Day 63-July 27, 2016-Montana and Baseball
Drove 184 miles in 5-1/4 hours.
Up to 92 degrees during the day, down to 55 at night
We’re still on I-90 east past Coeur d’Alene Lake, big lake, couple of boats and fishermen out today. A nice place to stay for the summer. This is called the Silver Valley in the Idaho Panhandle National Forest and the views are wonderful, huge pine trees (imagine the smell), tiny purple and yellow wildflowers, rivers, lakes and mountains. Over the Fourth of July Pass (I like this name), and through the towns of Wallace and Kellogg known for their gold, silver, lead and zinc mines, two of which are still open. Over Lookout Pass, 4725’ and into Montana where we went back into Mountain Time and lost an hour. Stopped at a roadside stand in St. Regis, “The Fly Fishing Capital of The World”, for some blueberries and the biggest cherries I’ve ever seen, then stopped at a rest stop for lunch on a cliff overlooking a river where I could hear the swimmers in the canyon below better than I could see them. Funny how sound carries in a canyon. Got off the “highway” in Missoula, stopped for some groceries then about 15 miles south stopped at our campground, The Squaredance Center and Campground in Lolo, MT. They asked if we’d be dancing tonight but we have a ballgame scheduled. This was one of the prettiest trips we’ve taken, the views were spectacular. And our site is great too. We’re under big pine trees. A quick dinner and we’re off to watch the Missoula Ospreys vs. the Idaho Falls Chukars at Ogren Field. The Ospreys mascot is Ollie, a big blue osprey and there’s an active osprey nest visible to all parts of the field with mom and dad osprey watching the game between flights to the river for food. I had a hard time concentrating on the game because of the beautiful sunset in the big sky. The sun setting in the west was gold and the clouds in the east were pink, fascinating. The Osprey won 5-4 in the bottom of the 9th inning with a home run. There’s a 72 mile bike trail here and quite a few people came to the game on bikes. When we left after 10PM there was still a bit of light in the sky, but by the time we got back to the campground it was dark and we could see lots and lots of stars.