Western Journal, Day 3

Wednesday, September 14

During the routine of breaking camp, I was assigned to find our morning coffee. I went back to the Missoula strip and found a Starbucks in a Target. Such a departure this trip has been from our wilderness ventures into Canada!

At a gas station in Lolo, we decided to step into the neighboring state of Idaho and vaguely set a town called Elk City as our destination. We liked the name. While setting our course beside the pumps, a stranger told my father he was the spitting image of a Forest Service doctor who died ten years ago. I began calling him “Doc.” As we broke west and entered the Bitterroot National Forest, the hilly plains became sparse pine forest upon the hills and mountains again. We saw ranches and small farms on either side of the road, but also evidence of wildfire in the previous season. Each of these little farms is marked by a ranch gate: two vertical pieces support a third horizontal beam that protrudes from each end, like serifs in text. Sadly, there was not actually a home behind each gate, likely taken in the fires.

We uneventfully explored a network of side roads that seemed to go nowhere, but found evidence of a tidy secluded campsite.

More productively, we later stopped to climb on some rock formations, spectacular in their improbable geometry. Igneous rock climbed upward in rounded, billowing shapes resembling soft gray serve ice cream among the now green pine forest. Lunch was had in the restaurant of a motel-style cabin resort with an RV park and swimming pool. Our sandwiches weren’t so great, but we were interested to hear the story of our waitress, who came from Oregon. She’s making a go of things in Montana, living in an RV across from her workplace and happily reported she spends her evenings in the pool.

Crossing the border into Idaho, we were again astonished at a dramatic change in terrain. The browns and oranges transitioned into bold green pine forest across mountains surrounding a valley so gorgeous as to be dramatic in its mere stillness. We stopped to take pictures.

Deciding we didn’t want to make camp in the dark again, we found a US Forest Service campground. We set up our tents and briefly explored the adjacent river.

With a few hours of daylight remaining, we left our camp and continued on down the road. I spotted a Forest Service sign advertising a parking area for a long distance trail and some warm springs. We stopped and hopped out, noting the presence of a full-size school bus. It had been modified into something like a motor home with curtains in the windows and a huge load of gear, including a folded up tipi, secured on top.

The sign at the trailhead stated the warm springs were only half a mile in. An old man returning to the road said they were “alright” and just had “a bunch of naked girls – nothing you want to see” with a sarcastic twinkle. After walking half mile along the river leading to the springs, I found them after walking another half mile. There I was met with the sight of… well, nudists! Two families, their children, and… their goats…. were enjoying the warm waters. I suppose these were the probable occupants of the school bus. Not immediately equipped with a sense of the etiquette I smiled and carried on, finding a spring of my own over the next crest. I returned and found my father had followed me up the trail and was conversing with some of the naked users of the other springs as their two goats meandered about, eating grass. Amused, he joined me at the spring I found and I hopped in (with shorts). We noticed that wax candles had been used by other visitors around the spring and the remains of a campfire were nearby.

 

On our drive back, my dad was surprised to see cars and RVs parked in turnouts along the highway and tents shallowly concealed in the woods. I explained (and I had said this several times leading up to the trip!) that camping is generally permitted anywhere in the national forests and national grasslands, as long as there was no locally posted prohibition against it. Seeing it in action made it click for him and he enjoyed the drive back to camp with a smile on his face. He occasionally mused at all the places along the mountains where he could camp and seemed to be uplifted by some heightened sense of ownership of these lands.

We enjoyed dinner at a nearby lodge. My father related part of his conversation with one of the men at the springs, who complained he “didn’t like people wearing too many clothes.” My dad politely retorted with the line, “Well, that’s your hangup, man.” I was rather pleased with him flipping the other guy’s words.