Swede Mountain Lookout

The day before Jim's accident we took a drive up to a fire tower. They advertise it as a tourist attraction. There are picnic tables and a person working the tower that will talk about doing fire watch. We started going up and got more and more nervous about the road. The road was gravel and kept getting more and more narrow and windy. We saw a forest service truck a little bigger than ours going up so we thought if he could go we could too. Well the last half mile of the "road" was just a washed out dirt track. The road was so narrow that we are sure the outside dually tires weren't even touching any road.

When we got up to the top we got out and kissed the ground. We did go up in the tower and saw this beautiful scenery. You can see the town of Libby down below and the Kootenai River running by it. The truck is in the bottom left corner of the other picture. The peaks of the Cabinet Mountains (with snow) are in the background. The guy in the fire tower laughed at our terror getting up there. He takes his truck up and down the road all the time. He stays up there for days at a time. He has to haul water up to the top of the tower and the outhouse is down at the base. No power but he seemed happpy to be working there -- he did have one heck of a view.

Yaak Falls -- Jim Falls

We drove up toward the town of Yaak. The road follows the Yaak river and about halfway between the town of Troy and Yaak there are falls. I've seen pictures of these "falls" when the water is low and I've seen people sliding down the rocks in this water. Obviously, the water is way too high and fast to go sliding.

While I was taking these pictures Jim was up river a 100 yds from me. I couldn't see him and I finally went to find him. I found him -- looking pretty beat up limping along the rock ledge on the shoreline. He had slipped on the rocks and fallen about 4 feet down onto the rock ledge. He yelled at me to put the camera down and come toward him very carefully because the rocks were slick as ice. I got to him and had to help pull him up the rocks -- I even slipped helping him - but didn't hurt anything. Jim on the other hand had a gash on his knee and forehead, glasses broken and both wrists hurting. The left wrist was starting to swell -- I knew it was probably broken.

I drove him to the ER in Libby. X-rays confirmed the broken wrist. They put a splint on it and refered him to an orthopedic clinic in Kalispell to get a cast put on in a week. I tried to take his picture with his arm in a sling but he wanted no part in showing everyone his Owee! He is lucky not to have ended up in that water and only one sprained wrist and one simple fracture. He also can get his glasses replaced for free through Walmart's vision center. Life is better with Walmart.

Swinging Bridge

The Kootenai River runs along Highway 2 south of the Libby Dam. It's still running pretty high and fast. There is a pullout along the highway where there is a county park that follows the river. There are two famous things to see along the river. The Swinging Bridge is a pedestrian bridge that goes over the river. We walked across it and all I could thing of was that Indiana Jones movie where they went across a bridge like it with the water far below and the water was full of alligators. This bridge isn't that high and there are no gators but it did bend and swing as you walked.

The other famous site is the Kootenai Falls. The falls are wide and don't look that high until you get up close to them. This part of the river was supposedly in one of the scenes in the movie "A River Wild" with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon. I want to rent that movie and see if I can spot them.

We are doing some gold panning and finding a few specs. It's fun and to get to the gold panning area you have to drive up the side of a mountain -- a very beautiful drive.

Libby, Montana

We are in the northwestern corner of Montana staying at an rv park in Libby. It is a beautiful area right on highway 2 -- the same highway 2 that runs through Minnesota, North Dakota -- all the way to the west coast. The Libby Dam in the picture is on the Kootenai River and the reservoir it creates is Lake Kookanooska. All trout waters of course -- the water is glacial. The Cabinet Mountain Range runs through this area. They call these mountains "Glacier National Park" without the tourists.

There is a lot to see and do around here so we are staying for a month. The monthly rate is always much cheaper than the daily or even weekly rate. The weather is fabulous mostly in the 80's and some 90's but it is always cool at night. During the day when it heats up we go up higher into the mountains to explore and it stays cooler there. We are just starting to sightsee and have already found lots of interesting places.

We even found a place in the national forest here that has a public gold panning area. We just checked it out and panned a little while and already found a few specks of gold. We figure if we aren't going to fish we might as well play in the "pay dirt".

Lake MacDonald

We got some great pictures of Lake MacDonald in Glacier National Park. The bears also were out foraging close to the road so we got some pictures. This black bear had a beautiful coat. We also saw a tan colored one that had a shaggy coat and a few other black bears. Grizzly bears have a slight hump behind the neck. They like more open meadows which are found on the east side of Glacier. I'm not sure if we will get to the east side.

Glacier -- at least what we've gotten to see -- is breathtaking. The snow has been melting rapidly since we got here. It may all be gone in a few weeks -- it's only July -- for goodness sake. We are going to have to give up the idea of fishing anywhere along the Missouri river on the east side of the state. The water isn't going to go down until August.

It is finally summer -- our first days in the 80's so we are just kicking back and enjoying it for awhile. Although we are trying to line up a job for the winter in Arizona. If something comes up that sounds good for the rest of the summer we may take it.