Day 5: Billings to Makoshika State Park, MT 240 miles

Today started with planning to get a few things done. We were low on fresh water, high on black water (stuff happens), low on propane and slightly down on gas. 

Stuff breaks on motorhomes. Ignoring things that are about to break means an emergency later. We are not experts in motorhome signs and symptoms so we are learning as we go. The latest "about to break" item is the water intake usually used when you camp and hook up to pressurized water. It is usually a one way valve, but recently has decided that it goes both ways...a little. So fix it or suffer the consequences. Hence a stop at an RV supply or other hardware store is in our future. 

We had a smooth route to get all our supplies. Unfortunately, Costco was in the center of our route and difficult to avoid. Kasey wanted snacks for when he is driving and so we went in for a look. It is a dangerous place. You can find way more stuff than you need. We did pretty well though since we had virtually no room in the fridge or freezer. We always like to check out local beer and we found our Montana favorite, Bent Nail IPA. 

There is a memorable story behind that. You see when we took the Via Rail in 2016 through Canada and then returned on the Amtrak in the US we went through a town called Havre, Montana. We were allowed to get off of the train at that point and we saw a pub where we thought we could get better beer than was being served on the train. We departed the train having been assured that we had 15 minutes and walked to the pub where we acquired a six pack of Bent Nail IPA, a Montana based beer. We almost missed our train as it was departing the station and we were running to catch it. We made the train but it still remains a wonderful and silly memory of our trip.

We were happy to find this beverage, a memorable reminder of our near mishap. So with our memory purchased, we headed to Petroglyphs State Park outside of Billings. Did I mention things break? Well, Kasey mentioned the break light indicating the invisibrake in the Honda was not lighting up. We remembered a distinctive bump before we ended up at Canyon Creek Brewey last night. At the next opportunity we checked everything. One of the connections seemed to not be all the way in so we reset it. We had a nice visit to the petroglyphs. 

I seemed to have to remind myself that we were in Montana and not the desert southwest. The landscape was dry and rocky with sandstone caves reminiscent of the Anasazi.

 It didn't take long to make the loop and we were back at the motorhome and on our way. Did I mention that things break? The invisibrake seemed to be malfunctioning again. We eventually poked every connection we could think of and, we were back in business. 

Our destination for the evening was Makoshika State Park, MT. The translation from the first nation is "badlands" roughly. So here we are in a really nice scenic spot with one other couple from New Jersey. Coast to Coast, and we met in the middle. We will explore the park in the morning using our "grey towed" which is what Kasey calls the Honda.