Last Day in Ennis, Wow, a Whole Month!

Well here it is, time to move on already.  Seems like like we've been very busy, certainly have done a lot of fishing, and mostly successfully.  We've taken a bunch of rides and done quite a bit of exploring.  Not much hiking here as it turns out.  We've also taken a couple forays into Bozeman for groceries and other odds and ends, it's 40 miles each way, but it is so scenic.  Not bad for us, but I think it would wear on you if you lived here.  Ennis is a wonderful little town, and even has its own grocery store, hardware store, lumber yard, shops, a few restaurants, auto supply, and even a medical clinic/hospital, but......

We had a very common air fitting fail on the coach, a tee, and for some reason I didn't have a spare, very unusual, but I figured it should be easy to get, even here in Ennis, no.  I went to the auto parts store, the hardware store, and even the lumber yard as was recommended to me, and ended up driving to Bozeman to get the $7 part.  That would get to me.

We have had an interesting time with the weather, lots of extremes.  And the smoke has been very bad a few times, and wafts in and out the rest of the time.  And to think we saw no smoke before we got here a month ago and were starting to feel pretty cocky that it would be a year without fires, ha.  Looks like it is shaping up to be one of the worst, particularly on the west coast.  For us the fires in ID, MT, and WY have affected us the most, so as the wind shifts so does the smokiness.  And wind, man have we had some wind!  Shaking and rocking the coach wind, several of our neighbors have retracted their slides the wind has been that bad.  We luckily were shielded somewhat by our neighbor's rig, and the direction was such we left ours out.  We went from 96df, smoky and very windy to a storm with 50 mph gusts, rain mixed with snow with a high of 37df and below freezing for 2 nights, quite a change!  But it dusted the mountains beautifully.

This post will be mostly pictures, hope you enjoy them.

Looking west across Ennis Lake

Moonrise on a hot, hot evening

Someone's dream

Amber waves of grain

Back down the hill

The sunset is pretty

But the glow it gives to the mountains looking east is fantastic!

Here comes the weather

Yes, that's snow in the campground

A snowy view from our site the next morning

Even more snow to the north

We fished in the morning and then when we saw some clearing from the smoke, we grabbed some coffee and headed up on a loop road we found, it was a gorgeous day!

About as clear as it got with the smoke,
so we took advantage

Up we go

Spectacular

This was our coffee spot, not bad:-)
It's hard to see in the photo, but we are far, far above the valley

The last overlook before heading back down

The famous Madison River

Got one!

Taking a break

Lunch on the river with happy Jan

Doesn't get much better than this!

So a whole month here in Ennis, very out of character for us, would we do it again?  Maybe, but probably 3 weeks would be the max in the future.  That itch to get moving is strong with us:-)  It did afford us to slow down and not try to fit everything in a quick time frame, and as we sat still, we were able to meet some of our neighbors that moved in and out.  We especially enjoyed meeting and visiting with Ron and LuAnn, also fishermen. Funny, actually almost everyone here is a fisherman, that's what Ennis is, a fly fishermen's mecca.  

I'll leave you with one last picture, our last evening's view at cocktail hour.