Montana Island Lodge Seeley Lake

... For now, I must head his request. He is right, I should be out playing with him rather than posting a travel entry not slated to get published for another 5.5 months.
But, I had to mess around with things to get the hang of them you know?
Alright, Alright, Kingston.
I'm getting off now......

This is a really weird feeling, leaving home for a five month adventure. We do a lot of traveling, but never one of this length. It's required an humongous amount of planning and while we've tried to think of all contingencies, we know that's not even possible.
And that's OK--part of the seat-of-your-pants traveling we're best at.
We ...

... away,my eggs are getting cold" look.I'm generally perfect as usual, but evidently, I can be grumpy and sarcastic.I don't see,however, what's wrong with wearing clothes two days in a row if you don't spill anything on them. My only problem is MY ASS HURTS! Honestly, we're having a ball.I'm going to try to send this before Linda sees it.

... good the quality was. He was using carbon fiber 20 years ago on some of his designs. Talented guy who still rides 25 mile every second day. The next day we said our goodbyes got our socks and shoes back, with dog holes, and rolled on passed flathead lake, America's largest western fresh water lake. 50km x 25km. One of the cleanest in the world for its size.

The next 120 miles were easy, foot hills, one pass, mainly cruising along at 4000ft. We had to get ...

... I'm not so sure about the mud in the wheel wells that still has to be removed!

Rather than taking us out of Great Falls on a connector to hwy 200, we found ourselves skirting a large table mountain heading in a southwest direction, in what turned out to be a route running parrallel to the hwy. What we thought would quickly turn from gravel to paved road, turned from gravel to 'dirt' road with grass between the tracks on 'unnamed roads ...

We stopped in Kalispell, Montana to get some groceries. Since we were there, we had to stop in the Harley-Davidson store and buy some souvenirs. Soon after, we left for Seeley Lake, which is about an hour to an hour and a half away from Kalispell. We got lost on the way down though and ended up 40 miles off course. But it was cool to see some new country. While off course, we came to a ...

... in the lake when we saw them riding back in with their group and everything was fine. We couldn't see them when they got up to the barn, but we heard some yelling and saw a horse run off. Apparently, they were about 200 ft from the barn and Keegan's saddle started to slide off. The horse got spooked by this and took off on a sprint, with Keegan basically riding side-saddle. He fell off after about 8 seconds and banged up his arm pretty good and got a nice welt on his back ...

... boats and tubes out and swam in the lake. We had a ball in the water, while Kelly sat on the shore and talked with some other guests. After we swam for a couple of hours, we came back to the cabin for the best part, a nap. We had dinner around 6pm and then the boys and I played some more pool, threw horseshoes and threw the baseball. I mean, it really doesn't get any better than all ...

... hear Greg, the owner, talk about all that goes into running the ranch. What's more amazing is that in the off-season he doesn't rest. That's when he does his 9 day elk-hunting trips. We're already in the middle of nowhere and he takes hunters another 23 miles, on horseback, into the woods. They stay out there for 7 days and hunt elk and deer. He and his wife are the perfect hosts. After everyone went to bed, Greg sat out at the fire with Kelly, the boys and I until about 10:30pm.

Back to our "home base" Missoula with friends & family. Possibly the last of our snowboarding of the season (one day at Lost Trail & one day at Big Mountain). We did our first rock climbing of the season at Kootenai in the Bitteroot Mountains with Matty & Beth.