KevinBauman After a night of rain, we headed down to the UPS store to pick up our mail, and head north towards Kalispell, Whitefish, and Glacier National Park. Unfortunately (unfortunately, this seems to be a commonly word in my posts), the UPS store was not ready for us. While they had the package, they had not scanned it in yet. So, we headed down the street to Zootown Coffee. A very large and nice space with good coffee and friendly employees. We did the usual, and worked, tended to our email inboxes, and waited.
Eventually the package was ready for pickup, so I ran down the street in the rain, grabbed the package, and ran back. The mail was important as it had checks from clients. We sold our house in Denver, so we weren’t in danger of running out of money, but spending the house sale proceeds on vanlife seems like a really bad financial mistake, so we intend to keep working and making money. So far, the work has not worked out as well as hoped. It’s part of the vanlife reality thing. Working on the road is hard. Decent WiFi is hard to come by, as is the time to do the work. Driving and working is hard to do simultaneously.
Anyway, thanks to modern banking phone apps, I can deposit checks from afar. Unfortunately, due to the shortcomings of modern banking phone apps, some checks just won’t go through. One client has terrible writing, and often has different amounts in the two areas of the check with the amount. For instance, in one area he’ll write 734.75, while in the other he’ll write seven hundred thirty four and no/100 dollars. This makes my success rate in depositing those checks around 25%. This time was one of the 75%. Also, I had a check from Canada. Apparently banks won’t let you do mobile deposits of checks from Canada. So, I had to now run down the street to Wells Fargo (I was glad I hadn’t closed that account yet), and make a deposit the old fashioned way: with a teller.
After one more run down the street through the rain, we were able to get on the road. Well, actually we had to get gas, ice for the cooler, and some food. This is also part of vanlife reality. All of the small things, like gas, food, oil changes, getting mail, banking, etc, take up way more time than you’d think. We finally got on the road by mid-afternoon.
As we headed north, we spent much of our time looking for our next place to camp. This is part of our normal driving ritual, along with lots of reading, and podcasts. We decided to head up the east side of Flathead Lake and decided to try the Finley Point Campground.
We got there in time for one of the last two campsites. We still had enough time for sunset at the lake and dinner before bed. Sadly the sunset wasn’t all too exciting, but water is always a hit with Alexander, and it was hard to drag him away for dinner.
We had mosquitoes again, but not nearly as badly as the last few nights at Lolo Creek. It rained off and on all day again.
Distance: 78 miles
Time: 2 hours
Vanlife reality: Rain, of course. Mosquitoes, of course. Logistics headaches. Spending a lot less time working, hiking, exploring than hoped. More time driving, getting gas, shopping, etc than hoped.
