Sun Canyon is the area where the Sun River cuts through the Rocky Mountain Front and flows out onto the Plains. It is one of the gateways to the eastern side of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. We drove about 60 miles to the small town of Augusta (last chance for gasoline and groceries) and then about another 20 miles of gravel road to the mountains. Follow the signs for Sun Canyon or Gibson Reservoir.
Our base-of-operations was the Sun Canyon Lodge. It’s located in Home Gulch, which is the first valley on the south behind the first row of mountains. The mountain ridgelines run in the north-south direction. The valleys between the ridgelines are called gulches. Sun Canyon Lodge is the only public establishment I saw in Sun Canyon, where you can get a meal or drink or hot shower. They have a campground and cabins for rent. It’s a real friendly down-home place run by a great bunch of people.
They are also licensed outfitters and guides. If you’re planning an extended backpacking trip or a through-hike, they can arrange drop-offs or pick-ups for you or arrange a food drop-off at their back-country camp. Mike hangs his hat here and helps out with the horse wrangling. Stop by and ask for Mike if you’d like to chat with someone about trail conditions, good places to camp, good day hikes in the area, etc.
We arrived at the lodge around 6pm. Mike gave me a quick tour and introduced me to a bunch of people. Since I was Mike’s cousin, I quickly became part of the “family” and ate dinner backstage in the kitchen with the crew. We had a delicious meal of roast beef cooked by Nickey. After B-S’ing for a while, I went and set up my tent next to Mike’s little trailer and retired for the night when it got dark. It was a beautiful night, but around 3am it suddenly went from absolute calm to 30 mph winds!
The winds kept up the rest of the night. I usually have trouble sleeping the first night in the tent, and the wind made it that much worse.
The landscape is hilly, open grasslands mixed with areas of conifer forest. This is the drier side of the mountain range, so it is not all thick forest. We continued upward, and passed a small pond known as Red Lake. We finally reached the crest and had a terrific view eastward of the Montana prairie. We were atop the easternmost ridge of the Rocky Mountain Front with a 1000 ft cliff below our feet. To our left the Sun River cut through a gap in the mountains and flowed east to its eventual meeting with the Missouri at Great Falls. To the north, on the other side of the river, was Castle Reef and the continuation of the same mountain and cliff face that we stood atop.
Today was the first day of the Labor Day weekend and Sun Canyon Lodge was having its annual pig roast. They got a slaughtered pig at a nearby Hutterite farm and cooked it all day long in a big iron roaster. The Lodge was hopping that night with the folks dancing to a live three-piece band playing country and swing-type music. I enjoyed the music and sat at the bar watching the Georgia Tech-Notre Dame football game. We planned to go backpacking tomorrow, so I turned in about 10 and fell asleep to the rumblings of the bass and drums.
Again, this night started out calm, and then the wind started howling in the middle of the night.
We got up early, headed to the kitchen and had our fill of coffee and a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage and home fries. We packed our backpacks and took enough food for seven days. Then we got in Mike’s old ’74 Toyota pickup and headed west up Sun Canyon Road about 4 miles to its end at Gibson Dam.
Gibson Dam is a concrete arch dam, kind of like a miniature Hoover Dam. The reservoir behind the dam fills up during the winter. It is then slowly drained during the summer to supply irrigation water to farms and ranches out on the prairie. When the water level in the reservoir (lake) is high, it is possible to catch a boat—run by one of the local outfitters—up to the end of the lake and save some hiking miles. However at this time of year the water level is very low.
We parked at the end of the road at a parking area on the shore of the lake just above the dam. The Forest Service’s Mortimer Gulch car campground is nearby. We hoisted our packs and started walking. I estimated I was carrying about 30-32 pounds. We each carried our own tents, food and stoves.
My equipment is:
Pack – Golite GustTent – MSR Hubba one-man tent
Sleeping Bag – Kelty 25° Light Year 3D and a silk liner (which I didn’t need or use)
Cooking – homemade stove made from 2 small tin cans; aluminum wind screen; Esbit fuel tablets; 2 bic lighters; 4 small boxes stick matches; 2 plastic forks; MSR titanium 2-cup pot & lid. The "stove” and matches fit inside the pot.
Shoes – North Face Hedgehogs
Sticks – Walmart trekking poles
Clothes besides what I was wearing – 1 pair socks, 1 pair underwear, pullover sweater, down jacket, cotton work gloves, stocking hat, rain jacket, rain pants.
Misc.: First aid kit; toilet paper and hand sanitizer; topo maps; writing paper & pen; digital camera; big wad of Kleenex; small headlamp; sunglasses; pocket knife; foam sleeping pad; Walmart camping towel; 30 feet poly rope; stuff sack for hanging food; a 1-liter water bottle and a 2-cup water bottle.
I used the down jacket, stuffed into a sack, for a pillow. I only wore it once, and really could have done without it and saved the weight (1 ˝ pounds). I didn’t use the rain jacket or pants either.
My food for the week was: Breakfasts: Carnation Instant Breakfast w/ dried milk—I pre-fill zip-lock baggies with ingredients—one for each day. And 2 Kellogg Nutri-Grain bars per day. Lunches: about a half pound of cashews & almonds and dried apricots, pineapples and mango. I measure and fill a ziplock with a ration of nuts and fruit for each day. Dinner: One freeze-dried Mountain House Pro-Pak meal, which you eat right out of the package it comes in, so there’s no cleanup required. I also have 2 mini-size Snickers for a snack. Not a very appetizing menu, but it’s lightweight, and I eat well the other 51 weeks of the year.
To save weight of fuel, I only cook (boil water) once a day. I don’t drink hot tea, coffee or hot chocolate while backpacking. One Esbit tablet burns long enough to bring a cup and a half of water to boil, which is what is required for the freeze-dried dinner.
On the other hand, Mike likes to cook a full breakfast and dinner. He carries a full load of macaroni, tuna, corn meal, tea bags, sugar, dried fruit and onions, etc. He usually cooks over a wood fire, but because of drought restrictions in effect while we were there, open fires were not allowed in the National Forest. So I brought along my MSR Whisper light stove from home, and lent it to him. He carried the stove and a bottle of fuel.
The trail follows the north shore of the lake and is, of course, above the high-water level. So at this time of year, the water is far below us. The lake trail is quite spectacular. It is out in the open almost its entire length so you always have a great view of the surrounding mountains and the river and lakebed below. At some points it consists of a narrow shelf with cliffs above and below on either side—like something you’d find in the Grand Canyon.
This is trail #201 and is on the Patrick’s Basin quadrangle. The topo map shows the lake at its high-water level. Where Big George Gulch enters the lake, there is an optional low-water trail which isn’t shown on the map (because it would be under water!) We took the low-water trail , which also cuts some length off the trail. On the picture, the little blips on the right end of the trail are a horse party. So you get some scale of the mountains. This part is very exposed—no shade for a mile—and put me in mind of walking across the Gobi Desert. The ground is flat hard-packed dirt and gravel. Not something I expected to find in the Rocky Mountains.
At the end of this “desert” we took a break where the trail re-entered the trees and offered some shade. The weather was beautiful, probably in the 80’s, sunny and no humidity. The sky was a little hazy from some active forest fires. That is why my pictures aren't crystal clear. We had heard there were 2 small fires in the Bob and a large one about 50 miles to the southwest in the Bitterroot Mountains.
A little ways up the trail are the Scattering Springs. Before coming to the springs, a side trail shoots off to the left (downhill). The horse parties take this trail so the horses can drink below where the hikers drink. Staying on the main trail, you are in the woods. The spring comes out of the hill about 30-40 feet below the trail in thick brush, so you may walk right on by without realizing it. Just beyond the spring, there’s a clearing on the downhill side of the trail. You can see a very little plateau about 20 yards down—about big enough for a tent. Walk down there and then follow a very short trail into the brush and you’ll find all the best-tasting fresh water you could ever want. And it’s just coming out of some hole in the ground. We drank this water—as we drank all creek water on this trip—straight.
We turned on to trail #208 and headed north and uphill, up the Arsenic Creek drainage. The topo map says “White Cabin Site” here. There are foundations of some old cabins that the forest service burned down a few years back. I guess so some squatters wouldn’t use them.
A little ways up, before the swamp shown on the map, we saw a clear grassy hilltop off to the right. We headed there and set up camp. Arsenic Creek, where we got our drinking water, was about 100 feet down a steep hillside. Like everywhere we’ve been so far, and everywhere we went in the next days, there was horse manure everywhere. Apparently, horse riders outnumber backpackers by quite a bit here in the Bob. (Strictly speaking, we have not yet entered the Bob Marshall Wilderness). You just have to get used to the horse crap. Be careful where you sit. View from the campsite, looking back South from where we came. Arsenic Creek is down in the dark greenery on the left.
We set up our tents. Mike has a one-man Sierra Designs. While eating dinner we heard a weird animal sound. Mike interpreted it as a crying bear cub. We looked around a bit, but never saw anything and we didn’t hear it again. We hung our food in the trees, and then sat in the clearing watching the sun set and moon rise. It got pretty cool in the night, but not freezing. And absolutely no wind!
We slept in until the sun hit the tents, which was about 8:30 or so. We’re slow movers, so we didn’t get back on the trail till about noon. Our plan for the day was to follow the Arsenic Creek trail (#208) north to the Circle Creek trail (#231) and take that west towards Sun Canyon Lodge’s backcountry hunting camp at Cabin Creek.
The trail went steadily uphill, but it was a fairly gentle slope. Sometimes in the open, sometimes through forest. We had great views of the pyramidal Arsenic Mountain , El. 8500, all along the way. A note about the trails: Since it seems that there are more horseback travelers than foot travelers in this area, the trails are maintained by the heavy weight of horse's hooves. Especially noticeable in the open grasslands, the trails are about 12 inches wide and depressed about 6 inches lower than the surrounding ground. This makes it difficult to keep up a good gait with trekking poles, since the poles are landing on ground higher than your feet and you’re pulling them through dry grass about 1 to 2 feet high. I would usually just hold them horizontal, which gets tiring.
Further up the trail, we began to pass by several freshly sawn tree stumps. We assumed the forest service was cutting the trees as part of trail maintenance, and this was validation that we were on the correct trail. (Another result of the horse traffic is a variety of horse trails intertwined with the “official” trail.)
Mike and I usually keep up a constant conversation while hiking. I don’t know how we don’t run out of stuff to talk about, but it’s good for alerting any bears to our presence. Anyway, we were B-S’ing about something or other when we suddenly ran out of trail. We took a break and pulled out the topo map and compass and tried to determine where we were. Earlier, when we crossed over a dry creekbed, we thought we were crossing a west branch of Arsenic Creek, but it must have been the main branch. We were probably following a horse wrangler’s trail and we were now east of where we wanted to be.
Instead of retracing our steps, we decided to “just” bushwhack our way north up to the divide separating the Arsenic drainage from the Circle Creek drainage. We followed our noses and some game trails and ran into a valley created by another eastern branch of the Arsenic. Not wanting to lose altitude, we tried to head around it to the east, but the land was too steep. So we went down to the bottom of the valley, and straight up the other side. I said let’s just keeping going uphill till we get to a high point where maybe we can get another visual bearing. We hit a knife-edge ridgeline which ran uphill northward. We scrambled along that and then climbed straight up a near vertical hill on our left until we topped out. All this with full packs on! I was beat.
We figured we were on a high point, which on the topo map is about an inch to the right of where the real trail crosses the divide. This divide marks the boundary of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. We stopped here for a long break to decide our next move. Mike wanted to run the ridgeline westward until we hit the trail. Since I was dead-tired, I wanted to go straight north, because it was all downhill, until we hit the Circle Creek trail. We were in heavy forest now and the ridgeline was broad and not readily apparent. It also involved more hill climbing. Mike pointed out that if we headed north and downhill, we would be on a north-facing slope and it would probably be covered with alder bushes and possibly deadfall and the going would be difficult.
I pleaded my case for going downhill instead of uphill and Mike reluctantly gave in to me. He should have pushed his argument more. We right away got onto a good deer path that wound its way downhill quite a ways. But then that petered out and sure enough we came upon an area of heavy downfall. There were more trees lying down than standing up. Mike could have said “I told you so” but he held his tongue. I led the way and kept a northward bearing—there are little tiny compasses in the tops of my trekking pole handles. We climbed over, under and along the tops of tree trunks. At times it seemed there was no way to go, but we kept it up and finally came to the edge of a 10 foot cut-bank with a trickle of water flowing down at the bottom. After close scrutiny, we determined it was flowing westward, so this must be a tributary of Circle Creek. We pushed downstream through brambles and bushes until we found a spot where we could get down the bank to the water.
It was now about 5 pm and we stopped for a long break and drink. I think I drank about a liter. I was tired and told Mike we should just camp here—even though there was no open ground. He said “no way.” I reconnoitered the area and the forest looked impenetrable in the downstream direction. Mike said to keep heading north, and in about 5 minutes we hit a trail. Right there on a tree was a forest service blaze—the upside-down exclamation point. Hallelujah!! We made it to the Circle Creek trail and were back in “civilization”.
I found a second wind and practically ran down the trail. We got to the junction with the Arsenic Creek trail, where we should have come out a lot earlier. There was some open ground here where we could camp, but Mike thought that at the junction of two trails there would be a high probability of bear traffic. Continuing on, we crossed over to the Glenn Creek quadrangle topo map and right at the edge of the map at the junction of trails 231 and 231Y, came to a clearing known as Skippy’s Park.
We walked across the clearing to a small grove of trees adjacent a steep drop-off to Circle Creek. Mike said that elk hunters usually camp here in season. There were plenty of horse droppings everywhere, and someone had gone through the trouble of lashing a high horizontal pole to two trees, so there was a good place to hang our food bags. We were right on the edge of a forest fire that ravaged the area last summer. Some of the trees in our little grove were burned but the grass on the ground had grown back nicely. But down along the creek there was an area where all the trees and all the ground were pitch black.
I set my tent up in the grove, but a little while later, Mike said, “Man, you better move your tent. This tree is ready to fall down on it.” I didn’t notice it previously, but the base of the tree was half burned away. I don’t know how the tree was still standing. Luckily my tent is self-supporting, so I just pulled the stakes, picked it up with one hand and moved out into the field. You can see the burnt trees in the background.
I had freeze-dried beef stew for dinner, but it seemed that the “beef” pieces didn’t rehydrate too well. I had some on my last trip that turned out the same way, so I scratched beef stew off my list for future trips. Soon it was dark and we turned in. The night was cold but calm. We heard some elk bugling during the night, but they sounded far off.
Again, we slept-in until the sun hit the tents. Hey, we’re on vacation. Amazingly, as soon as the sun did hit the tent, it almost instantly got too hot to be in the tent.
I was burnt-out from the bushwhacking yesterday, so we decided to take it easy today and stay in this camp for another night. After breakfast we took a day hike up to Elk Hill. It was less than a mile, directly south of camp on trail 231Y. Elk Hill is a grass-covered knoll, only 5600 ft elevation, but with a million dollar view. Looking westward the entire valley of the North Fork Sun River lays before you. Sheep Mountain and Slategoat Mountain are the prominent peaks on the far side of the river. Looking back to the east is the long north-south mountain, Sheep Reef. At the north end of Sheep Reef is the Circle Creek canyon that we came through the day before.
Unfortunately, due to forest fires, the sky was very hazy so the pictures are kind of dull-looking. We met a small horse party on top of the hill. A guide and two guests from K Bar L lodge. Mike knew the guide, Shrub, and caught up on gossip with him, while I took a bunch of pictures and just enjoyed the Rocky Mountain high. The view in all directions was magnificent. What I especially enjoyed seeing were the groves of aspen trees mixed in with the evergreens. Their white trunks really stand out and some of the leaves were just starting to get their gold Autumn color.
We walked back to camp. The weather was sunny and very warm, maybe in the 80’s. We rinsed out some clothes in the creek and hung them out to dry on the branches of a fallen tree. In the warm dry air they dried out in no time. I walked downstream a bit and found a nice secluded spot to take a “bath.” Since the creek is only a few feet wide and about 6 inches deep, it was more like a “rinse off” of 3 days of trail grime. It was refreshing nonetheless. The water was cold but not ice cold.
Later that afternoon we took another day hike northward to Sun Canyon Lodge’s back-country hunting camp. We passed the Cabin Creek ranger station along the way, but it appeared no one was home. At the hunting camp we met the caretaker, Lyle. We shot the breeze with him for a while. He has an AM radio there, and when Mike asked him what was the news from the outside world, he told us that The Crocodile Hunter had been killed by a stingray.
The hunting camp is quite a setup. There were about a half-dozen big canvas tents, a corral, and an outhouse. For bear protection, the entire camp was surrounded by a single-wire battery-operated electric fence and the kitchen tent and game-hanging area were surrounded by 5-wire electric fences. Lyle said, “Everyone wants to see a Grizzly until they see one.” The entire camp is brought in on horseback every summer and must be dismantled at the end of hunting season. The only thing that can remain standing is the corral, since it was there before the Wilderness was designated.
Mike bummed some sugar and Coleman fuel from Lyle and we went back to our camp. I wasn’t very hungry, so I skipped my freeze-dried dinner and just ate a couple of snickers bars. The sunset was quickly followed by a near-full moon. We did a little star-gazing then went to bed.
What a treat we had last night! We heard wolves howling. I remember hearing them four times, each time from a different location. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say “other-worldly.” I had heard coyotes howling before, but it was nothing like that. It was like they were singing a song. Each wolf howled at a different pitch and some of them went up and down the scale. Each “song” lasted about 30 seconds to a minute. Just wild!
We packed up camp, bid farewell to Skippy’s Park and headed downstream on the Circle Creek trail, #231. We hit the main North Fork trail, #201, crossed over Circle Creek and then immediately turned right on a trail that’s not on the map. It took us down to the Sun River.
We had to ford the river. It looked quite shallow, but the bottom was covered with large rounded rocks. I thought about going barefoot, but I didn’t think I would be able to keep my balance on the rocks. I zipped off my long pant legs and removed my socks and put my shoes back on. The first half was barely ankle-deep, but the last half was up to my knees and a bit swift. I was glad I had the trekking poles to lean on.
Just as I stopped about 10 yards from the far bank to take a picture, a clap of thunder sounded in the distance. We had had beautiful weather so far with mostly cloudless skies. Clouds were moving in today, though. Thankfully, we didn’t hear any more thunder.
We planned to hike south along the river about a mile to a nice campsite that Mike knew about. He suggested that we first go north about 10 minutes to Glenn Creek and fill up our water bottles there instead of drinking from the Sun River. My gore-tex shoes were full of sloshing water, so I sat down on a log and emptied them out. Glenn Creek was about 10 feet wide and half a foot deep. There were no stepping stones or logs nearby, so crossing it would require getting the feet wet. We had a good, long drink, filled our bottles and turned South. In the middle of the trail were a couple of Spruce grouse. Mike said the locals call them stupid grouse. Instead of flying away, they just walked to the side of the path and watched us pass.
We were now on Trail #261, known as the Moose-Furman Trail. We walked through some woods and brush and eventually came to a large, open, flat grassland on our left. We headed for a small grove of trees at the edge of the field on the bank of the river. We set up camp here. This was on of the nicest back-country campsites I’ve ever had. We were on the outside edge of a big curve in the North Fork Sun River atop a cut bank about 15 feet high. Looking down, the water was crystal clear with a slight greenish tint. It was maybe 3 to 5 feet deep and you could see every stone on the bottom. Across the river was flat open land gradually rising up to Elk Hill and Sheep Ridge on the horizon beyond. Behind us the field went out flat a couple hundred yards, then the forest rose up to the rock cliff face of 8000 ft Sheep Mountain.
Obviously this site had been camped at many times. There was the ubiquitous horse crap and someone had gone through the trouble of lashing a bear-bag pole high up between two trees.
The cloud cover started to break up and the sun came out and warmed us up into the 80’s. My shoes dried out in a couple hours. We lazed around for the rest of day and talked about everything from our ancestors to old TV shows. In the evening a small herd of elk came out of the woods upstream and walked into the river for a drink. They kept an eye on us the entire time. On this side of the river, they were in the Game Preserve. But if they stepped onto the other bank they were fair game for hunters. It was bow season. They stayed on the safe side. We also saw a whitetail doe and 2 young ones in the distance, and watched an osprey glide slowly above the river looking for trout.
I had beef stroganoff for dinner (my favorite) and turned in around nine.
The elk were bugling all night. The cows made a long one-syllable sound and the bulls made a long two-syllable sound that turned up or down at the end. At one point during the night it sounded like the bull was right outside my tent. I slowly unzipped my tent and leaned my head out into the cold air. I guess the full moon had set behind the mountains because it was pretty dark. But I could make out a few elk standing by some woods about 30 yards away. I walked over there in the morning a saw plenty of fresh elk “sign” and several beds where the grass was crushed down.
We had breakfast and packed up camp and bid this beautiful place goodbye. While getting ready we saw a group of 3 backpackers out on the trail heading south. These were the only other hikers we saw on our entire trip.
We headed south about 4 miles on trail #261 and then took the left fork for trail #261Y. This took us down alongside Sun Butte and we soon hit the main South Fork Sun River trail, #202. We turned East here, and soon passed the Wilderness boundary marker. Just beyond the marker we found a nice campsite on a rocky bluff above the South Fork where the river squeezes between Sun Butte and Black Reef.
This campsite was well-used and had several nice size rocks set about for sitting on. There was a large fire ring with a lot of bottles and cans in it. We were on a small plateau overlooking a cataract on the river. Slightly upstream the river tumbled down a series of small waterfalls and slides. About 30 feet down directly below us was a deep crystal clear pool. On the other side of the river were black rock cliffs with evergreen trees precariously growing from every crevice.
The clouds moved in and there were some thunderclaps, but thankfully, the rain held off. I had beef stroganoff again for dinner and while eating, saw a small group of white-tails on the hill above camp. We leaned a long fallen snag up onto a tree limb and hung our food bags off the cantilevered trunk.
It was a cold, but rain-free, night. The sun came up around 8:30 but we were enclosed by trees and rock cliffs, so our site was shaded and didn’t warm up right away.
We loaded up our packs for the last time and got back on the trail. Trail #202 east-bound along the north bank of the South Fork Sun River. Nice open country with great views of the surrounding mountains. We came to the meeting of the North and South Forks, and the trail turned left up the North Fork a little ways. A sign greeted us there saying that we were entering private property—the K Bar L ranch—and to not wander off the trail!! The ranch is right at the base of Sun Butte. There was a nice bridge there over the North Fork, which we crossed and then were heading downstream again.
The Sun River squeezes through a mountain gap here. High on a cliff face on the north side were some aboriginal petroglyphs. There was a sun face, some handprints and some counting lines. An archaeologist came to study them and others in the area a few years ago. He estimated their age as 800-1000 years old. The trail then drops down to Reclamation Flats. Here you walk through a tunnel of very tall green grasses and reeds. A wrangler taking a pack string up to K Bar L passed us heading the other way.
When we got to Scattering Springs we took a long drink and a long rest. I walked down to where the springs hit the river. It’s an amazing place. I still can’t believe the amount of water pouring out of the hillside.
The Lake trail, #201, was just as amazing heading east as it was five days ago heading west. Here’s a picture from just south of Scattering Springs, looking across at point 6287. Here’s a picture looking down river with Sawtooth in the background. The low-water trail. Finally we rounded the last bend and saw the dam and knew our waiting truck wouldn’t be much farther.
While loading our stuff into the truck, the campground host from the nearby national forest campground drove by making his rounds and stopped and said hello to Mike. We hopped into the truck, said a little prayer that it would start—it did—and drove up the hill. Part-way up, a lady in a station wagon going the other way flagged us down. It was the c.g. host’s wife. She heard from her husband that we just came out of the backcountry and she had a bottle of Gatorade and 2 cups for us. A real nice treat from a real nice lady.
Unfortunately we couldn’t get the truck going on the steep uphill and had to coast backwards to a level spot and try from there. We soon arrived back at the Lodge, got showers and changed into clean clothes. Felt great! Over at the bar, I had a delicious dinner of salad, chopped steak, mashed potatoes and coffee. Mike had a big cheeseburger. We told everyone our stories over a couple cold drafts then hit the sack.
This morning the professional horse-shoers came to the Lodge to
shoe 30 horses and mules. We watched them for a while. Afterwards we decided to take a day hike up
Here we turned north and uphill. We followed a trail for a while, but it eventually petered out as the hill got steeper. Since we were in open country, we just followed our noses up toward a saddle to the left of the high peaks. Just below the saddle there was an eerie-looking area of rock and dead trees. We made the saddle, had our lunch and turned around. We followed a faint trail across the scree slope which eventually took us northward to a nice grass-covered hill which we then followed all the way back down to the river. Along the way we spied a group of Bighorn sheep high above us, and later on saw another group in a valley below.
Back at the lodge we had a pot-roast dinner with the crew. It started to drizzle, which was the first rain we had all week, but it only lasted a couple hours.
Last day. I had a 2:30 flight out of Great Falls.
We got up at 7:30, and I made my last visit to the kitchen, had a coffee and a few refills, and a last conversation with the lodge folks. I packed up my tent and managed to fit everything back into my suitcase and duffle bag.
We got into the old truck and headed out on the long gravel road to Augusta. Mike’s tires are old, so he doesn’t like to drive over 25 mph on the stones. It was a hot day and even hotter in the truck. In Augusta I stopped in at a gift shop to look for some souvenirs. The place had a unique, interesting name, but I can’t remember what it was. The merchandise was kind of artsy and pricey, but I found a few unusual trinkets for the folks back home. One of them was a buffalo tooth for a couple dollars.
In Great Falls we had lunch at a Burger King, then Mike dropped me at the airport. We said our farewell and he left.
Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my Buck pocket knife into my suitcase, so I had to hand it over to the TSA agent. A sour note to an otherwise great trip.