Here’s a good story of a man named Robert Sines who bought an M-38A1, wrote a story about it on Kaiser Willys’ website, then donated the check he received for the story to his local American Legion Post 66.

Kaiser Willys Post: https://blog.kaiserwillys.com/jeep-for-sale-with-conditions-a-willys-m38a1-used-in-support-of-veterans?doing_wp_cron=1563676900.8970100879669189453125

Newspaper article: https://www.hiawathaworldonline.com/news/willys-jeep-life-story-helps-out-local-legion/article_bf804a78-983d-11e9-a9d1-df2402b1b0b9.html

Photo Credit: Joey May and the Hiawatha World

Bobbie Howard makes waterproof key chains with Willys insignias. I asked some Facebook readers about them and they all said the product was a good one. They cost $10 and include free shipping. At this point, it looks like she only works from Facebook, so you’ll need a FB account to order them.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2382510764/permalink/10156506817540765

Me looking over the valley at an overlook in Glacier National Park.

I don’t know what it was about Friday, but through the course of our 14 hour drive from Great Falls, Montana, to Pasco, Washington, we encountered more rude drivers and more poor driving than we had over the rest of our trip. Maybe it was something about Friday and the weekend, but people just had no patience.

On Friday we drove home to Pasco, but we definitely took the LONG way.

We began the day at 5:30am. Our goal was to get to Glacier National Park before the crowds arrived. We reached the eastern entrance at 8:00am, but by then the eastern visitor’s center was already packed solid. So, rather than linger, we began our trek across the Going to the Sun Road. Here are some pics from Glacier:

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Just one post Friday. We are getting up early to drive to the Road to the Sun Road in Glacier. Here’s a video of what we hope to see (the weather ti supposed to be this good).

Me standing on the walkway at Giant Springs State Park. Note the trees in the background bending to the wind. The wind plagued us all day.

On Thursday, we drove from Minot, North Dakota, to Great Falls, Montana.

The drive started off nicely, with a flat, smooth, four-land highway. North Dakota really knows how to build a highway, or at least they know how to build Highway 2. The road was great all the way to Willston, North Dakota, which also is the border between North Dakota and Montana. Along the way, we enjoyed wind blown grass against countless deep blue ponds and lakes. So Idyllic.

Naively, I thought all of Highway 2 would like that. As usual, just when you are cruising down the highway of life, life throws you a curve … or in this case takes away two of your lanes and turns the remaining two lanes into whoop-d-doos. Adding to that, Mother Nature cranked up the wind until our average MPG dropped from 24mpg to 18mpg.

This made for a long drive between Williston and Great Falls. Still, we made it safely to Great Falls.

Our reason for spending the night in Great Falls was to see if Giant Springs Heritage State Park had made any updates to its smelter exhibit. The exhibit is a walking tour through the remains of the Montana Smelter, the first industry that came to Great Falls. It was a state-of-the-art silver-lead smelter designed, built, and controlled by Anton Eilers; which is the reason he is considered the city’s father of industry.

PHOTO CREDIT: Montana State Archives. The smelter, built in 1887, fills most of this photo. To the right is the manager’s residence and in the foreground you can see the spring for which Giant Spring is named.

Yes, the tour is still there, along with the remains of one of the blast furnaces.

After our quick tour, we walked down to see the park’s core attraction: the Roe River, the shortest river in the world. The water bubbles out of a spring, then flows 200 feet, before tumbling into the Missouri River.

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