Lost Creek Falls
Tonight we find ourselves in Big Sky Country – Montana. It’s amazing to look out across the terrain in this part of our country and see the rock encrusted buttes and plateaus inching their way past the truck as we make our way east on Interstate 90. I have wondered why they call this area the “Big Sky Country”, and today I have the answer. Obviously, the lack of towering, snow capped peaks provides a lower horizon and therefore more sky, but the same could be said for the absolutely flat terrain of Florida yet it hasn’t earned a reputation for having more sky. No, the difference is actually in the sky itself. Huge, puffy, pure white cumulous clouds drift high over the grass covered hills and scattered rock formation that surge out of the ground. The contrast of the white clouds against the expanse of deep blue sky just seem to take your breath away. I can’t think of a better way to describe it then a really big sky. Tomorrow we continue on to Yellowstone and Wyoming, but will still be enjoying the big sky – Wyoming shares the reputation.
The drive since we left the house on Monday has been uneventful, if not enjoyable. The first day we crossed Washington State to Cheney and today we left Washington, made a quick dash across Idaho and into Montana. The first night we stayed in a small RV Park in Cheney named Peaceful Pines. It had pine trees, but was anything but peaceful. The full moon brought out the coyotes by the score and they were drowned out only be the whistles and rumblings of the trains which passed about 400 feet behind the park at least every hour. Although the park had a WiFi network, it was not working. We got out of there a bit later than expected as I helped them reconfigure their routers and all was working well when I left.
Despite the late start we settled into our current camp site near Anaconda, Montana in time to unhitch the RV and take the dogs on their first adventure. A short drive past the town of Anaconda and up a canyon to Lost Creek State Park and then a hike up to the waterfall (see photo above). Once in the park, we drove to the end of the gravel road and then hiked the remaining distance to the falls – a whopping 125 yards. Now, that is my kind of adventure! It view at the falls was worth the great exertion and the dogs were out of the car without a leash for the first time in 2 days. You can see from the photo that it is actually a nice “cascade”, but if they can call what they have in Granite, “Falls”, I recon these folks can too.
Tomorrow we start for Yellowstone where we’ll camp for three days and do the tourist thing around the Yellowstone Country. The drive time will be a bit longer tomorrow (about 6 to 7 hours) so once again we’re shooting for an early start. That means before 9:00 am for us. But at least there won’t be a time change to forget about factoring in.