Missoula hosts several farmer's markets, and we were glad to see fresh cherries! One of the cherry orchard owners from the Flathead Lake area was selling the last of his harvest that he picked the day before. Denisa is also excited to see that garden peas are still available to purchase this late in the summer.
Over and over we found vendors selling fresh huckleberries. Knowing how labor intensive it is to pick them, and how hard it can be to find them, we're not surprised that they sell for $10 per pound. We're glad that we have the ones we picked already in the freezer!
This farmer had the most creative huckleberry pastry at the market this morning--huckleberry pie on a stick.
We had to go back to our parking spot at Cabela's to leave all our goodies in the refrigerator. We don't do much shopping since we have limited cargo space in the motor home, but food (especially fresh produce) is our favorite souvenir when traveling.
Then we went back to downtown Missoula for entertainment. Mark had found that they were hosting their annual Roots Festival, with live music all day on Main Street. We did some dancing in the street to the music of Cascade Crescendo.
The next musicians had a wide fan base and an interesting story. Shawn Camp and Verlon Thompson had both played with a well-known song writer, Guy Clark. Guy died several years ago, so now his two buddies perform some of his favorite songs and preface each one with a personal story about how it was written. We love story-telling songs, and they played many fun ones. Another interesting note is that the gray-haired musician (Verlon Thompson) knew Guy the longest and performed with him over twenty years. Verlon was born and raised in Binger, Oklahoma, just a few miles away from where we retired.
Missoula has a very nice downtown, including hanging flower baskets that are the size of a small car. We visited this college town two years ago, when we couldn't even see the mountains that surround this city because of all the smoke. Missoula sits in a bowl formed by the convergence of five different mountain ranges, and it tends to trap the smoke from area fires. But this year the air was clear and the views were beautiful.
We left our Cabela's parking space Sunday after church, and made our first stop in the motor home just a few miles out of town. With our Montana State Park pass, it was a free stop at Traveler's Rest park. The name was given by the Lewis and Clark Discovery team who camped here two different times in their journey to the west and back. The park has symbolic tents set up where the Corp of Discovery would have camped.
Archaeologists have scientific proof of this location based on the meticulous journals that were written by Lewis and Clark. A metal button was found here, of the same kind attached to military uniforms of that day. But the real proof are the traces of mercury found 300 yards from the tent sites. The journal recorded that two members of the corp suffered from stomach problems during their stay, and were treated with Dr. Rush's miracle pills. These pills were called "thunderbolts," because their main ingredient was mercury, which causes instantaneous diarrhea. Sometimes tracking history can be a little graphic.
Before Lewis and Clark, the native Americans also camped here at Traveler's Rest. So the state park also included a tent set up in this traveler's style.
More recently, love can be found at Traveler's Rest. We wondered about all the rose petals at the river. We later found out that the state park had hosted a wedding yesterday.
After a little exercise at the park, we were back on the road heading out of Montana on Highway 93. That included a section of highway that headed straight up through the Bitterroot Mountains to Chief Joseph Pass.
The speed limit up this steep pass is 20-30 miles per hour because of all the tight curves. It was a slow climb up those mountains as we gained over 3,000 feet in elevation quickly.
We were welcomed to the summit of the pass with lots of signs, including one that read, "Welcome to Idaho."
Then we started the equally steep trip down off the mountain summit. That's when IT happened.
We were going around one of those hair-pin turns when we had a new travel experience. Suddenly our refrigerator door flew open, and things started sliding out and hitting the floor. One of those was a gallon of milk. Oh no! Denisa dashed from her seat as quickly as the hair-pin turns would allow her to go. Even though the lid stayed on, the fall cracked the plastic jug. Milk was streaming down the refrigerator and into the carpet below. Mark found a pull-over spot to help with the major clean-up effort that ensued.
Just like the pioneers, we had quite a ride getting over the Bitterroot Mountains today, but we're not crying over spilled milk. That's because we are now nestled into a nice campground just south of North Fork, Idaho. We are camped under the face of Tower Rock in a Forest Service Campground that charges a whopping $5 per night.
It's hard to understand just how big the impressive face of Tower Rock really is. The pioneers used it as a road mark for their trek to the west. To get some scale to the size of Tower Rock, we were hoping that a car would drive by on the highway that is between us and the tower. Or Mark could have climbed up a little of the steep front, but he would have been only a speck. So instead, Denisa takes another outhouse picture in a beautiful location to give some scale to size of Tower Rock. The bathroom is much closer than Tower Rock, but you get the picture--literally.
If we look in the opposite direction from Tower Rock, we are looking down the Salmon River that flows right in front of our motor home. What a lovely campground! We've heard a lot about this river whose claim to fame is that it is the longest river that lies totally within one state. Tomorrow we intend to experience it for ourselves first-hand. Travel has its ups and downs, and today we experienced some of both. But we continue to get to wander more of God's wonders, so we won't cry over spilled milk on days like today.
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