August, beautiful August

So last year at this time we were cursing the heat and the fires out here. Remember this post? All we had was 100 degree heat and smoke from July into the end of Aug. We escaped to the mountains as much as we could but even that didn't always help. Well, this summer we have been enjoying 70's and 80's most of the summer. It's been getting down into the 50-60's at night so we sleep with all the windows wide open. It's been great. The beginning of August we went to Upper Northwest Montana near Troy and Libby and did some camping, hiking and fishing. It was gorgeous up there. Nice lush forests, big cedars, lots of lakes. Almost like MN!! One of our first stops was the Ross creek Cedar Grove where they have cedars over 500 years old. Here I am finally something is taller than me!

And here we are by one fallen down. It was a real gorgeous hike.

Here is Yaak Falls:

Here's Erik fishing by Kilbrennan Lake where we camped:

The next day we did a hike close to the Canada border and found this pretty waterfall:

Well we headed home on a Sunday. I worked Mon, Tues and Wed and then we headed out to the Mission Mountains. I'e mentioned them several times in this post, this post and this post. So I guess we like the Mission Mountains! This time we hiked one day up and one day back to Heart Lake near Condon, MT. It was a really nice hike. Here we are at the trailhead:

We stopped at Glacier Lake on the way up.

We got there way too early, there wasn't much to do but wait until the sun started to go down so we could fish. So we sat by the water and I took pics of Erik...

flowers...and my foot!Later we finally got to fish, no luck again!

Here's a view of the lake before we left in the morning:

On the way out we picked two nalgene bottles full of huckleberries, about $40 worth if you got them at the Farmer's Market in town. And boy are those huckleberry shakes good after a long hike! Up next: our international guest!

July was nice!

So it's getting to be monthly updates. Sorry about that! It's just hard to sit down at the computer after a long day at work. I keep trying to get Erik to do the posting since he's home all day now, but I think I'd better just let him try to cook meals and keep the house picked up right now.
Well you all mostly know that Erik got let go from his job a couple months ago. So while we're job searching we've also been working hard to see as many things/places as we can in can we do have to move again. So every day I have off we are out and about in Montana somewhere. We've taken some pictures but sometimes we forget. Here's some of the adventures we've had recently.
Backing up to the last weekend in June. Erik's parents came for a visit. He picked them up on the Amtrak train in Whitefish (a reasonable option if you'd like to come and visit us, hint hint!) Then they decided to camp in Glacier for three nights before they had to get Karen back on the train to Seattle. Karl came to Missoula with Erik for a few days before he took the bus home. (I was working most of the time). Erik hardly took any pictures in Glacier but he did take some. Glacier had an excellenct snow year and the Going to the Sun Road was not fully open yet. Also there was snow on almost all the mountains. Erik took a bike ride on the Going to Sun Road and he got up pretty far. Here's a pic that Erik took at the top of his ride.

They also drove the car up as far as they could which was just past the Weeping Wall. Here is Bird Woman Falls: Mt Ober (l) and Cannon (r) with Bird Woman Falls in the middle:

The Weeping Wall:And a stitched together photo (sorry we dont have a high pixel camera and this is the biggest I could show this without it being blurry):

Here's a fun picture of us in fornt of our Pink Palace. We had to take this for our adoption file.

4th of July weekend we stayed at our friends cabin on a Placid Lake. We had a good time watching fireworks, playing with their 5 kids (yes, 5), relaxing and hiking. Here we are in the pontoon one night:

Here's sunset on the lake:This is Morrell Falls that we hiked to: (Remember when I hiked there last year?)

We didn't do much camping in July, just some day hikes and I must not have taken any picutres. We were in MN for a visit at the end of the month. We got to see lots of friends and our families. It was great but too short. On to August.......