This part of Montana is moose country, though we've yet to see one. Hopefully the first one we see won't be in the middle of the road. Or charging at us through the bush. People in the know know that moose are to be feared more than are bears.
We went to the top (Lolo Pass) and checked out the visitor's center on the MDT/PDT line. Mitch explained to Esmé about time zones, and he thinks she understood well enough (though of course she was upset about the inanity of daylight savings time). 
The nature trail behind the building was still under a few feet of snow, so we couldn't take a hike.
On the way back down we stopped at some National Forest campgrounds to reconnoiter for future easy camping trips. There were plenty of good spots nestled in trees like these, and there are some good trails through the woods for walking with the bay-bay strapped to us.Spring is here, and Melissa couldn't resist taking pictures of the flora.
It looks like we'll need to check out a book from the library to figure out what these are, and whether or not we can feed them to the baby.
7 comments:
Good Lord you guys are a cute family!
Congrats on the babe!
Way to slip in a plug for the library webpage.
Looks like you had a good weekend.
Hey, we just saw the McD's blog, and we think Esmé needs an airplane like Emma has. Looks like she's having a ball just bouncing around in it. --Mom & Dad G.
That last one looks like a Trillium. We have them here. They like wooded areas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillium
Totally unrelated to this post -
saw your comment about moving my fuel filter, and believe me, it's been on my mind. But I don't have a firewall between the tank and the engine - they didn't have them in '68. Where can I move it that it's out of my engine compartment? Pretty much has to stay in there, no?
Thanks.
Carry on.
This is the way I understand it: All things being equal (i.e. you're using proper fuel hose and clamps), the weakest points in the fuel system are where hosing gets clamped onto something. As it stands, Big Blue has six clamps in the line; one outbound from the tank, one inbound to the pump, one outbound from the pump, one inbound to the filter, one outbound from the filter, one inbound to the carb.
Now imagine that Big Blue's fuel line fails at one of these clamps: (1)Tank outbound--probably not a real big deal as the gas runs to the ground and the fuel-starved engine dies after the fuel in the carb is gone. (2)Fuel pump inbound--bad, as gas runs out into the engine compartment until the line is empty. (3)Fuel pump outbound--bad, as Big Blue's (mechanical) fuel pump runs as long as the engine turns. As the carb runs the engine out of gas, the still-running pump is spraying gas all over into the engine compartment.(4)Fuel filter inbound--same as (3). (5)Fuel filter--same as (3). (6)Inbound to carb--same as (3).
Some of these situations are unavoidable as given that the carb and pump have to be in the engine compartment. Well, not the pump if you mount an electric one somewhere else, but that's why you inspect these fittings often and replace defective hoses/clamps immediately. HOWEVER, you can easily control where the fuel filter is. So the idea is to eliminate situations (4) and (5) above, thus reducing the number of clamps in the fuel line whose failure results in fuel spraying on the hot parts and the electrified parts (distributor caps are NOT sealed tight--there's a lot of sparking going on in your running engine) of the engine. Add to that that the fuel filter is the most fiddled with component in the series and therefore the most susceptible to error. Therefore you want it upstream of the pump, so the failure of one of its clamps results in some gas on the ground and the engine dies as it runs out of gas in the carb, its pump pumping nothing.
As an added bonus, in this position it will collect particulate matter (re: rust) from Big Blue's 40 year-old gas tank before said particulate matter ends up plugging up the pump's own internal filter. It's 10x easier to replace the fuel filter than to remove the pump and clean out its filter.
Alright,
whc03grady
Wow. good stuff. Thanks for the lesson. I'll get on it...
-Brett
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