Day 19

There aren’t a whole lot of breakfast options anymore.  We need to make a grocery run.  We had hot cereal with yogurt.  We decided to camp at Apgar again tonight, which will make it our fourth night here.  It’s a nice campground with good facilities, but it does stay rather cold for most of the morning.  The rising sun doesn’t make it up over the mountain until at least 11am.  Based not that, Joshua decided this was the place for him to live.  He could get up at 10:30 and still say he was up before sunrise!  :P

The dogs have gotten pretty good about all this camping business.  They’re fairly quiet and happy on the high line, they stay in the tent when told, they stay at camp when they’re told when we run off to get water.  I can even take one dog and tell the other to stay there.  We do have to keep an eye on them or else they’ll go visiting everybody else.  

That we did.

We messed around camp for a good long which and then finally took off for Kintla Lake. 

The views are just gorgeous along this road!  Some pretty ranches.

 We took Camas Road, then the Outside North Fork Road to Polebridge, and then the Inside North Fork Road.

Such a pretty lake and a nice campground too.  Their dog rules are dry restrictive though.  

The last part of the road up there is pretty rough … Along the lines of the road down to Blair Creek!  So, poor little minivan (talked about naming it Charlie) got its initiation.  A little mud splashed on the windshield, big rocks, axle-breaker pot holes, the works.  Just no fording really deep water.  

I love my brother.  A whole lot.  He’s very kind, tolerates and even supports my pet peeves, very talented, and isn’t one to do a half job.  But I sure am glad I’m not married to him.  Because I can’t stand his driving!  It’s pretty rare that I say anything about it, though I did tell him exactly that.  It is an exercise in keeping my mouth closed, grinning and bearing.  And thinking how I’m glad I’m not basing our relationship on liking his driving!  :)  

He and Mom got into it going up to Kintla, so she drove on the way down and then up to Bowman Lake.  There was much squealing and “oops”s from the drivers seat.  We almost didn’t pass a horse trailer that was on the way down.  She begged Jeremiah to drive on the way down from Bowman.  

We stopped at the road that heads up to Logging Lake to gather stove fuel.  Apgar doesn’t like you to gather wood there, and says only along that road may you pick up dead wood.  Jeremiah is certain there is a rule against everything up here.  :)  He says he doesn’t mind the rules that consider other people or legitimately protect an environment.  He just doesn’t like the ones that are for the idiots that spoil it for the rest of us.  

We were high-tailing it back to Kalispell to make it to the health food store before they closed when we blew the right rear tire.  Joshua read instructions from the owner’s manual, I got car stuff out of the way and winched the flat tire back up into the bay, and Jeremiah did all the work.  We were back on the road in about 15 minutes.  Jeremiah did mention that it was strange that we’d had trouble with both right tires and that maybe he should quit using the side of the road so much.  He said that.  I didn’t.  :)

We walked into Natural Grocers at 7:50.  We would have been checked out at 8, except Mom got sidelined by some pretty headbands. Then to Walmart.  Checked out twice because I forgot ice and to price bacon.  Then I got scared because Jeremiah started talking about hiding up in the mountains at Bowman Lake for several days.  I’d grocery shopped based on Mom’s anxiousness to not be driving around on the spare tire for more than a day or two.  Once we got that sorted out, we got gas and went back to Apgar.  

I made some boxed macaroni and cheese and celery.  We ate at 11:15pm.  High time for bed time!

3,026 miles in.