No beating the heat

I drove 2000 miles north looking for cold weather (should I tell you how many pullover sweaters and jeans I brought with me?) but it is not to be found. Part of the problem is there are not a lot of mountains with forest camping in northwestern Montana. I have had trouble finding campgrounds above 3500 feet elevation (that are not too far off the beaten path), and you need to be a lot higher than that to stay cool during the summer afternoons.

The other thing I have been chasing is a cell phone signal. Short of staying in an RV park in some city, I've been hard pressed to find many bars of service. In the past ~10 days, I've only had four days with at least one bar of 4G. That's just enough to get an occasional text message through, but not even enough to check the internet news, blogs and Facebook. Streaming Netflix? Forget about that!

Faced with these challenges, I guess it's time to turn back south. I gave some thought to going into Canada and driving to Banff. Dale told me Canadian National Parks are free this year. But without internet availability to put plans and routes in place and also knowing I'd have to turn off my phone while I am north of the border (to avoid expensive roaming charges), it would be hard to travel in a strange location without the resources I've become dependent on. So Canada will wait for another year.

After I left the Glacier area, I stayed in a large, busy campground on Kookanusa Lake just outside Eureka for three nights.

A couple days, Hanna and I drove into Eureka for groceries and internet signal. We got our two walks a day and 10,000 steps in. We saw this on one of those walks.

This morning we moved south of Missoula to a small campground near Lolo.

Tomorrow, I'll take the car back into Missoula to print out a temporary 30 day license for Minnie. I didn't realize when I left home in June that it would come due at the end of July AND that I needed an Emmissions check this year. After many phone calls and run around trying to obtain an out of state waiver, I've decided it will be cheaper and easier to buy a $15 temp permit and pay the $8 late fee when I get home and can license it in town. But I need to print the permit and attach it to my license plate and for that I need a copy/print shop.

It's also time to do some laundry, so I'll take care of that in Missoula tomorrow and come back here for one more night. Then I'll take that beautiful road I wrote about last week back west where I have my eye on a campground near Grangeville, ID.

Here's the sun this evening. Unfortunately, the beautiful red glow is caused by the smoke of a nearby forest fire. But it's still pretty.