Week 7 - Montana and Idaho

We left the madding crowds of Canada's national parks to return to a far more tranquil Idaho and Montana.  This part of the country is extremely remote and empty, yet the states have done an excellent job of allowing access to these wilderness areas.  Roads are well-graded and marked, nicely maintained campgrounds abound, and wild camping areas are plentiful.  (If you're viewing this in an email, click here for a better viewing experience.)

Welcome to Idaho.  Or is it Montana??

One of our favorite campsites along a very remote lake

Zee diving exuberantly for the stick

Sunset or sunrise?  One has wine, the other has coffee. 

The past few weeks, we've been in the heart of bear country, both grizzly and black.  We started out carrying bear mace and an air horn with us, then slowly left one behind and then the other once we learned the best defense is the human voice.  We were afraid the dogs would chase after their scent, but fortunately they seemed to know instinctively to steer clear.  You can tell when they smell them - their ears perk up and the emit a very unique 'woof' that we hadn't heard before.  We just continue on speaking loudly, singing (we've been told Johnny Cash songs are quite a deterrent - not surprising) and altogether sounding alternately like either the "Loud Family" of SNL or someone with Tourette's Syndrome.

On the opposite side of the spectrum from dangerous animals that kill you, at one of our camps there was a deer that kept appearing.  It almost seemed tame - every time we'd look back, it would be there, quietly foraging, seemingly unafraid.  The dogs would chase it away (much as we tried to stop them), but it would always return.  Dennis even saw it in the middle of the night.  We both kept thinking it was almost as if we had invoked the Patronus Charm from Harry Potter.  Now that's a magical campground!

Forget the deer, I'd like some of that

The downside of camping along water is the ever present presence of mosquitoes.  We are so spoiled not having them in San Diego!  We are already on our 5th can of Off Deep Woods Dry repellent - which I highly recommend.  It does make you wonder what effect all that Deet (25%) is doing to us.  I kind of think it's might be bleaching my dark roots.  Even with the repellent, we are all (dogs included) approaching Olympic level skill in killing them.

Our Bose speaker is very well traveled

Anniversary shot - I'm in Idaho, Dennis is in Montana

At this point in our journey, we rolled in and out of Montana and Idaho so often that we never could figure out which state we were in.  In fact, on our 35th anniversary, we camped on the dividing line between the two.  I slept in Idaho, and Dennis slept in Montana...

Funny story about this bottle of wine.  It's from a BC winery called Vibrant Vines.  Their son did some really cool artwork for the bottle (it's 3-D - they even give you glasses when you buy a bottle), so they decided to submit it to an international competition in France.  They inadvertently shipped full bottles instead of empty bottles, so the organizers assumed they meant to submit it to the wine tasting competition instead of the art competition.  It's a white blend of 5 local grapes, which is pretty atypical for a white wine.  It ended up winning first prize, much to the dismay of those Frenchie wine snobs!  And to add further spice to the story, they had a new employee at the winery, and she inadvertently labeled all the bottles upside down.  They decided to stick with a winner and continue to label this wine upside down.  The name of the wine?   WOOPS 

This campground was an amazing find.  We were in a very busy corridor of Idaho, between Stanley and Sun Valley.  We found a legitimate campsite, completely empty, along a creek - and every site had its own bridge.

Stanley, ID has some great rides, many with water.  That means the dogs (and wife) get to come along!  Our enthusiasm was slightly tempered when we found a leech on one of the dogs, which for some reason fell to me to remove.

Our final site for the week was just outside of Ketchum, right on the bike trails.  A wide shallow river separated us from the dirt road, and we liked it so much we stayed 2 nights (luxury!).  You can see the smoke in the sky from the nearby wildfires.  We've been lucky so far to avoid them, but we're about to enter Utah and Colorado, which have been battling fires all summer.

Day is done, coffee ready for morning

Happy dog