Montana Flowers

Wildflowers in the mountains are so beautiful. At Logan Pass which is at the highest part of the Going to the Sun road there was a carpet of yellow glacier lilies. You can see the snow at the left edge of the picture of the lilies -- and its August. The orange flowers in the foreground of the other picture are called indian paintbrush. Indian paintbrush is the Montana state flower.

We loved every minute of Glacier and went over the Going to the Sun road four times. After leaving the Kalispell area on the west side of Glacier we took highway 83 south. This is another scenic byway that goes along mountain lakes and wildlife management areas. We followed it down and then wound over to Missoula and from there south to Anaconda.

We are going to stay in Anaconda until after Labor Dy weekend. We found an orthopedic doctor in Butte for Jim to see to get his cast changed to a removeable splint in another week. We've been up to Gem Mountain west of Phillipsburg and found some more sapphires. We got all excited because we found one that was four carats -- but it was too flawed to make into jewelry. Someone the week before had found a 19 carat sapphire there -- they said it was worth a six figure sum of money. No such luck for us.

We are close to the Big Hole River which is very famous for trout fishing. We went by it and there were rafts filled with people every 200 feet in the water. People come from all over to fish here and most fly fish. The river is shallow and rocky so only rafts and those funny shaped river boats with curved bows on each end can be used. We haven't done any fishing since Washington.

We did get some good news. We got hired as volunteers at the Imperial National Wildlife refuge down by Yuma, Az. We get a site for our rv with full hookups in exchange for working in the visitor center 3 days a week. We start November 1st and the job runs until the end of March. There is a boat launch close to the visitor center so we will try doing some fishing in the Colorado this winter.