June was a little different than most.  Gail had to go back to North Carolina to give her sister a break and help get her mom settled into an independent living facility.  Her sister had helped their mom move and get her old house emptied and move to the new facility.  Gail’s sister’s daughter was also expecting at any time, so it was to also allow her sister to spend some time with the new grandchild when he was born.  This left me at Camp Bighorn and having to drive about 120 miles to the next project at Camp Utmost in Greenough, Montana.

This was the first time I have driven to a project by myself.  After hooking up at Camp Bighorn in Plains, Montana, I then proceeded to Camp Utmost.  We had taken a weekend trip to the camp, so we knew what to expect when we got there and where I had to park.  The trip there went without a hitch and I arrived early in the afternoon, squeezed the motorhome into one of the parking places and met with the director.

Since I was working by myself, I worked with some other volunteers from a church just outside Missoula.  They had 8 to 10 men come and volunteer on Mondays and Wednesdays for the three weeks I was there.  That is definitely a church putting their faith in action. 

Now Greenough, Montana where the camp is located is not a city, but an area.  The nearest town was Avando. As you can see from the sign, there are more dogs in the town than people. It was also where I attended church while there.

Over the winter, the shop had been totally emptied with all the material placed in 3 of the cabins.  This allowed the volunteer workers to insulate the walls and put up sheetrock, finish and paint the walls and build new shelves and a loft to store everything.  The first week of work consisted of carrying everything from the cabins and putting the “stuff” back into the shop.  Since the configuration was different, it did not all fit into specific places. This was definitely not a “place for everything and everything in it’s place” kind of job at this time.  On and off for the three weeks, I was sorting nails, screws, carriage bolts and hex head bolts whenever I was not helping with anything else.

The first week, we also had a small church group come in and we worked to clean the cabins by vacuuming, washing all the mattresses and beds with disinfectant and generally preparing the camp for campers.  The timing for this group was good as a large youth group from Colorado came in to help the next week and now all the cabins were ready for them to occupy. 

This group helped stain all the cabins, the dining hall, the shop, the pump houses and the lodge.  They also went into Avando and stained the church there.  A small portion of them spent two days raking and picking up all the pine cones from the site and carting them down to a burn pit at the lower section of the property.  This pit was a good 10 feet wide, 25 feet long and 4 feet deep and it was filled with pine cones, scrap wood and pine needles from the job. On the last day, we set the pit on fire and it was like a small “Gehenna”.

I wouldn’t say they stained a lot, but notice the number of empty 5 gallon pails stacked at the shop at the end of the week.

After helping with the pickup of all the pine cones, pine needles and other items, I also took 3 of the young men and we worked on making more stations on their challenge course.  We buried 4 tires so that teams could craw through them, made a climbing wall, constructed an A-frame unit for climbing a rope and a rope ladder and a high/low section of 4 X 4’s for teams to race through.  Here are pictures of those items.

The last week I spent a couple of days mowing the property.  They had a unique mower arrangement.  They had a 4 foot mower attachment that could be pulled behind a riding mower.  This allowed you to cut a good 6 to 7 foot swath at a time.  That is good since there was a lot of property to mow.  I also helped extend a floating dock that was to be used for swimming at the local river.

Gail returned after the project and we were able to be on site for the first campers of the year.  By far, the most popular attraction was the water slide.  Attached are the pictures before and then during use.

We also went on a hike with one group of the campers to a waterfall that fed Holland Lake.  The lake and falls were beautiful as the pictures show.

One of the interesting things in this part of the country were the signs along the highway.  Not only did they have the English wording, but they also had the Indian words.  Boy am I glad I did not have to learn that alphabet and language. Here is an example.

From here it is off to Mission Aviation Fellowship in Nampa, Idaho, after a visit to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons.