Our New Campsite

Tuesday, July 9th, we headed out of Cripple Creek around 8am, after saying our goodbyes to family we were RVing with. The trip went great and we had lots of daylight, so we were going to head on to Billings, MT to stay the night.

When we got near the area where Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument is (close to Hardin, MT), the "check engine" light lit up on the dashboard. Uh oh...The engine had been running for a LONG time, so we thought maybe when we gas up next that it may go away after turning the engine off and then back on. No such luck. There was no loss of power from the engine, and seeing as the biggest city in Montana is Billings, we decided to head on to the Cabela's we were originally planning to stay the night at. Once there, we looked up the Caterpillar dealerships in the area. After talking with a mechanic at a local shop, we decided since the motorhome is still under warranty, to go ahead and drive the motorhome to the Cat dealership parking lot so we would be there bright and early when they opened. Little did we know that it wouldn't help speed things along and the Cat dealership is where we would could home for the next couple of nights.

This morning, July 10th, we walked over to the store front at 0730 am where they referred us to the service area. The manager stated that he could probably get to us today, but more than likely they wouldn't be able to start repair until tomorrow morning. Poop...oh well, at least we didn't ignore the light and break down in Canada. They ran diagnostics on the motorhome today and determined that it was an emissions regen. problem. So, we will see if possibly we can get this thing repaired and on the road tomorrow sometime.

Sean and I figured while we were basically stuck here we would make the best of it and explore the area. Sean follows a couple through their blog, and apparently, they and their motorhome are stuck in Billings too for repair of their Detroit Diesel engine. We headed over to the repair shop they are at to see if we could meet them, but it looked as though no one was there, so we were in search of something else to do.

I had seen on the atlas that there was Pictograph Cave State Park close by. So, off we went. It was neat and cheap entertainment for a couple of hours.

We asked the Park Ranger where there was a good place to view Pronghorns (we had seen many on the way up I-90, but had no chance to pull over to view them), and we were directed to Airport Road. We checked it out, but only found empty grassy hills (probably because it was 95 degrees out). However, we found a great view of Downtown Billings.