After a brief stop in Idaho, we've landed in Washington

We woke up to very hazy smokey conditions in Butte, MT this morning.

A little later in the day - still hazy, but not quite so bad as it was first thing in the morning.

There were some places - like the area coming up on the right side of the road, that appeared to have gone through a fire, but not recently.

This was the area to the right side of the road - there is regrowth under the trees, but the trunks show fire damage from some time within the last year or so we think.

We got into some very curvy up and down hill sections on the interstate.

We stopped in Missoula, Montana with the plan to fuel up, but the station was quite small and we figured that we would block both of the entrance/exits if we went in there... I started looking further down the road and found a Pilot near Superior, Montana so we decided to stop there. It was an odd layout to the station - probably because of the narrowness of the valley and needing to fit into the space available:

There were 3 diesel pumps at "1", but we weren't sure we could make the turn to U-back onto Diamond Road... so we went down to "2" where there was a gravel lot and made a U-turn, and then came back and were able to easily get into the furthest left lane in the second set of pumps (I think 4 pumps there). The lady in the shop was surprised when I told her which pump we were at - she said no one fills there... it appeared that there was no DEF there (which we don't need), and from watching how the trucks came in (making a U-turn off of Diamond Road into the pumps), I think they would have had a hard time getting into that pump.

Another view if you want to look at the site:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/403+Diamond+Rd,+Superior,+MT+59872/@47.188611,-114.8889668,1026m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x535e1cc7fe66fe47:0x2ae06f13232b0180!8m2!3d47.1886074!4d-114.8845841

In that area, I think they were staging firefighters - there were signs directing to different fire numbers or staging areas.

We had planned to overnight in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and stopped at the Costco to shop (though the parking lot was PACKED and we had to park at a nearby Safeway)... but it was 106F! Staying without hookups, even when the temperature overnight would eventually get down into the 60s, is really not optimal as we would have to run the generator to run the air conditioners and try to get the bus to cool down while sitting on a heat-radiating asphalt surface. We decided to see if the campground we were to check into tomorrow in Newport, WA could take us a day early, and they could. It is still in the mid 90s here at the campground, but with 50A hookups we can run the air conditioners and be comfortable.

We are booked to be in this campground through the Labor Day weekend, so it is good to have gotten in early and have been able to get a 50A site in one of the less dusty areas of the campground.

Dwayne noticed something hanging under the back of the bus when I was backing into the spot - he discovered that some tape that had been used to bind up the wiring to the house batteries was hanging down and so he decided to replace it with a heavy wire tie (see his legs outside the battery compartment).

A fellow stopped to chat with us as we were unhooking the Jeep and preparing to go looking for a spot. He pointed to this spot and the one next to it as the best choices of what was available. Evidently the majority of the campground has a gravel road, but the part in front of this site is asphalt and therefore less dusty. This site also has 50A hookups which allows us to run multiple air conditioners!

Dwayne and I both were surprised at how hot and dry it is here... I guess it is only the coastal areas of the state that are rainy and cloudy and relatively cool. We will eventually be getting to that part of the state (in a week or so). From one of the folks that we met in Casper we learned that Oregon is dealing with one of the driest summers they have every had (I think it was 70+ days without rain at that point and I have not heard that they have had rain since then - though I honestly haven't been paying a lot of attention) - so maybe the weather here is a bit out of the ordinary. I guess we will be finding out!