The end of September already, and wow, did we get out of Montana just in time!

We made our run into Bozeman before we left Ennis, and found a new food genre for us, Korean.  And we really enjoyed it.  We love Asian food, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, etc.  They are similar yet unique in their own right.

Our homemade Kimchi appetizer

Korean short ribs!

A noodle soup with seafood and chicken!

And just so you don't think we eat all our meals out, here is an example of a delicious home cooked dinner!

Scallops, sautéed spinach with baby potatoes!  Yummy!

We enjoyed Ennis for our last day, and got ready to head a bit south to Henry's Lake State Park.

The setting sun reflecting off the hills

Some unsettled weather

Good bye Ennis, we'll be back

We have stayed at Henry's Lake before always with a reservation, but this time of the year they go to walk-in only.  We weren't sure what to expect, and since they only have a few full hook up sites, we made sure we had empty tanks.  Sure enough even in the middle of the week, at the end of September, all the full hook up sites were taken, so we looked around and found what turned out to be even a better site than we had hoped.  We pulled in instead of backed in and had a terrific view of the lake and the mountains out our front window!

Right out our front window!

Another perspective 

We only spent a few nights there before heading down to Colorado.  We did a long day into Vernal, UT at the Dinosaurland KOA for one night, and I will have to interject here one of our pet peeves.  It seems there is an unusual phenomenon occurring more and more over the last couple years, and that is lighting.  When I say lighting I mean mostly lights from RV's that run all night long, maybe LED rope lighting laid out all around the unit, and if really lucky changes colors all night long, or maybe a big long awning LED rope, bright white bathing everything and everyone within a mile of the unit, or best of all an intense bright white LED flood light for a porch light!  It seems more and more people for some unknown reason come out "camping" to enjoy nature and the outside and then light up their unit, and every unit within a mile of them all night long!  WHY???  Are they frightened, are they scaring off rodents, what the hell are they doing?  And amazingly it seems just as they turn them on they go inside, shut their door, pull all their blinds down tight and still leave the damn lights on all night long!  Do you get the impression Jan and I don't like this, you're right.  And then to compound this, more and more campgrounds are lighting the area up, I can see a light by a bath house, but do you really need street lights like a subdivision in the middle of nowhere?  Well, our night in Vernal had it all, streetlight right outside our bedroom window and an intensely bright white awning light left on all night by our neighbors who were cuddled up inside the whole time!  Okay, I'm done ranting.

We then went farther south into Colorado, first of all over Teton Pass, over 10% grades, it's a serious pass, then by Jackson, WY and south we went.

The clouds on Teton Pass

Looking way, way down

Coming out near Jackson

We turned another milestone in our coach on this leg of our trip, 150,000 miles.

Hopefully we'll get another 150,000 miles out of her

We crossed the dam at Flaming Gorge, got a quick glimpse of the lake on our way.

Flaming Gorge

So now we are in Colorado, and so glad especially after reading the reports of the incredible amount of snow they have gotten in Montana, setting new records of snow and cold, damn global warming!  So here we are, one more travel day to Durango where we'll spend all of October.  I'll leave you with a view from our present campground.

Aaaaah

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!