touring the area. I think we have found the one that they were wanting, so I have sent pictures of it over to them in California, and if it is in fact the right one, then we will pick it up for them and see that they get it.

The shop is really a neat place to visit though in its own right. There are large carvings, very large carvings, medium sized carvings, small carvings, and very small carvings. It is sort of like going through a museum there and Jeff’s expertise with his tools is superb to say the least.

The weather has been very nice, in fact ideal. With lots of sun, a few lazy clouds, and temps in the upper 70F’s and the lows at night down around 48F to 55F at night. We haven’t seen any rain since the soaking that we experienced in the Black Hills about 2 or 3 weeks ago. So all in all, it has been very enjoyable weather for us.

We expect to remain here in this section of “God’s Country” for probably about another month or so. As the National Director, I do have an FMCA International Convention to attend in Redmond, Oregon in mid-August, so that is our only ‘sure thing’ so to speak. But after four years of holding this office, I will be relinquishing it to another able bodied individual in January (2011). This will be my final FMCA governing board meeting at the Redmond conclave, and since they are usually about 10 -12 hours long, it will be good to have it out of the way.

I’ll throw a few pictures in here to acquaint you with the territory and our travels through these areas.

The photos above show us coming into Shelby, MT; Marilyn, her cousin, Dorthy and her husband, Walt.; As we get closer to the front-range of the Rockies and Glacier, gets closer and closer; coming into Kalispell, along with an art-deco building from the 1930's (originally was a gas/service station) which houses one of the local television station studios; a tree lined residential street in the older, historic district; the old courthouse