A nice rendezvous and a little biding time

I left you on the Missouri River after our disappointing day.  The next day we drove over to Lakeside, MT on Flathead Lake near Kalispell.  We stayed at Edgewater RV Park where we had stayed a few years ago.  It is a nice park, very busy with the lake across the street, but quiet and dark at night.  It looks a bit like a parking lot, but it is well done and actually quite roomy as long as you don't get a shared site at the last moment.  Jan's sister Karen and hubby Tom were having their family vacation nearby and we hoped to see Karen and Tom for lunch one day when things were quiet.  Unexpectedly, we got a text inviting us to drinks and dinner with the whole gang.  They were at a stunning lakefront property with an enormous yard where we could all stretch out and distance.  We were warmly welcomed by the "kids", Jordan and Meg, Walker and Mirasol, and Steve who also served up an awesome dinner.  Thanks so much everyone for having us.

Karen meeting us with booze!
What a view, huh?

Relaxing on the lawn with Karen and Tom

Not many campgrounds allow washing of your rig, so we try to take advantage of any opportunity that arises, and Edgewater does, so we gave the coach a bath.

Don't get the idea from this picture that I did the whole job,
Jan did her normal 75%  :-)

We had tried to get a reservation at one of our favorite parks, Jim and Mary's in Missoula, but were only able to get 2 days, then had to leave for 6, then back for a week.  Before we left Lakeside we gave them a call to see if a site had opened up.  Not expecting anything we were thrilled to be able to add 2 days to our first group making 4, and able to add 1 day to our week, but we would still have to leave for 4 days, better than nothing.  This park is almost always full, they have a big sign up saying "Full for the Night", virtually every night.  So we moved south to Missoula.  

Our site at Jim and Mary's

A beautiful sky

We got a takeout pizza from Biga, one of our absolute favorites.  We took it and ate down by the Bitterroot River.  We did get to fish one day on the Blackfoot, and this time I was the one to catch a fish:-)  

We had to figure out where to go for 4 days, so with a study of the map and the campground guide we decided to go south to Grangeville, ID to the Bear Den RV Resort, only 175 miles each way.  Famous last words.  We got a fairly late start at 11am as we were waiting for a package, and then got fuel and off we went, and went and went.  From Lolo south the road never straightened, I spent the next 5 hours turning the wheel, maybe got up to 45mph, tops, 4 times!  It was beautiful, but man it never let up.

This is our simple 175 mile route

I tried to zoom in a bit to show you how windy it was

Along the river

Closer to Grangeville after climbing a huge winding hill
Lots of farming

Once we arrived, the campground roads were incredibly dusty, it was 100df outside, then the site they assigned us to had low hanging limbs and after our paint work that wasn't going to happen, so they gave us another site and to their credit they sent out a couple kids to cut the limbs, and then cut even more at the new site.  I just do not understand why these campgrounds can't keep the limbs trimmed?  It's not that hard and it causes a lot of damage.  We settled in and then woke to rain the next morning, just enough to run the dust down the sides of our recently washed rig:-(  Before you get the wrong idea, the campground is pretty nice, they call themselves a resort with no amenities, but they are working hard keeping it nice, the pull throughs are longer than we have seen, sites are roomy, but lots of light at night.  If you could find anything to do in this part of Idaho or needed to be here for some reason, this would be a nice place to stay.

About 5 years ago, we were in White Bird, ID, a tiny town about 16 miles south of us to take an awesome jet boat trip on the Snake River in Hell's Canyon, so we decided to pack a lunch, take a ride duplicating the drive to the launch site which we remembered as breathtaking, and have lunch by the river.  Quite the drive, first you go down White Bird Hill.  The new highway was constructed in 1975 to replace the old road, which straightened it somewhat and made it a bit steeper, it drops 2700' in 7 miles at a 7% gradient, it seems to just go on and on, the view is amazing.

This is the view from the top of the pass, a little hazy with the heat, 90df

Came upon this old codger at the viewpoint

You can see part of the road in this picture

The road takes you down to White Bird which has an approximate elevation of 1550' on the Salmon River, then we took a gravel road 16 miles up and across a ridge that separates the Snake River canyon from the Salmon River canyon at about 4600', then back down to the Snake at about 1150'.  Quite the drive!  

Starting at the Salmon in White Bird

The view from the ridge with the Snake way, way down in front of us

Then the amazing Snake River

Our picnic wasn't quite what we hoped for, we couldn't see the river from where we ate in the little bit of shade we found, but since it was 99df, we felt the shade trumped the river:-)

It is pretty here in the high farmland with mountains in the distance, but we can't really figure out why you'd come here.  We must be missing something because the campground is essentially full.  We are going to kill one more day here and then it's back to Missoula for us.

The view from our walk this am

Very pretty

Now I will say that when we go back to Missoula tomorrow, we won't be taking RT 12.  We are actually going to head directly north and join the interstate a little east of Coeur d'Alene, it will be a bit longer, 319 vs 175, but I'll bet we get there faster:-)