Day 47

Beautiful sunrise at about 7am.  Read Job 9-12.  We plan to leave camp at noon.  I’m kinda dragging around today so I tried to keep moving to make up for my slowness.  I made hash for breakfast. 

Spent some time by the creek sharpening knives on the whetstone.  It was my first attempt at that … we’ll see how well they work.  

We were packed by noon, but it took Jeremiah bit to get some of his new inventions and acquisitions securely stashed under the canoe.  We pulled out about 12:45pm.  

We stopped off in Butte in search of some organic green apples, but came up empty handed.  

Like.

From there we drove to Pony, MT.  Lots of pretty scenery on the way out there, but my camera battery was only alive for part of it.

Did some driving around on the back roads toward the Tobacco Roots.  Passed Hollow Top Ranch and went to the Potosi Campground.  There are some really neat houses along that road.  One place had a fancy tree house and a legit hobbit hole!  Mom says she remembers reading an interview of the owners.

We drove back to Harrison and headed south through Norris.  The sun was setting.  The eastern hills were a gentle cream, like a natural colored yarn.  The grass looks almost as pretty dead as alive, especially against a slate blue sky.  Patches of black velvet in the valley told of fuzzy winter coast starting on the cattle.  Got gas in Norris.  A local remarked we were from the Show-Me state and offer to show us this hill and that hill.  Jeremiah retorted that he could show us this nippy wind too!  He assured us it was worth further north.  :)

We continued through McAllister and Ennis, both tidy and interesting towns.  The whole and has that beautiful slate blue tint to it.  I suppose because of the expanses, there is more atmosphere between.  I’m growing to love the wide open spaces and feel less lonely from the lack of trees.  I’m also getting weary.  I’m ready to be back home … jus beginning ot be ready.

Tonight when Joshua got out the animal crackers, he started telling a story about a safari based on each cracker.  Such a goofball!

We had another hard night deciding on a campground.  The one that we had planned on we decided against.  We found a second one that was ok, but Mom had some concerns for the dogs there.  So we drove back up to Bear Creek Campground closer to Ennis.  

By this time it was around 9pm.  We hadn’t had dinner yet.  And this campground was quite crowded, had lots of horses penned up.  It was comparatively incredibly warm there.  Jeremiah and I went and talked to the owners of the horses we were going to camp next to, making sure they were ok with that especially because of the dogs.  They had been camping up here for 31 years, hunting elk every year.  It looked as if that’s what everyone else was doing up here too, except for one  camp that was there to go climbing up on Spinx Mountain behind us.  None of us were crazy about camping there, especially knowing that logistically it would be smart to stay for two nights, but felt is was on par with what we had looked at so far … and it was late.  Mom wasn’t so sure.  Again we got down to the fact that Mom had different standards for how the dogs should be tended to than the people responsible for the dogs. 

I finally got hungry and pulled the cold cereal out.  The decision was finally made to camp here.  I got ready for bed and napped in the van until the tipi was set up.  Very grateful that the guys had that part under control!