Front and center

It's been awhile since I blogged, and that's because I'm doing the above -- camping, first at 
Holland Lake northeast of Missoula, more beautiful than ever but buggy -- armies of
mosquitoes -- and without an open lodge restaurant, as promised online. Arrggh. We wanted
a bit of glamping (as glamorous, catered camping is called). We got in a nice campfire in one 
of the sturdy, official fire rings, instead, a light home-cooked meal, a night's sleep, cold coals 
the next morning, and we moved on instead of staying the second night that we'd booked
via Holland Lake Campground.

We headed further north -- through Big Fork, MT, a cute touristy community on the eastern shore of Flathead Lake. We got gas and turned away from it (eastward) to skirt the south side of Glacier National Park. This was weeks ago. Currently, there's something called the Glacier Rim Fire (Inciweb Montana) going on there, with 85 acres and some 30 percent of it contained. As a Facebook friend wrote the other day, "And so it begins," fire season, that is.

What we wanted to see most on this trip was something that a Bitterroot Audubon Society friend (and, coincidentally, TV's David Letterman) had discovered years ago -- the beauty of the beginning of the Rockies. You probably know about the front in Colorado. Montana has it, too. It's called the Rocky Mountain Front here. Above, we drove toward it from Choteau, MT, with dancing clouds leading the way past remnants of the Great Plains.

There is a new federal law (Rocky Mount Front Heritage Act) and a new book (Discover the Rocky Mountain Front) that give dignity, protection and adventure to this place where plains meet Rockies. Plus, it's just gorgeous there, and relatively undiscovered.

Above, is one beauty spot that we want to come back to, to do some dispersed camping ("the term used for camping anywhere in the National Forest outside of a designated campground. Dispersed camping means no services; such as trash removal, and little or no facilities; such as tables and fire pits," according to the US Forest Service). I'm not telling exactly where this place is!

Talk about dispersed! I will tell about this location. It's high above East Fork Reservoir, near Philipsburg, MT, and only 67 miles from our front door. However, the narrow, some would say dangerous mountain roads make for a 2-3 hour ride each way.

We did this trip the day before yesterday. The view of the Anaconda-Pintler Mountains is spectacular on this dispersed-camping spot. However, global warming is turning Montana into a heat oven early this year. On this day, we were still experiencing 100-degree heat, even at the higher elevations. The mountains, above, had been seriously snow-streaked when we saw them last. This trip, the snow was gone. And we were beset by bees and flies of all shapes and sizes. Most were non-biting, except for at least one huge horsefly. It got me right in the scalp. Itching and swelling followed, although it's better today.  Montana isn't easy. But, boy is it pretty.

A side note on our vintage VW Westfalia van: It took a leak, literally, when we got home from the first of these trips. Apparently, we needed a new port for connecting to external water sources. My husband called a great source of parts (GoWesty) and got a guy who was having a bad day. We called again the next morning and, indeed, someone else told us that the part shouldn't have failed, and we got another one shipped to us at no cost. Now, if we can only get that oil light to stop buzzing when it consistently lights up (on a more recent trip). We carry oil with us, of course, and a dose of it tamed the light on the drive home. But surely we're not burning oil after only 800 miles on a newly rebuilt engine, right Scott/GoWesty? Yikes.