Went to Montana, had a really good time. Flew there, drove back with a friend. Was gone eight days. We went to Missoula and then through a beautiful canyon in Idaho, past Lolo Hot Springs, through the Nez Perce reservation. Followed a river for miles and miles. It was beautiful and there was a lot of stuff to stop and see. I like to stop for yard sales and historical markers. My friend likes to stop for fish hatcheries and historical markers, so we got along fine and each got to do what she really wanted to do. That road took us through Idaho and into Oregon. One one of her stops we watched some huge salmon going up a fish ladder from a bit of river into the fish hatchery. They hatched in the hatchery, so they go back there to lay eggs when it is time to reproduce. We were pretty far inland, but the river there connects to the Columbia and so the fish could come all that way from the Pacific to spawn in eastern Oregon.
We stopped in Pendleton, Or for a night and wished we had time to stay longer. It has an old and interesting town center, with lots of buildings from pioneer days. We went to Picture Gorge which is awesome! Wouldn't mind doing that again. Look it up online -- it has layers and layers of fossils, going back 65 million years -- fossils from the entire age of mammals. We watched a scientist using a tiny tool to clean a tooth from what she says is a new species -- at least new to the scientists, eh? It lived millions of years ago and they aren't sure yet what it was. There was a camera on the microscope, so we could also see what she was doing on a screen.
Then Crater Lake, although the road around the lake wasn't completely open yet -- about 12 feet of snow still on some of the roads. But we could drive through the park along about 1/3 of the lake. Very beautiful, wouldn't mind doing that again when all the road around the lake is open. Besides the wonderful views, we could see lots and lots of tourists risking their lives by climbing over barriers to stand on the edge of the volcano mouth and look down into the lake. The little Crater Lake newspaper says that behavior results in serious injury and death every year, but still the yahoos did it. Highway 138 on the north of Crater Lake goes through National Forest and we saw some beautiful waterfalls.
I took a lot of pictures, but somehow the pictures never show the grandeur of the area. I wish you all could take that road trip -- so much to see! I am very tired today, and being tired makes me negative sometimes, so I'm moving furniture, rearranging my living room and thinking about my trip to make myself more cheerful. It was a good trip and next year my friend and I plant to drive from Billings up to Glacier Park and into Canada.
