Our first stop was at the Black Rabbit RV Park in Hamilton, Montana. We managed to get away from the house about 10:50 this morning. The last task, hooking the Tracker onto the motor home, took quite a while as the safety chains hookup had become quite corroded over the winter.

Our route of travel has been mostly on normal roads other than the drive from Pocatello to Blackfoot on the freeway. We drove through the Idaho National Laboratory and past EBR-1, the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity and Atomic City, the first town to be lit up by nuclear energy. The we turned north in Arco and drove past Mt. Borah, the highest point in Idaho and onto Challis, Idaho. Another turn north took us through Salmon, Idaho, over Lost Trail Pass (and the interesting ski resort there), the Continental Divide, and down the other side into Hamilton, Montana. Much of the drive from Challis northward was along the Salmon River as far as the Divide, and then along the Bitterroot River. Our campground is on the banks of the Bitterroot about three miles north of town.

Our map index says that the population of Hamilton, Montana was about 3,000 souls. Wikipedia says 3,705 in the 2000 census. It cannot be true. This must be a much larger town. There are three grocery stores, just about every fast food restaurant, and a couple of movie theaters. It seems to be a very vibrant place.

With gasoline prices around $4 a gallon, we’ve decided to slow down to 55 mph as we’ve got more time available to us now. Today that resulted in a 20% increase in gas mileage, even though we’ve been going up and down mountains much of the day. We’ve pretty much decided to drive the motor home out east in October for The Wedding and take some time around that to do some vacationing. It looks like by slowing down we can dramatically reduce the cost of the trip.

The vacation has begun!