Helena

Montana – Saturday, July 13

Sometimes my destination for the day is subject to where I can stay for a reasonable price, and although I haven’t run into too many limitations even though I’m in the peak of summer travel season, today was one of those days. Most campgrounds and motels in the direction I wanted to go were either entirely booked up, or ridiculously expensive for tonight since it was a weekend night. I had used a free night last night (I have nearly 2 weeks of free nights stashed up at various motels to use as a result of earning points) and didn’t want to use another free one somewhere else tonight. The front desk people offered me a good deal to stay a second night here in Helena (for some reason they gave me the “trucker” rate when I was waffling back and forth!) so I decided to stay in Helena a second night, and hoped to get back early enough to start getting caught up on my blog.

So Tula and I headed out for some walking, and we got the first mile and a quarter done in a local neighborhood. Then I headed over to the state capital area, which are usually fun places to walk, and covered almost 3 more miles. It was getting to be a pretty warm day in the 90s and I began to be happy I wasn’t going to be camping! I found a big park in town and Tula and I walked another mile and a quarter, but there was no shade and that was enough for Tula for the time being. I headed over to the historic Main Street and walked a mile and a half. Several blocks of shops were “pedestrian mall” areas which were blocked off to vehicle traffic, and there were lots of fun little shops to walk past, but a surprising lack of people for a sunny Saturday afternoon – the ice cream shop was the only one that seemed to be attracting anyone!

From there I headed to a long pretty avenue full of some historic old churches, homes and mansions, including the original governor’s mansion. That was a shady way to finish off my walking for the day.

I know what I’m doing for a donation tomorrow, and will have to double up in the next couple of days. Nothing really popped up today as far as a good donation opportunity, and I didn’t run across any possibilities on my walks all over the place. So I’ll take that to mean I’ll run across some good ones in the next couple of days!

I was gone all afternoon doing my walking in different parts of town, and I simply picked up a salad to take back, and enjoyed a relatively quiet evening working on my blog, financial records and writing some postcards. It’s nice to have a little catch-up time now and then!