Yaak River, Montana

Two weeks ago (yup, I am slow again) Walter and I took a little trip to Northwest Montana and took our friend Fabiola along who was visiting from Mexico. I had never been there before so it was a treat for all of us. This time Nancy stayed home and worked in the garden. We stayed at the Whitetail Forest Circus campground on state route 508. The river is totally cool and there were very few people around. We did not do any hiking because of my leg. I have not had an MRI done but my doctor thinks I tore my hamstring. I am not sure I tore anything since I don't really remember a sudden onset, just a slow freight train of pain after our backpacking trip. I was treating it myself with ultrasound and stuff and getting some assistance at work from anyone with some spare time, but none of us really have time to work on each other so I got a referral to have therapy somewhere else. I need more than just sporadic treatments.

The weather was absolutely wonderful for the first 8 hours, then it rained like hell the rest of the time. It was fun anyway. We took a nice drive up near the border on some bumpy dirt roads, collected rocks from a cool creek, and read and slept a lot. Fabiola does not care what the weather is like as long as she is not in Mexico. We had lunch at the Dirty Shame Saloon http://www.dirtyshamesaloon.com/in the hamlet of Yaak (I had the grilled cheese which was pretty darn good). It was interesting. It used to be a wild ass biker bar and is now just a bar. When we walked in some folks were watching FOX news (should have been the first clue we were not in Kansas anymore) and Obama was giving out congressional medals. I could not hear all of it but I heard the name Harvey Milk (I am pretty sure he was not there) and one of the guys in the bar said, "They are giving a medal to a gay?" Oh well, even stupid people need a place to live.

On the way home we took a detour through Troy and down highway 56 along the Cabinet Mountains. ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!! We stopped by an old growth forest and checked out some other campgrounds along the way. It is a pretty cool spot for me to file back into my brain.

Yaak Falls. They are a series of falls but we did not go down and look at the lower ones because the weather was hell

Right behind our camping spot



Just down a bit from out site

The river through the trees

Fabiola

Walter trying to stay out of the rain

Collecting rocks

Dirty Shame Saloon

Bull Lake


Bull Lake looking the other way

Walter at Bull Lake

Fabiola hugging a giant tree

Me kissing Walter inside of a giant tree

Cabinet Mountain Wilderness