30th July, 2017

Well, the usual seems to be happening as I am typing this up from Cody on 4th August, but it has been THAT busy, as you will see.

We had a truly superb breakfast at the Lonesome Dove Ranch (warm granola among other bits and pieces), packed the car like veterans and headed south through Kalispell and on to Bigfork at the top right end of Flathead Lake and the Wayfarers State Park, which Shivonne had picked out as a good spot for a bit of activity. And she was right! We discovered that you could rent kayaks by the hour, so we picked out 3 of them, got snug in our life jackets and launched ourselves out onto the lake. We did not feel confident enough to take the camera with us, but we did manage a few photos before we set out….. I have no idea what Caroline was doing with her paddle!

I initially wondered if an hour would be enough time, but after about 10 minutes I was starting to think it was going to be way more than enough as my arm muscles started to tighten. Val and I made quite a good team, though it helps to paddle in time with each other!

We had a bit of a swim, dried off in the 30 degree sunshine and much enjoyed the fresh air and not being in the car. Some photos of us having fun! And no, I don’t know why my offspring can’t pose sensibly…..

After showers, recommended to prevent ‘swimmers itch’, we hit the road again, driving down the east side of the lake and rejoining Highway 93 heading south past Missoula for the Bitterroot Forest. As ever the scenery was stunning, the weather hot and sunny and the road long and winding, but we pressed on to our next overnight destination, the 100 Acre Wood B&B. This had been a rather last minute booking as I seemed to have had something of an aberration on the dates and had got the booking wrong for our stay in Salmon as originally planned, so we had cancelled that one and booked into what proved to be an absolute gem of a place.

We were met by Dawn and Tony, the owners though for some reason best left unexplored, I thought it was Don and Kevin – the former perhaps understandable due to the accent, but I have no idea where Kevin came from. The house is in a lovely setting in the valley with hills and mountains and a small pond.

The rooms were large and very comfortable too, so we were a happy bunch before heading off for supper up the road. Well, most of us were happy, but Chris had rather overindulged at our Dairy Queen lunch stop on, in particular, Mountain Dew and ice cream, so he did not join us for what proved to be a very good Mexican restaurant called the Broken Arrow. We brought him something back and he seemed a little better. Some of us took a short constitutional round the pond until forced in by the mosquitoes.

Another great day completed, a few pounds heavier, some beautiful scenery and great music on the various playlists (Caro had put together a special one for the trip) – all in all a terrific trip so far, with more to come!