Magnificent Montana

We had a fabulous family vacation in St. Regis, Montana. The mountains are so HUGE, you feel like an ant! On our way to our campsite, we stopped in Missoula for our first RV and Truck Wash at “Exit 96 Shine”. It was pretty cool to stay in the RV and watch the cleaning, and see how great the RV and truck looked afterwards. Mike is not sure if we will do again, as it is tougher on vehicles than the normal hand wash we do or have RV cleaners complete for us. We stayed at Nugget RV Resort, a lovely park in the middle of nowhere, with miles of hiking trails and a fun sasquatch scavenger hunt. We had stayed here once before, so knew it was peaceful and perfect for our family get together. After we got settled, we picked up family at the Missoula airport, about and hour from St. Regis. We hung out at the river front, ate great food truck food and walked along the many trails, before heading to the RV.

Our first hike was the “Cascade Falls Overlook Trail”, where we saw lots of cool birds, especially the Western Tanager and a waterfall. The next planned hike was the “Heart and Pearl Lake Trail”. It was at a much higher elevation in the Lolo National Forest and had so much snow, we could not see the trail. We used the “All Trails app. to navigate the snow and try to follow the trail. It worked for the most part, however, there were a lot of trees down and obstacles, so we definitely went off the trail. Unfortunately, after hiking for several miles, we came to a part of the trail that we could not safely cross, so we unfortunately did not get to see either lake. It was quite an experience falling through deep snow in June! Thank goodness we had some crampons to provide some grip, especially when we were going downhill. The next day the weather was a little drizzly, so we Mike found a great drive to the “Bison Range” on a nature reserve on the Flathead Indian Reservation. It was the highlight of our trip with absolutely spectacular views. We stopped at really cool Amish grocery store, Stutzman’s Country Market in St. Ignatius, where we bought a lot of healthy organic food. Yum! The weather continued to be rainy, but we still tried a few more hikes in Superior, MT. The first one was the “Diamond Lake and Cliff Lake Trail”. After driving about 30 minutes on a gravel road up the mountain, we ran into too much snow, and were fairly certain the trail was likely closed, and it was too dangerous to continue. So, we tried the “Dry Creek Trail”, which was pretty slippery. We ended up having to crawl over a wooden slat bridge, to avoid falling into the freezing creek, but it was still fun. The last hike was the Superior Vista trail, which had some really pretty panoramic views. In our free time, we hiked around the RV Park looking for “Sasquatch” on the park scavenger hunt, played board games and went birding. The favorite bird we found at the RV Resort was definitely a Merlin. A fun time was had by all, but now it is time to head to Washington State!