In Smoky Missoula, Montana

With the smoky conditions here in Missoula, we normally would have hurried on down the road. But we have an appointment for the annual maintenance on the motor home's engine and chassis two days from now. So we will be exploring this little city, in spite of its smoke. The other reason we had planned to swing through Missoula was to pick up Denisa's Mother at the airport. She was supposed to be traveling with us for a week, and we were taking her on a much-anticipated trip into Canada. But she suddenly came down with a bad case of shingles, so she won't be able to make the journey after all. We're disappointed, and we're changing our plans. We'll visit Canada another time, hopefully when there are fewer forest fires.

While we are biding our time in Missoula, we found it to be a vibrant college town--even in the summer. The first evening, we went downtown to Caras Park, where the crowds were enjoying the annual Celtic Festival. There were food trucks and live music, and we got a feel for the sense of community here. The views from Higgins Bridge showed the large number of people enjoying the cool evening weather in spite of the smoke clouds hovering over the city.

There's a biking/walking trail that follows the Clark Ford River that winds its way through town. From the trail we could listen to the celtic music and watch the kayakers in the river at the same time.

There is a man-made water feature here named after a local kayaker. "Brennan's Wave" is a powerful surge of water that is fun for kayakers to practice maneuvers. We watched over and over as different guys tested their skills against the man-made wave.

Brennan's Wave is also used by surfers, as it creates a constant curl to ride.

The Clark Ford River is popular with tubers making a leisurely float down the river in their tubes. But as they approach the wave . . .

their leisurely float suddenly becomes a white water experience.

Just down the walking trail is Dragon Hollow Park, filled with wooden structures for children to slide and play on. But Denisa's favorite part of the park was the carousel. Each one of the animals was hand-made by volunteers in the workshop here in Missoula.

Denisa has ridden a lot of carousels in our travels, and this one was surprisingly fast. But it is her new favorite for a different reason. There is a ring game that riders on the outside ponies can participate in with each rotation. Before the carousel starts, the attendant puts plastic rings into a long tube that comes out of the dragon's mouth.

That dragon is perched just at arm's length, with that tube of rings inside. The riders can snatch a ring as they go by.

It's an acquired skill, as Denisa missed the ring on about half of her rotations. But as riders continue to grab the rings, the final one is the coveted brass ring. Whoever gets the brass ring wins the prize--a free carousel ride.

It brings a whole new dimension to riding a carousel! Denisa had lots of fun trying to capture those rings. But alas, the guy right in front of her got the shiny brass ring. What a fun carousel!

We found another interesting stop not far from where we were boondocking at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant parking lot. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is headquartered here in Missoula, in a beautiful building full of all kinds of elk displays. In the entry there are two huge bucks, in the middle of a fight for the rights of the harem of elk cows.

There are walls full of some of the biggest elk ever shot. Just looking at these guys would make any hunter salivate.

Unknown to us, there is a grading system for sizing and scoring antlers. This elk was shot with a bow in September 2016 in eastern Montana. The rack scored 447 inches, making this the new archery world record for a typical elk. We also learned that "typical" are matching antlers, while "non-typical" are assymetrical with different number of points.

While the focus is obviously on elk, this group also does much to educate and rehabilitate wild lands that will benefit other creatures. This diorama includes animals that share the elks' habitat. There are touch tables that gave us hands-on experience with pelts and antlers. We had never touched a beaver's tail before today.

We also enjoyed the whimsical expression in the picture below. (That's the whimsical expression of the stuffed bear--not Mark.)

We hope to never get this close view of a live bear in the wild.

We enjoyed this side of town, but we also made the drive across the river to the campus of the University of Montana. Here the Fighting Grizzlies do battle on the football field in the shadow of Mount Sentinel. We have seen the giant "M" on the face of this mountain from miles away. If you look closely, you can see the zig-zagging trail that takes students up the trail to the famous "M."

The trails into the mountains are open, but the fire danger is "extreme." We had people tell us that this was the driest summer on record, with not even a drop of rain for the entire month of July in the mountains around Missoula.

With temperatures in the 90's and poor air quality alerts, we decided against hiking while we were in Missoula. We did take a drive into the mountains, where the smoke was shutting out the sun. We could see the blanket of smoke smothering the main part of Missoula that lies in the bowl between the mountains.

The air in the neighborhoods at this higher elevation was clearer. It was so clear that we could see the deer nibbling their way across the well-watered lawns. The deer are leaving the dry mountain-sides for the green treats close to the homes. You can see one deer in the center of the picture between two houses. We noticed that these home-owners don't waste money on flowers that would be especially delicious to the deer.

On a less traveled road we saw two spotted fawn, hiding in the tall yellow grass. They perked up their ears when Denisa took the picture, but they were still waiting patiently for their mother's return.

It seems that this blog has a lot of wildlife pictures. But Denisa couldn't resist taking this picture of two more deer close to the road. Mark was asking, "How much is a picture like that worth?" He answered it himself, "About two bucks!"