summing up montana...

... which I can't- I took too many photos, did too many fun things and managed NOT keep up with my posting. So now I find myself a bit overwhelmed by trying to figure out how to choose just a few photos. I'll try to give you snippets I guess. It'll have to do.

Backpacking trip with the Natural History Center:

- We did a weekend backpacking trip which was super fun despite incessant rain which soaked us and in the end cut the trip a day short... but the mountains were beautiful, green and blushing from head to toe with all sorts of wildflowers and berries. We waded through thickets of huckleberries and thimbleberries... which are wild little zingers closely related to their domesticated cousins the blueberry and the raspberry... Mmmm... and managed to avoid bears, mountain lions, moose and any other potentially dangerous wildlife.

(kara and I trying to warm up in the tent... and stay dry. Or get dry. We look remarkably happy for being remarkably cold and wet. Photos are sometimes so deceiving...)
Morning and evening hikes up Jumbo: This day rain all around... but blue sky above.
This hike was sunny and hot, the rattlesnakes (mountains) in the distance:
Oh, yes, and Life Everlasting can be purchased at a mere $1.35/oz in missoula....
And one of my most favorite things: floating... down rivers... The options: The Bitterroot, The Blackfoot, or The Clark Fork. (Well at least that I remember, I'm sure there are many more). Oh, what fun!! You drive out of town, with your two cars, park one where you plan to get out, pile everyone and all inner tubes into the other, drive a few miles up river and "put in." You float a couple of hours on down stream- through "rapids" and whathaveyou, enjoying the pristine trees and mountains, and a bald eagle or Osprey overhead every now and then. My plum point and shoot is not waterproof so I don't have any documentation of the floating, just a photo of what you get after an afternoon of having your legs and feet sticking out of a tube in direct sunlight (while your bum chills underwater for all the fishes delight).