Where the heck are we, anyway??

See our little vacation town -- Hamilton -- smack in the middle of the Bitterroot River Valley, with Idaho just over mountains that start at the end of our street?

This is another, harder-to-read map of the entire state, with Hamilton far to the west, on State Highway 93 and just above the words "Bitterroot Valley."

Several folks have asked me for a map of this ridiculously long but, now, very satisfying trip. It's overcast in Hamilton today, humidity at 75 percent with a little light rain, but the temp at 3 p.m. is just 50! It's lowest low this week is to be 41 degrees on Thursday night. Townsfolk are tired of this; they can't get their tomato plants in; and their fleece and down jackets are getting old. At the worst is flooding that's predicted on some farmland and county roads along the Bitterroot River, and even in parts of big-city Missoula and small-town Darby. The Ravalli Republic newspaper is keeping tabs:
http://ravallirepublic.com/news/local/article_4127be56-9178-11e0-b54f-001cc4c03286.html.

But I have to say that, as I think of the scorching temperatures in most of the rest of the country, I am so grateful to be spending some cool time here. The coffee shop, River Rising, must be grateful, too.  It is buzzing this afternoon; every table is filled, talk is cacophonous and the hot coffee's flowing as if this were Little Seattle.

Alex and I had a laugh the other day when a weekend "heat wave" of 80s during the day prompted our wonderful landlady to ask if we wanted the portable air-conditioner installed.  We thanked her and said "no." She's provided every other comfort possible in our tiny space. She's at http://www.vrbo.com/275459 (Vacation Rentals By Owners). I hesitate to post it only because I want access to it next year, that is, if Alex doesn't buy some little fixer-upper of a house here on the sly! (He'd better not!!)

Here are a few pictures I've taken of our small, shabby-chic rental space (some are duplicates, sorry):

We leave our digs tomorrow, weather and rivers permitting. We hope to venture east across the valley to the smaller, smoky-blue Sapphire Mountains for a wildlife walk with new binoculars from REI in Missoula (that MT store actually took our old, partly broken ones originally from REI in St. Louis as a trade!).  Life is good.