Day 5 : Labor Day, September 7, 2026 - 396 miles, 7 hours

We pulled away from Jean's beautiful home on Swan Lake Monday morning full of warmth and special memories, grateful for the time we had shared and excited for the road still stretching ahead of us.

Diana had left about an hour before us, pointing her vehicle west toward Oregon while we would soon be heading east. We love traveling with Diana and wished she could simply turn around and join our little wagon train for the rest of the Grand Adventure.

That left Janice and me with one more precious hour with Julie and her mom, Jean.

After the stories, meals, laughter and memories of the past several days, there wasn't much more that needed to be said. Sometimes you recognize a special moment while you are still living it. This was one of those times. Our visit couldn't have been better, and I know it is something we will treasure forever.

One Last Stop in Swan Lake

Before leaving the area, Janice and I stopped at the Mission Mountain Mercantile for one last look around this delightful little store—and, importantly, to fill our coffee mugs for the road.

On the wall were beautiful panoramic maps of the Swan Mountain Range and Mission Mountains, identifying the peaks, passes, creeks and valleys of the country that had surrounded us during our stay.

I had also picked up a wonderful hooded sweatshirt covered with topographic lines and sketches of the mountains, trails and lakes. It seemed like the perfect souvenir—a wearable map of a place that had become much more meaningful to us over the past few days.

Coffee mugs filled, we climbed back aboard our rolling cabin and headed down the road.

Montana Through the Windshield

Our original plan was fairly modest: drive about four hours to Bozeman and call it a day. But plans on the "Chariot of the Dogs RV" are subject to change!

During the first part of the drive, as we worked our way toward Interstate 90, intermittent showers followed us through the mountains. Once we turned east, however, the clouds began giving way to sunshine, revealing the spectacular Montana landscape, forested mountains, dramatic rocky peaks, broad valleys and that seemingly endless western sky.

One of the things Janice and I enjoy when traveling is listening to local radio. It gives us a little sense of the communities we're passing through, the music people are hearing, the local voices, advertisements and bits of news from places that otherwise might simply be names on highway signs.

And Montana certainly seems to appreciate its classic rock.

Near Bozeman we found KBZM and its Labor Day special featuring classic hits from A to Z. It became our soundtrack as the miles rolled beneath us.

By the time we reached Bozeman, we were feeling good and decided, Why stop now?

So we kept going.

When the radio signal finally faded, we switched to our audiobook, First Evidence by Ken Goddard, a captivating mystery set in Oregon. A good audiobook is one of the great secrets of a long road trip. Before we knew it, another two hours had disappeared and Billings was coming into view.

Our destination was Canyon Creek Brewing, a Harvest Hosts location where we have stayed twice before.

Harvest Hosts has become one of our favorite ways to travel. Participating breweries, wineries, farms and other businesses allow RV travelers to stay overnight, giving us something much more interesting than another parking lot, and often introducing us to wonderful people along the way.  

The Staff at Canyon Creek Brewing welcomed us as graciously as ever. It being Labor Day, they were hosting a free barbecue, and the owner had roasted an entire pig along with several chickens. A lively crowd had gathered, including at least eight other people staying there through Harvest Hosts.

We found a spot on the patio, enjoyed the feast and a beer, and naturally brought Tad along. Which meant that within minutes, Tad was the star.

As happens nearly everywhere we take him, someone eventually said the words we have heard countless times:

“I haven't seen an Irish Setter in years!”

Tad accepts such admiration with appropriate dignity.

Among the people who came over to meet him was a family from the Netherlands who were traveling across the United States in a converted school bus. They stopped to pet Tad, and before long we were talking about traveling, the places we'd been and the adventures still ahead.

These spontaneous encounters are one of my favorite parts of being on the road. We arrive as strangers, Tad provides the introduction, and suddenly we're sharing stories with people whose paths might never cross ours again.

Eventually we returned to our little home on wheels. After 396 miles and seven hours on the road, you might imagine Janice would show some compassion for her weary husband. You would be mistaken. She proceeded to unmercifully beat me in a couple games of Spite and Malice. Apparently there is no mercy clause for long-distance driving.

We took Tad for his evening walk and then settled into bed, listening to another couple chapters of First Evidence before turning out the lights. And just like that, another day of our Grand Adventure was complete.

That morning we had awakened beside Swan Lake, surrounded by people and a place we had grown to love. That evening we were nearly 400 miles away in Billings, sharing barbecue and beer with strangers who quickly became acquaintances, while Tad collected yet another group of admirers. 

The mountains were now behind us, but I had them printed across my new hoodie, special memories tucked safely away, Janice beside me, Tad stretched out on his bed up front in our rolling cabin, and thousands of miles of road and special times together still ahead.

Day 4: Sunday, Sept 6. Swan Lake and Hiking Holland Lake, Montana

The rain continued into the morning as it pitter pattered on the roof of our motorhome. Kasey mentioned that there was even some thunder, but I didn’t hear it. I had let the rhythm of the rain lull me to sleep. I woke only a few times during the night making for a restful slumber.

The rain tapered off just in time for daylight. Like clockwork, Tad reminded me of his need to go for a walk. It was cool out but not cold. In the house, Julie had plugged in the coffee maker to my delight. She was quietly absorbing the morning news in the den away from the living room where Jean would have been awakened. I joined her with my coffee and we talked about many things. We were proud to have trapped the mouse that was terrorizing the the place and were celebrating our victory having saved the day.

Jean woke and was up so we joined her in the living room. Julie wás insistent that she relax while she made breakfast.

The lake was cleared of the low clouds except for a few along the far shore. It was gorgeous. Diana joined us we stared out at the lake’s changing view. 

Julie started in on breakfast. Considered a ”light” breakfast, she made sausage, and eggs. I cut a waterloup, a cross between a cantaloupe and a watermelon.

After breakfast, we piled into Julie’s car to go hike to the falls at Holland lake. Jean stayed behind, opting to rest.

Holland Lake is popular, for a reason. It has spectacular scenery. The dogs were plenty and a few I know enjoyed a lake swim. It was 1.5 miles to the falls and we took our time. 

Part of the Flathead National Forest, Holland Lake has developed a little controversy lately centering on developlent.

 https://takingthekids.com/controversy-has-suddenly-taken-over-this-once-quiet-montana-lake/

Kasey and Tad were a little faster than us as were the vast majority of young and tall adventurers. I would step to the side of the trail to let them pass and decided to take advantage of the opportunity to remind them of how this hike was possible because it was public land. “Enjoy your public lands, don’t forget to vote,” I would say as Julie chuckled at my bravery, or whatever. Young people, enjoying the publicly owned lands, during an important midterm, who knows. Maybe it made a difference.

We returned to the car just in time for the rain to start and made our way home. We stopped at the Mission Mountain Mercantile to check it out. A wonderful selection of gourmet items, clothing, groceries, fresh made sandwiches, and more. I got a portable table for the motorhome.

Back at the cabin we all decided a nap was in order. Couple of hours later, we emerged. More visiting and sharing history. We talked about how we all met our partners. Julie talked about her first job and the manual she edited for AI.

Before we knew it, it was dinner time. Jean and Julie cooked up a lasagna and green beans with a caprice salad. Jean shared more stories of her work with executive leaders.

We continued talking and sharing stories into the night.

The rain continued throughout the evening and by the time we retired for the evening, it had thouroughly soaked the surrounding grounds. We hastened to the motorhome where we snuggled in for a few chapters of our book, First Evidence, by Ken Goddard. 

Tomorrow we depart for places east and Diana will head home to Roseburg. Julie will stay for a few more days.

Day 3: Saturday, September 5, 2026 — Swan Lake, Montana

We awoke Saturday morning at Swan Lake surrounded by the mountains, water and forests of northwest Montana. It would become one of those days when we saw some spectacular scenery, but by evening I realized that the most memorable parts weren't really about the places we visited.

They were about people, stories and connections.

Pancakes, Bacon and Stories

Our day began with breakfast with our wonderful hosts, Jean Erickson and her daughter Julie Erickson Lowe, along with Diana, Janice and me. We enjoyed pancakes and bacon while Jean shared stories about her childhood.

Jean grew up on a large farm and ranch in northeastern North Dakota. Her parents had come from Norway, which gave us an immediate connection through our shared Norwegian heritage, my grandparents on my father's side also came from Norway.

Jean grew up before her family had electricity or refrigeration. In winter, they harvested ice from a nearby lake and stored it in a sawdust-insulated icehouse to use throughout the year.

One winter when Jean was only about four years old, she went with her father and brother in a horse-drawn sleigh to harvest ice. Her father and brother were loading blocks when little Jean wandered over to the enormous hole they had cut in the lake. 

And she fell in.

Her heavy winter clothes quickly became waterlogged. Fortunately, her father saw what happened and pulled her from the icy water.

What made the story even more tangible was that the old ice tongs her family used to haul those blocks are still here at the cabin, hanging on the wall more than eight decades later. Julie held them up for a photograph.

Suddenly they weren't just antique tools.

They were witnesses to a family's story.

George's Saddle

Later we went out to the shed because Julie wanted to take home another piece of family history—her father George's saddle.

I helped bring it down.

Calling it a "saddle" doesn't quite convey the experience of lifting the thing. It must weigh at least 50 pounds! It is a substantial working saddle from a life in which horses weren't decorations or hobbies but part of the family's everyday world.

George, Jean's husband and Julie's father, died in 2020 after living with Alzheimer's disease. That same year, Julie also lost her younger brother Erik. Listening to Jean and Julie talk about George made the saddle feel like much more than leather, wood and metal.

Julie also has the saddle Jean used as a girl. She plans to take both home to Oregon, where she and Chris will display them together.

We loved hearing Jean tell stories about Julie riding horses from an early age. We are so proud of Julie and her passion for nature and her connection to her Dad and Mom special part of who she is.

Before we put George's saddle away for the trip west, Tad and I posed beside it in Jean's living room.

Hungry Horse Dam

Later, Diana, Janice and I headed toward Hungry Horse Reservoir, not far from Glacier National Park.

Hungry Horse Dam is an extraordinary structure tucked into equally extraordinary country. Standing there, I found myself thinking about the sheer scale of what humans can build, and the landscapes and watersheds in which we build them.

We did a little sightseeing afterward, although anyone who knows me knows that crowded tourist attractions and shops designed primarily to separate tourists from their money aren't exactly my favorite form of recreation. There was, however, one important exception.

A huckleberry shake. Now that was worth stopping for!

Our next stop was Sacred Waters Brewing Company, where we met Janice's longtime friend Carol Jorgenson, who lives in Kalispell.

Carol is also a retired wildlife biologist and someone Janice greatly respects for her work protecting wildlife. They hadn't seen one another since Janice retired in 2019, so this was much more than a quick beer stop.

We ordered a flight, some French fries and nachos and settled in for a long-overdue visit.

Carol brought us gifts, and the conversation quickly became what these gatherings are really about, catching up on the years that have passed, hearing where life has taken someone and rediscovering a friendship that time and distance never quite erased.

Tad, meanwhile, joined us and appeared to believe that the primary purpose of a brewery patio was for people to admire an Irish Setter. He may have been right.

Back to Swan Lake

By the time we returned to Jean's cabin, Tad was ready for a swim. He and Freya headed into Swan Lake for a swim, splashing through water so clear that we could see the stones beneath their feet.

We sat on Jean's deck overlooking the lake. A boat passed. People paddled kayaks across the water. The mountains rose beyond the opposite shore. The afternoon light softened, and eventually great clouds above the mountains caught the colors of evening.

Nobody needed to be anywhere.

Nobody needed to buy anything.

We just sat together and talked.

Diana had thoughtfully picked up a jar of huckleberry jalapeño jelly for me during our travels that day. It was a particularly special little gift because she knew I would enjoy the combination of sweet huckleberries and a bit of jalapeño heat. I shared it with everyone as we sat together overlooking Swan Lake, and we all enjoyed another delicious taste of Montana.

Jean's Marvelous Dinner

Eventually we moved inside, where Jean prepared an extraordinary dinner from one of her handwritten recipes, a Portuguese-inspired dish combining pork, ham, chorizo, prosciutto and clams, along with onions, garlic, tomato, herbs and spices, served over pasta.

It was delicious!

But, once again, the food was only part of the experience.

Around the dinner table Jean began telling us about another chapter of her remarkable life.

Jean became involved with Friendship Force in its early years, around 1982. The organization brought ordinary people from different countries into one another's homes with the idea that personal relationships could help bridge cultural and political differences.

Through those experiences, Jean traveled the world, met people from many cultures and even had the opportunity to meet President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter.

Jean is vibrant, curious and engaged with the world. She has traveled extensively and written four books. Sitting at her table listening to her stories, it struck me that we weren't simply hearing about history.

We were sitting with someone who had lived a remarkable piece of it.

The Things We Carry

Saturday began with an old pair of ice tongs and a story about a four-year-old girl falling through the ice in rural Minnesota.

Then came George's saddle.

Later there was a dam, a huckleberry shake, an old friend, a flight of Montana beer, two happy dogs swimming in Swan Lake, an evening sky reflected across the water, a handwritten recipe and stories from around the world.

The ice tongs survived.

The saddle survived.

Jean's handwritten recipe survived.

But none of those objects really matters without the stories attached to them.

Perhaps that's one reason Janice and I wanted to make this Grand Adventure in the first place. We're traveling thousands of miles across the country, and I'm sure we'll see extraordinary mountains, rivers, forests and places along the way.

But increasingly I suspect that isn't what this journey is really about.

It's about the people we love, the stories we share, and the things we choose to carry forward.

Saturday at Swan Lake reminded me of that.

And as the light faded over the mountains and another day of our Grand Adventure came to an end, I felt enormously grateful simply to be there.

Day 2: Sept 5. Boardman, OR to Swan Lake , MT

Our overnight stay near Burnt Fields Brewery was interrupted by the usual train passings but all in all, we slept well.

The trip for today began with an early departure from Boardman at 7:30 AM, meeting Diana at a planned gas station stop near the freeway. The route traversed eastern Washington, Idaho, and into Montana.

During the drive, I researched Samuel Boardman, the first superintendent of Oregon State Parks. He was instrumental in acquiring many of the state's current parks He was born in 1874 In Massachusetts.

The drive through eastern Washington shifted from flat grasslands to volcanic, rocky terrain characterized by sagebrush. Spectacular scenery awaited us upon entering Montana. It was a long drive and Tad was bored.

A traditional stop to view live rainbow trout and purchase huckleberry shakes was a must at St Regis, MT. A the "postage stamp sized" dog park was inadequate for a large dog so Kasey took Tad for a walk while Diana and I went inside the gift shop.

We arrived at Swan Lake before dark and greeted by Julie. We maneuvered the motorhome into a spot and went into the home of Jean Walker.

The evening was spent on the deck admiring the lake view and discussing Jean Walker’s crafts and her life in the local community. 

Dinner consisted of veal with Hollandaise sauce, salad, asparagus, and bread. The meal was prepared by Julie with assistance from Jean. A wonderful triffle was presented as dessert to cap the evening.

Adventures await tomorrow.

Day One — The Wheels Begin to Turn

September 3, 2026 | Roseburg to Boardman, Oregon 5.5 hours 336 mile

There is a moment at the beginning of every long journey when preparation finally becomes adventure.

For us, that moment came a little before 10:00 this morning.

Janice was up around 6:00 a.m., and I was up before 7 after staying awake into the wee hours getting ready for our eight-week, roughly 6,000-mile Fall Dusty Roads Wagon Train.

For the past several days, our lives have been governed by lists. More than 30 things had to be loaded into the motorhome. There were lists of things to finish at home, lists for Umpqua Watersheds, and all of those last-minute details that somehow multiply before a long trip.

One by one, we checked them off.

And then something nearly unprecedented happened:

We left home by 10:00 a.m.

We actually made our self-imposed departure time!

We drove down to the county road, loaded the bikes onto the motorhome, and pointed our little wagon train east.

At 10:30, we met our friend Diana Pace in Wilbur, and the adventure was officially underway.

The drive to Boardman took about five and a half hours and was surprisingly easy. Traffic wasn't bad, we encountered a little rain, and before long we were approaching Portland and turning east into the Columbia River Gorge.

That was when the landscape—and my imagination—really began to open up.

Driving alongside the Columbia, we began seeing signs marking the Lewis and Clark Trail. I found myself thinking about their extraordinary journey through this same country more than 220 years ago. Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery traveled down the Columbia toward the Pacific in 1805 and back up the river in 1806.

Our circumstances could hardly be more different. We have a motorhome, highways, GPS, music, audiobooks, comfortable beds and cold beer waiting at the end of the day.

But there is still something about following a river through an enormous landscape that awakens that old human desire to discover what lies beyond the next bend.

We stopped briefly at Multnomah Falls, hoping to get a closer look. The falls were only a trickle, and we discovered that access now requires advance arrangements that we hadn't made. So we took a photograph from a distance, climbed back aboard our wagon, and continued east on Interstate 84.

Eventually, we arrived in Boardman and one of our traditional stops: Burnt Field Brewing.

We have stopped here on previous trips and always enjoy it. It's a wonderful little place near the Columbia River, with good beer, excellent pizza and the nearby Al James barge display.

Before settling completely into vacation mode, however, there was one last bit of Umpqua Watersheds business. We held a KQUA radio meeting with Shane, Joseph and Julie and talked about the work ahead for our community radio station.

Then Diana joined us for dinner.

We spent a wonderful evening eating pizza, drinking beer and talking with Michelle, the owner of Burnt Field Brewing. We have stopped here enough times that Michelle actually remembered my name, which amazed me. There is something special about discovering these little touchstones along the road—places hundreds of miles from home that somehow begin to feel familiar.

After dinner, we took Tad for a good walk and settled into the motorhome for the night.

And now we're tired.

It has been several intense days of finishing projects, packing, checking lists and preparing to disappear down the road for two months. Tomorrow will be considerably more demanding: roughly eight hours of driving as we make our way to Swan Lake, Montana. Julie will meet us there, and we'll spend three days at the cabin of her mother, Jean.

After that, Minnesota awaits. We'll spend about three weeks there with family before pointing the motorhome east again—eventually traveling all the way to New York, with Canada, Michigan, friends, relatives and unexpected discoveries somewhere along the way. We hope to see Jonathan Foster in New York, reconnect with our former AmeriCorps member Ryan Kincaid, and discover whatever else the road decides to put in front of us.

And that's really the point.

We don't want to script this adventure too carefully.

One of my favorite parts of traveling is passing through little towns and wondering about the people who live there. What are their lives like? What do they love about this place? What worries them? What makes this particular bend in the river or collection of buildings home?

And meanwhile, inside our rolling little world, Janice and I talk. We listen to music and audiobooks. We laugh. Tad watches the world go by. Sometimes we talk about important things, and sometimes about absolutely nothing.

There is always a little sadness—and a little anxiety, in leaving home for such a long time.

But there is something wonderful about it, too.

For the next eight weeks, Janice and I get to simply be us.

Us, Tad, the motorhome, friends and family waiting somewhere ahead, and approximately 6,000 miles of dusty roads stretching toward the horizon.

Tonight, we're boondocking beside Burnt Field Brewing in Boardman, Oregon.

The lists are finished.

The bikes are loaded.

The first 250-or-so miles are behind us.

And somewhere beyond the Columbia River, tomorrow's road is already waiting.

Day One: a great success.

Together we are. Together we shine.

—Kasey