Day 11

Do you start books in the middle to? Go back to the beginning.

Got up today and felt I needed a good breakfast, so I cooked a few eggs and tried not to leave any scraps for the bears to find. Unfortunately I don't know how large of a morsel is considered "bear worthy" but the pieces of egg that missed my napkin were quickly found by the squirrels around the area. I hate squirrels. Probably a bad idea to drop a boulder on these little varmints in a national park, but I considered it. Little mutton grabbers.

After pressing my luck with a wilderness hike yesterday, I stuck to higher traveled trails today. Namely the trails to St. Mary's falls. On my way back, I was taking the shot of the butterfly you see attached to this post, when it was scared away by people approaching from above me on the ledge. I thought at this point that the only reason for that butterfly to be scarred off better be for two hot chicks walking up. Sure enough, there were two of them, and not bad looking either. Apparently it was snack time, so we sat and chatted for about a half hour. I suppose that was worth messing up my butterfly shot after all.

Time to drive to the other side of the park. Sheesh, makes you wish they had a route through the middle of this park... oh, right, closed.

I picked out a nice circular path that would bring me around a lake and started walking. The forest on this side seemed quite a bit different. I'm no expert on forests, but I noticed that there was much less undergrowth, but a more complete canopy. I'd guess that this side was younger as the older trees hadn't yet died to allow openings in the canopy that allowed the undergrowth to flourish.

At the point the circular path should have turned to return home, I found a surprise waiting for me. No bridge. Well, there was a bridge, barley. Oh yeah, obscene amounts of rain. I continued on for awhile longer, hoping for another path across, but really I knew I'd picked another down and back path. Fortunately, to make up for the fact that I was back to not seeing anything else human on the path, a deer and it's fawn crossed in front of me. Then something I'd never seen before happened; as I watched, the mother deer nestled the fawn down in the shadows, and tried to get me to follow her. She stood for awhile, then rotated in a circle, then walked off, leaving her fawn hunkered down. An easy meal. Too bad I'd just had a snack and wasn't hungry for any native offerings, so I resorted to the next best thing: a good photo op with a captive audience. No need for that 70-300mm lens, I could walk right up to the fawn and take it's picture.

I want to make it to Portland tomorrow, so it's back on the road we go. After Missoula I figured I'd look for a place to camp, but I didn't figure I'd find one _IN_ a rest stop, but that's what the sign said, so I got off I-90 to investigate. Sure enough, there was a little road back to a national forest with camping just off the Interstate. How convenient, but at the same time terribly disappointing. No narrow roadway to follow for miles at a time, or confusing signs to interpret, or signs half destroyed by those people that hunt stationary reflective objects at point blank range with shotguns. Oh well, I guess this will do.

Day 11 Distance: 315, Elevation: 2733 -> 6017

Don't know where to go from here? There's always Day 12.