Awoke this morning with the tent in full sun again, I hate it when we do that. (However, full sun at nine AM in MT ain't so bad.) We camped at the free Pigeon Creek Campground, next to what i can only assume is Pigeon Creek. There were actually a fair number of people here, only two other empty spots besides ours, granted the campground only had about seven sites that we saw... My only complaint was that some man kept going into the composting toilet to smoke. Quite annoying!
We got coffee and some nibbles at Starbucks in Butte and hung around there for a while because of the free wi-fi. Robert even tried their instant coffee because of an ad about some award earned from Backpacker Magazine touting it as the best trail coffee. He liked it well enough to buy some, so we might just get a mocha on our next excursion! We used the wifi to get several audiobooks for our next drive as well: Alice in wonderland, huck Finn, count of Monte cristo, and a few short aesops fables. Gotta love free podcasts!
When we got hungry enough for lunch, we asked the friendly barrista for a suggestion. We got several....all of which turned out to be closed. Apparently we are in a good Christian town that shuts down on sundays. Thanks a lot, Butte. We ended up eating at a place called Bob and Sandys Cafe (BS Cafe for short, aren't they cute!). I mention the name so specifically so you will be able to avoid it should you ever care to visit the fine town of Butte. I ate a grilled cheese sandwich, to which I asked to be added kraut and shrooms, in an attempt to convince myself that it was actually lunch food and not a snack. Robert, the normal one, got a burger. We both got side salads and fries to round out the meal. The salad was all iceberg, nothing else at all. The fries were tiny and seemingly unsalted, but at least hot. My sandwich was fried in just enough butter so as to make it edible. Our water glasses were never refilled. In short, don't bother.
Next we found a laundromat. It served our needs, but it was hot and dingy with some interesting characters, like the man who must have had OCD because I saw him wash his hands about ten times, he washed each load twice, and he never touched the knobs with his fingers. Poor guy. We planned our trip on the map and I looked up veggie hiking blogs to pass the time.
Next we hit up the walmart to provision for our next hike. It took a while and we ended up forgetting enough things to warrant another trip after dinner, oops. For dinner we tried a place recommended by the locals from this morning, Pekin Noodle Parlor, supposedly the noodles were superb. False. Well, actually, the plain white noodles served in a clear broth were the best part of my meal, everything else was "marginal at best," a phrase we have been using to describe too many meals eaten out lately. The only vegetable I could positively identify in the slop on my plate was celery, oh and the canned mushrooms which were dumped on top of fried rice to make...mushroom fried rice, clever. (robert: it reminded me too much of our backpacking gruel meals than anything else.) I should mention however that the building was located in the old part of town, harkening from the 1800s when the area abounded with Chinese immigrants and the place was supposedly a brothel. Each table is separated from the rest in a mini-room type thing where you can just imagine a bed would fit nicely. (r: I don't think it was actually a brothel. I think they did that.) The point of the story is, the best thing i ate today was a blueberry scone from starbucks, so much for supporting local businesses.
Now we are headed off Into the wilderness yet again. The backseat is a mess with piles of provision bags and clean clothes stuffed back into the laundry sack since they are delicate and not yet dry. It looks like the bags are cascading down between the seats like the very slow yet somehow terrifying blob from old b movies.
Our plan is the following: drive up to darby, arriving around 11:15pm, take a small dirt road twenty miles into the wilderness and camp at either Schumaker Camp or Bear Creek Pass, stay there for a few days then hike out west, cross into Idaho, loop around and hike back, thirty five miles or there abouts, don't know the name of the trail or even if it has a proper name. :) "I'm excited. We might Get lost!" -Robert talking about our last trip, but I think it fits nicely for this one as well. Goodnight for now, Im going to try to be a better passenger and help amuse the driver so he doesn't fall asleep and drive us off a mountain.
Addendum: the bugs are currently so thick outside that It seems to be raining. Robert has run out of wiper fluid yet again and still the bugs persist in staining the windshield mercilessly! Listening to Alice and it is great.
Recording the adventures of Robert and Jenn since 2010.
2 comments:
This covers time before camping along the Shawley River and emerging at Lewiston, Idaho?
Yes. The posts are out of order because I skipped a few days and had to go back and fill them in. The date is correct in the title. We hit Butte after we saw you in Billings and before going to Twin Lakes and then Selway River and then Lewiston.
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