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!