A fantastic new spot and back to Ennis!

It was raining when we got ready to leave Missoula.  It's interesting that in all these years of travel, we rarely make or break camp in the rain.  We needed to stop and get fuel at the nearby Pilot, in fact just a mile from the campground, and planned to hook up after I got diesel.  I pull into the truck stop and there is a can in front of every lane at the pumps?!?!?  Jan pulled in behind me and ran inside to see what was going on, and amazingly no one seemed to know, only to say it might be fixed in awhile.  So after we hooked up the truck we called the Flying J on the other side of town, not where we had planned to go, and they said they were open and operating normally.  So as we decide to just go there, we notice all the cans have been removed, so around the building I go and pull into a lane, stick the card in and enter all the data, and.............nothing.  So I go inside to see what is going on.  The guy inside asked what pump am I at, I say 9, and he says as far as he knows that pump doesn't work??????  I bite by lip, and keep quiet, and go back outside, Jan moves the coach around to another pump and we finally get fuel.  Oh well, we're not going far, and it only took an extra hour:-)

We have never camped on the Big Hole River before and our route took us to the south of Missoula, into Idaho for a moment, over 2 passes, and then back into Montana.  It was rainy off and on the whole trip, but the views were awesome.

Along the way back in Montana

We hoped along the way no one else had the same idea to boon dock at the Fishtrap fishing access, and when we pulled in 2 small trailers were already there.  We were disappointed at first, but when we got in there we found an open site, pulled in, and determined it would be the site we would have picked anyway.  Right near the river, quiet and oh so dark!  It was great, even with the weather that rained on and off, it was peaceful and nice to watch the clouds move up and down the hills, and have the fog roll in and out.

Our site

We essentially have it all to ourselves!

It rained all night and when we caught a glimpse of the mountains, we noticed something else.

Thar's snow on them thar hills!

But the weather gods smiled upon us and gave us time to go fish without it raining or blowing, and fish we did.  We even caught fish so it was a very successful and enjoyable time.

Here fishy

One of Jan's

And one of my whitefish

I even caught a small grayling, we didn't even know they were around here.  We spent 2 nights, absolutely wonderful and then decided to go back to Ennis.  That way Jan could get her hair cut in Bozeman and we could run a couple errands.  We gave them a call and we were even lucky enough to snag a site in the back again.

A pretty drive to Ennis

Our site in Ennis, and yes there is snow on these mountains too

It was cool and windy, rain in and out, but sometimes it's nice just to hole up and enjoy the peace, watch a movie and chill, which we did.  Another day we took a ride to the other side of Ennis Lake to explore the Madison downriver of the dam.  Usually when we have been here in the middle of the summer, that part of the river is closed to fishing as the water temps are too high.

The Madison below the dam

And what a view across the lake!