Montana Roadtrip
Wife and I headed up to Montana (rockies zone) the last week of July into August for 10 days (well you know one 10 hours any direction to get to decent camping/views/boondocking from Iowa). Thanks to the Forum, had a couple of reports we noted and did that turned into GREAT experiences!! Wyoming is great but our first day adventure started west of Tetons/Jackson Hole when we started on the Gravelly Road (I of coarse pronounced it like gravel instead of rhyming it with 'jelly' as I learned was the correct way)...the Gravelly was AWESOME and reminded me quite a lot of the Dempster....you're traveling on the tops of mountains most of the time, and if not in vast stretches of hay fields, but always in view of mountains...and the boondocking was great too....many places marked for camping along the way...or a fire pit...we DID get lost and ended up WAY south of our intended destination, Dillon...we missed two 'right' turns and ended up on some B/rutted roads even more desolate than the Gravelly...came out at Monida at the Southern border with Idaho...crazy and fun (get a better map than standard Atlas to really find your way on those roads)...THe Gravelly is a MUST for any SMB'r...seriously! We then headed up to the NW corner by Yaak...a let down....beautiful but little to no camping possibilities...Then we headed for a VERY REMOTE campsite called Moose Lake, west of Glacier...only bad part was the 15-20 miles of washboard (which I tried the 35-40 mph method as first heard here) and crusied over that nightmare part of the road...we were rewarded with a lake to ourselves...not counting the deer and two Osprey fishing! Speaking of, it was great fun-fishing (rainbow were 5-six inches they were fun to catch and let go)...the best part was the PRIVACY!! Funny GPS story...on the way to get back to 93 we decided to try to get another way out...enter GPS...and yes it was twenty-some miles less, and no washboard, but we ended up on some forrest road on the side of a mountain that nobody had been on in weeks/months maybe years...great views but the old 2 hours to get 29 miles!! On the way back south/home we dug for crystals at Crystal Park (N of Elkhorn hot springs)...$5 parking and a chance to find cool crystals...shovels, bucket, fun! Found some great specimens and went later in day so had park pretty much to ourselves...boondocked off the road, then hit Ruby Reservoir the next day to look for Garnets on the banks...found some great ones there too...they said you can/usually find very little stones a carat or less...we did and I happened to find a 138 carat garnet too!!!!...yes...I'd rather be lucky than good! Anyway, a blast that we will be repeating again! Though next time we are panning for gold too!!! I will try to put up as many pics as I can...hope you all enjoy...AND SMB's RULE!!!!
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