Turn Off the Paved Road…

Hello once again faithful readers. It’s that time again…yes…time for you to once again set aside about 10 seconds of your life so that you have plenty of time to read and digest everything that is important in this blog post (pretty much, you can stop now…congrats!).

It’s been an interesting week or so. Kind of stressful, but only in that neither groovy nor I have a job and we’re looking at things in a new light (as in: “Do we really need that?” and “How much do you like making pancakes?”). So far, it isn’t that bad and as the old saying goes, “What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.” I don’t know if I agree with Nietzsche or not, but I would have to agree with the answer argument that goes something like “That which kills you makes you dead.” How can you argue with logic like that?

Anyway, yesterday groovy and I went to visit with two of our friends who were camping up at Hungry Horse Reservoir near Glacier National Park. Groovy was in charge of getting directions and such and estimated that the trip should take us roughly 3 hours. All-in-all, driving 3 hours each way to go hang out and goof off sounds like fun to me, especially if there is nice scenery and cool water involved and lucky for me, it was! We left Missoula around 8am in my truck because I wanted to see how much better it would run long distances now that the engine was properly tuned (I could drive before about 6 hours on a tank of gas).

We drove through some interesting places with some interesting names, but the thing that got me the most was the scenery. It was weird, to be honest. We would drive along for a while through mountains with lodgepole pine trees all over them and then nothing…we would be in a valley with prairie grasses and mountains off in the distance. Then, we would finally get to the mountains on the other side and then would drive through them for a while. Very cool to know that you’re driving along at 70 mph (legally, no less) on a 2 lane highway where it is 80 degrees outside, and there is snow visible on the mountain tops.

Anyway, we drove for a while (about 2 hours) and came to this place where there was this stop light suspended over the road, but there was no work going on at all. We sat there for about 5 minutes when finally a pace car came up with flashing lights and a “Follow Me” sign on the back of it. We did like any dutiful driver would and followed the person for 10 miles at speeds which infrequently approached 15 miles per hour (he was a daredevil, what can I say?). The whole way I kept saying, “I sure hope there is a major landslide, missing road or something disastrous that requires this fast speed”, but unfortunately for me, we were driving along at 10-15 miles per hour on a perfectly fine road with no problems and no roadwork crews.

We finally got to Hungry Horse, Montana and found the turnoff for the reservoir that we were supposed to take. I’m sure that 90% of you have driven someplace before where the road goes from a nice road to something a little less than ideal…I know I have. This road was, hands down, the worst road I’ve ever driven on. There were potholes big enough to lose medium-sized mammals in, several hundred foot drop-offs, windy-turny-“Oh-My-Goodness-Are-We-Gonna-Make-It” roads…I loved every minute of it! Groovy, on the other hand, didn’t fare so well on the road. I know at one point, I said, “We’re half way in! Only 10 more miles of this” to which she replied, “You’re kidding…right?” I wasn’t, but we did arrive where we were supposed to roughly around 12:30pm (we stopped for groceries).

The water in the Hungry Horse Reservoir was nice and cool. We got to drive around a bit more with “Shocker” and “Mrs. SW” for a while and even went on a short hike (where we found mushrooms that looked like brains!) until we decided that, as we were in bear country, we probably ought to get back before we became dinner for a grizzly (or any of his other family members). Shocker and I joked at one part that we didn’t have to outrun the bear; we just had to outrun the slowest runner. When you’re with people who exercise all the time, you kinda have to wonder why you were invited. Was I there for the fun/friendship…or was I the bait/life insurance? Hmm…

At one point, we found a small stream that was coming down from the mountains. The water in it was cold. I’m not talking “oh, this would make nice iced tea” cold…I’m talking “how is it possible that this isn’t ice” cold. It was great! I toyed with the thought of trying to wade in it but realized that there was probably an altitude adjustment (read: waterfall) shortly down stream that I, being the klutz that I am, would find the hard way.

We all said our goodbyes around 5pm and were back home around 9:15 or so. We got some great pictures which can be found at my picture site (http://mccombs.scott.googlepages.com/home). We had a GREAT time and will be camping out there soon.