The Next Chunk - Days 5+
FRIENDS & trusty blog followers - how the heck are you!?! Are you still burning up in MN? Has my house fallen over yet?!? Is the neighbor boy REALLY mowing our lawn?? Or am I just paying him to claim he mowed my lawn…hmm, one may never know.
ANYWAYS, this is my second update of the Ruby trip - happening somewhere around week 2 of the adventure. We have done SO much in such little time that I just about can’t keep up with updates! Oh, and not having service 70% of the time also hinders the post-ability :) I love me some good #noservice time, but it’s been coming when we aren’t expecting it. It has led to some interesting wrong turns and missed trailheads and dusty dirt roads, but we are here for it!!! Ruby - maybe not so much. We also sacrificed the service for some of the greatest views and lakeshore I have ever camped on.
Since the last post, we went from Fort Peck —> Great Falls, MT —> Seely Lake —> Flathead SP area
GREAT FALLS:
We loved this city, but only spent a day exploring it. We went to Giant Springs State Park in the morning and biked along the Rivers Edge trail which is a beautiful trail that strolls along the river. There are some really cool damns and waterfalls here; it was just one of those cities that has really good vibes to it and we were grateful to get to spend some hours here! We only stayed for the afternoon and kept on keeping on as it cooled off into the evening :)
SEELY LAKE:
We have learned that Central MT (south of Glacier area) is HOPPING! It feels like the equivalent of a Brainerd/Baxter area in MN - aka where all of the locals have cabins and go to play on the weekends, except not just the weekends because it’s HELLA busy all of the time. This was NOT something we were very well prepared for. We have been planning most nights the day or maybe 2 days before we get there. We haven’t been reserving much unless it’s a quick call when we are about 2 hours away. However, when we got to the Seely Lake area, we found out this may not be the best approach.
We got extremely luck in the Seely area as we planned to park in a National Forest campground with designated sites. I didn’t think much of it, aside from it being a Friday, but there were quite a few of these “mini campgrounds” along the way. The only thing is, these “mini campgrounds” are HIGHLY sought after. They are mostly free or $10 / night or less and people appear to camp on them for weeks at a time. We happened to pull up in campground #2 when someone was just packing up and they offered us the site. SCORE!! On a map, it looks like a lot of campgrounds, but they are so small (like <10 sites), that they don’t really hold that many parties. I should mention that some people pack more than 20 people into a campsite; the campsite next to us had more than 9 cars parked outside of it the entire time & they had been there for weeks.
Anyways, we felt very fortunate to get this site. It was beautiful, right on the lake with private shoreline, spacious, and a nice fire grate. The lake didn’t have a boat access either which made it perfect waters for my inflatable kayak :) It was the first time on this trip that I have found use of ol’ green. I guess it wasn’t the worst thing to pack after all! And when I crossed the lake, I turned around and could get an amazing peek at the mountains!!
The Continental Divide passes through really near the Seely area; I had an idea to hike a trail in the “Bob” (Bob Marshall Wilderness). However, we did not get service at this site and I had limited research done thus far, but I thought I could maybe get us to a trail head. We started down a service road, parked Ruby, and then took out our bikes…we biked straight UPHILL for over an hour and still didn’t find a trailhead. :0 So after Jake was passed pissed, we decided to turn around (terrifying actually) and find a different dirt road.
We still got to bike along the Continental Divide which was beautiful and even Jake turned that frown upside down on the way down the mountain!! AND we ended up finding a nice hike to a waterfall once we got into service :)
FLATHEAD LAKE AREA:
After a couple night on Lake Alva, we moved on to the Flathead Lake area. It’s the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi River; aka it’s HUGE. & we soon learned it’s a hotspot in MT. It appears to be a MT getaway area - where EVERYONE and their sisters have a cabin and boats and flock, at all hours of the summer. There are 6 state parks (SIX!) around Flathead Lake. NONE of them had available for a SUNDAY night. This is when I started learning that state parks in MT are slightly different than those in MN. 1) they aren’t that cheap 2) they don’t have all of the facilities you would expect - shower houses, bathroom facilities, etc. 3) they say they operate 25% on a FCFS system, but it did not feel that way. It seems like a very disorganized system where anyone can drive through the campground and just claim a site. At one park, I called and the guy said he had ONE site left. We high-tailed it there just for him to tell me he gave it to someone else. So then we went to state part #3 of the afternoon which thankfully (before we lost our minds completely) had a site available - just ONE. It was off of Flathead on a different lake called Lake Mary Ronan. Equally beautiful and much less busy than Flathead. BUT they did not have cell service; not a big deal, but Jake needed to work the next day. Just when we thought we got lucky and had the next 24hours figured out…
SO then we went out in search of WIFI. Which we found at a cafe through the woods and over the river (not really thru the river). It was pretty hectic, but we did find WIFI! Cleo also nearly passed out on the walk back, but some nice man gave us a ride in his pickup. We were ALL ready to just chill for a bit after this discovery, so naturally we threw in Season 1, Ep. 1 of GoT, outdoor movie style.
We spent the next day at Camp Tuffit enjoying a coffee and wifi overlooking Lake Mary. Good views, good vibes, and good wifi to get caught up on our next week planning.
Not all parts of #buslife are glamorous or even stress-free. You have the freedom, to some extent, to drive at your own pace, or the pace that your bus maxes at. We do have the freedom to drive, but we don’t have the freedom to go wherever whenever as sometimes the incline is too steep or they don’t have availability of the sun is shining too strongly and Ruby says no or they don’t have cell service when you need it. BUT at the end of the day, we make our way through it and are learning to be patient with each other and with what comes our way. Not my strength, but something I’m getting lots of practice at these days :)
Peace, love, and onwards we go,
Yo’ girl Jen <3
PS) I hate complaining about not having cell service (#soFIRSTworld) because I’m usually the person that rolls my eyes when people whine about not having service. BUT Jake needs it for work, so it’s sort of important for us. He is down to PT, but that still means 3 days / week MIN, he needs to sign in and do work :/ It’s been our biggest obstacle we are learning to navigate on this trip for sure.
