Rules kept and broken

How strange that a late morning person like me should be waking up so early in the mornings these last couple of weeks. I'd like to think it is the result of this very relaxed lifestyle. We had our camp packed and were on the road by 8 AM.

If I remember anything about Western Montana it will be smoke. We had a gorgeous drive along a mountain steam for the first hour of our ride out of Yellowstone, but the skies became more and more grey with smoke and it wasn't long before the smell of burning timber was obvious even inside of the car. We think we drove in the area of at least five different forest fires along the way, and, if what we were hearing from the various people we talked to along our stops were correct with their information, we were within 2 miles of at least one of them.

We stopped and had a snack along the side of a Montana ranch. The rancher stopped by and because he saw me taking a picture of Jim looking over the land, we think he suspected we were land speculators. He went into a long dialogue about how Montana's best land is being destroyed by all the people who are sub-dividing it. We assured him we had no interest in dividing up his land and the conversation became much
more relaxed. I was sorry to see him in a baseball cap though because Jim is finally beginning to meld into the landscape with his cowboy hat. The rancher assured me he had left his cowboy hat at home. It was fun to talk to him.

The drive into Idaho brought landscape changes once again. The first thing we noticed was the increased variety of pines and the fact that there were many more deciduous trees than there were in Wyoming. We almost immediately started steeply climbing mountains. The range here reminds me more of Colorado mountains.

At one point we came upon an amazing valley that had a lookout spot but by the time I realized that it was a view of a huge silver mine, we had driven past it. We enforced rule number five and took the next exit. We ended up in the historic mining town of Wallace, Idaho and had lunch there. There were silver shops everywhere.

We decided to break rule number two and drove 7 hours so we could reach Spokane, WA. We gained an hour by moving into Pacific Standard Time so the clock said 6 hours and while that doesn't make for logical thinking, it worked for us.

Tonight we are staying in a hotel in Spokane. We found the best food festival I have ever been to in downtown Spokane. There were food booths from about every country I could think of and all the food was freshly prepared. There were thousands of people there. Jim is taking me on the best ride ever!

Tomorrow we head to the Seattle area and hope to see something of the Islands there.