Summer Road Update: Minnesota to Montana

I haven’t posted photos in awhile On The Road, mainly because I’m spending more time in the woods and mountains and am rarely in town near an internet connection.

I think my last post was from the Canadian shores of Lake Superior.

The skeeters and deer flies of northern Minnesota were intense and really bothered the poor dog. We came down the shore from Canada, through Superior National Forest and Boundary Waters and stopped in lovely port town of Grand Marais for a few days, then headed northwest through Ely and International Falls along the northern border.

So, as I sit this morning in a lovely northern Puget sound town Laundromat, here’s a summer update and some shots as we traveled west from there.

California is a disaster, but the wildfires aren’t as bad in the northern rockies and pacific northwest as they were last year, but the heat has been intense and the conditions are extremely dry. Sometimes it feels like an oven, it smells like the pine duff is smoldering, and that the forest is about to burst into flame.

Along the Rainy River, border between Minnesota and Canada, west of International Falls

NorthDakota was flat and hot and we went across as fast as possible.

Arriving in Montana, the streams and rivers were flowing high and cold, due to a record snowfall season in parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Crazy mountains, western Montana

Big Sky country

We spent a few weeks in Absaroka – Beartooth Wilderness – truly spectacular, particularly camping along the clear and cold Yellowstone, Boulder and West Boulder Rivers:

Absaroka – Beartooth wilderness

Boie scratches an itch along the Yellowstone River

site along west boulder river

As we headed west towards Idaho, we stopped at Natural Bridge – a geological formation where the Boulder river has eroded a hole that makes it look like the river disappears into the ground. Here’s what it looks like on the outfall end. We scrambled down a makeshift “trail” – extremely steep and difficult, especially up and out but we got a rainbow!