{"id":1145,"date":"2008-06-20T20:32:06","date_gmt":"2008-06-21T03:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2008-06-20T20:32:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-21T03:32:08","slug":"hamilton-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1145","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton, Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1146\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?attachment_id=1146\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1146\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?attachment_id=1146\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?fit=750%2C496&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"750,496\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;Roland K Smith&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;As we left Idaho at the Lost Trail Pass (north of Salmon) and began the descent down the other side of the Continental Divide, we came across this small herd of Rocky Mountain goats. After I took this picture they started up the middle of the highway ... becoming potential roadkill.&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;This image is licensed under a Creative commons Attribution 2.5 License&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;Roadside Wildlife&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Roadside Wildlife\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;As we left Idaho at the Lost Trail Pass (north of Salmon) and began the descent down the other side of the Continental Divide, we came across this small herd of Rocky Mountain goats. After I took this picture they started up the middle of the highway &amp;#8230; becoming potential roadkill.&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Roadside Wildlife&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?fit=300%2C198&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?fit=604%2C399&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1146\" style=\"float:left; border:blue 2px solid;margin-right:8px;margin-bottom:2px;\" title=\"Roadside Wildlife\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?resize=300%2C198&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Roadside Wildlife\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?resize=300%2C198&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?resize=150%2C99&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.rnsmith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/dsc02183x.jpg?w=750&amp;ssl=1 750w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Our first stop was at the <a title=\"Black Rabbit RV Park link\" href=\"http:\/\/blackrabbitrv.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Black Rabbit RV Park<\/a> in <a title=\"Hamiton, Montana link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hamiltonmontanaonline.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hamilton, Montana<\/a>. We managed to get away from the house about 10:50 this morning. The last task, hooking the Tracker onto the motor home, took quite a while as the safety chains hookup had become quite corroded over the winter.<\/p>\n<p>Our route of travel has been mostly on normal roads other than the drive from Pocatello to Blackfoot on the freeway. We drove through the <a title=\"INL Link\" href=\"https:\/\/inlportal.inl.gov\/portal\/server.pt?open=512&amp;objID=255&amp;mode=2\" target=\"_blank\">Idaho National Laboratory<\/a> and past <a title=\"EBR-1 Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/EBR-I\" target=\"_blank\">EBR-1<\/a>, the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity and <a title=\"Atomic City Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atomic_City\" target=\"_blank\">Atomic City<\/a>, the first town to be lit up by nuclear energy. The  we turned north in <a title=\"Arco Idaho Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arco,_Idaho\" target=\"_blank\">Arco<\/a> and drove past <a title=\"Mt. Borah Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mt_borah\" target=\"_blank\">Mt. Borah<\/a>, the highest point in Idaho and onto <a title=\"Challis, Idaho Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Challis%2C_Idaho\" target=\"_blank\">Challis<\/a>, Idaho. Another turn north took us through <a title=\"Salmon, Idaho Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salmon%2C_Idaho\" target=\"_blank\">Salmon<\/a>, Idaho, over <a title=\"Lost Trail Pass Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lost_Trail_Pass\" target=\"_blank\">Lost Trail Pass<\/a> (and the interesting ski resort there), the <a title=\"Continental Divide Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Continental_Divide_%28Atlantic\/Pacific%29\" target=\"_blank\">Continental Divide<\/a>, and down the other side into Hamilton, Montana. Much of the drive from Challis northward was along the <a title=\"Salmon River Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Salmon_River_%28Idaho%29\" target=\"_blank\">Salmon River<\/a> as far as the Divide, and then along the <a title=\"Bitterroot River Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bitterroot_River\" target=\"_blank\">Bitterroot River<\/a>. Our campground is on the banks of the Bitterroot about three miles north of town.<\/p>\n<p>Our map index says that the population of Hamilton, Montana was about 3,000 souls. <a title=\"Hamilton, Montana Wikipedia link\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hamilton%2C_Montana\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a> says 3,705 in the 2000 census. It cannot be true. This must be a much larger town. There are three grocery stores, just about every fast food restaurant, and a couple of movie theaters. It seems to be a very vibrant place.<\/p>\n<p>With gasoline prices around $4 a gallon, we&#8217;ve decided to slow down to 55 mph as we&#8217;ve got more time available to us now. Today that resulted in a 20% increase in gas mileage, even though we&#8217;ve been going up and down mountains much of the day. We&#8217;ve pretty much decided to drive the motor home out east in October for The Wedding and take some time around that to do some vacationing. It looks like by slowing down we can dramatically reduce the cost of the trip.<\/p>\n<p>The vacation has begun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our first stop was at the Black Rabbit RV Park in Hamilton, Montana. We managed to get away from the house about 10:50 this morning. The last task, hooking the Tracker onto the motor home, took quite a while as the safety chains hookup had become quite corroded over the winter. Our route of travel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/?p=1145\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hamilton, Montana<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnKxs-it","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rnsmith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}