SATURDAY 4 JULY, LOLO, MONTANA

SATURDAY;  HAPPY 4TH OF JULY EVERYBODY.

It's going to be another beautiful day.  We first planned on doing that mountain bike ride, but now I'm kind of afraid to leave Bella.  
Normally when we arrive at a campsite we put our little fence up.  We have a doggy door and Bella can go in and out of the rig as she pleases.  She generally just stays wherever we are and when we aren't here she stays inside.  But, she has the option of sticking her head out to see what's going on or even go out on the steps.  But here, they told us we weren't allowed to have the fence and made us take it down.  That means if we left we would have to have her locked inside.  With today being the 4th I'm not sure what people around here are going to do.  I really don't want her locked inside without us if people are going to be firing off fireworks.  So, I think we will go for a hike instead.
We finally left about 11am. We headed out hwy 12 in the jeep and turned of onto Elk Meadows Road.  IT was a gravel/dirt road.  We followed it for about 11 miles and then came to the Skookum Ridge trail head. we hiked up to Skookum Butte which is 2.6 miles.  It says it is a moderately trafficked out and back trail located near Florence, Montana.  It features beautiful wild flowers and is rated as moderate (it lied, it was hard).  The trail is primarily used for hiking, walking, nature trips and bird watching.  It is a 918ft elevation gain.  

When we got out of the jeep we were immediately attacked by mosquitos.  Such a drag. I bought 2 bottles of bug spray yesterday and we didn’t have either one of them with us.  We decided it was best just to move out.  The trail started out pretty mellow.


But it quickly turned into single track and started getting rockier.

Pretty soon we were climbing. There were 3 cars at the trail head and we quickly caught up To one pair of gals.  One of them was talking so loud we heard her from quite a distance. They were on their way down as we were going up.  I made the comment that they sure were loud and Rob said that’s good, they’re scaring the bears away.  We were supposed to bring bear bells and spray but we for got them......along with the bug spray.
We came upon a family two adults and two young teens plus Dad was carrying one on his back.  They let us go past them.  I really wanted to stop and rest, but we were hiking mostly along a stream and in the shade and I was afraid of getting eaten alive if I stopped. I could barely stop long enough for a drink of water.  We finally saw the butte with the lookout shack on the top of it.  Now we have to scramble up the rocks.

We made it 

and Oh My God the view was amazing

We enjoyed the views and drank some water, 

but couldn’t stay to long because the mosquitos and flies were still biting. So we headed down. We encountered the family and chatted with them for a minute or two. They are from Missoula. We asked them if they had bug spray and bless them, they did and they shared. 
As we started down Rob asked if I wanted to go to the snow. Do I have to go up hill to get to it? No!  Do I have to go up hill to get back?  No!  Ok then! There was actually quite a bit of it.

The trip down did not take as long as the trip up, and I was able to enjoy the views better.

Especially the wildflowers.  There were a couple different colors of wild phlox and some pretty purple ground cover.  Also there was the bitterroot flowers.  It was lovely.

 We made it back to the Jeep and it really was not to soon.  My knees were really starting to bother me.  Down hill is the worse.  We headed out immediately.
There was a bad forest fire in this area about three years ago and it is really sad looking.  We ran into some guys who were up here to chop some of these dead trees up into fire wood.

Once we hit the highway agin we went past the pretty meadows and all the horse ranches again.  So very pretty out here.

We stopped in at Traveler’s Rest Park, but we didn’t have the right money for parking so we didn’t stay.  We’ll come back tomorrow or Monday. 
We went on into Lolo and went to the grocery store.  While there we picked up a little snack to bring back to camp.
After lunch Rob went to hit some golf balls and I stayed at camp.
I sat outside with Bella enjoying the outdoors.  Someone set off some fire crackers and that sent Bella dashing back into the rig.
Rob got back and we Bar B Qu’d.  We will see what the evening has in store as far as 4th of July Fireworks.
We hope everyone had a safe, healthy 4th and got to spend some time with loved ones.