FL9

Sunday morning on October 15th was overcast when we awakened, but no rain yet.  While Judy was getting dressed for breakfast, I walked down the path from the caboose to an opening in the fence between the hiking/cross country skiing trails and the BNSF yard for this picture of one of the helper sets at rest.

On the way back I paused for this wooded view that is not as far out in the wilderness as it looks.

This is the road from the cabooses back out towards the main highway two miles north of here.  During our four day stay, we never met another vehicle on this road.

Our timing was perfect during our walk to the Inn for breakfast as the eastbound Empire Builder passed under the bridge just as we strolled overhead.

We had a leisurely breakfast as we had no real plans for the day, and that turned out to be a good thing.  When we got back to the caboose, I noticed the passenger side front tire on our rental SUV was very low.  We packed up and nursed it over the four miles to the Inn, figuring they would know how to advise us since the nearest gas station we knew about was 30 miles in either direction.

The staff was of tremendous assistance as always during our stay.  They had a tire guage and an electric compressor outside in no time, and we pumped it up but could not hear or see any obvious leaks.  Nature put in a cameo appearance at that moment as a chipmunk moving at high speed came around the corner of the Inn and vaulted over my foot without hesitation.  As it raced on across the lawn, the gentleman helping me said this was common as the local chipmunks were pretty much fearless when it came to humans.

Leaving the tire to sit for a pressure test, we went back in and got out the phone book to see who could repair a leak that would be open on a Sunday.   After a few calls we determined our only choice was the WalMart in Kalispell, about 60 miles by road to the west.  We went back outside to check the tire again, and determined it was a slow leak.  Judy and I started out west on Highway 2 as we had the day before.  It started to rain, and the mist-wrapped hills and mountains had a totally different look to them compared to yesterday’s sunshine.  We stopped near Nyack for this quick view looking down towards the Flathead River as a stray cloud wandered up the slope on the other side.

We made it to Kalispell just fine, and went shopping in WalMart and had lunch at Applebee’s next door while we waited for them to solve our problem.