Day 40 Most Beautiful Campsite (LeAnn)

Today I biked back into West Yellowstone for a few more supplies. An old man working at the local bike shop was really helpful and taught me all about spokes. He used to build over a thousand bicycle wheels every summer and knew the ins and outs of every detail. I stopped at a farmers stand on the way back "home" and bought a pint of raspberries. I enjoy having "home" be just wherever we feel like spending some time in the woods. It doesn't have to be anything permanent, just a place to rest for a while.

We continued biking toward Ennis. After making our way around Hebgen Lake, we came across an area that had felt the strongest earthquake recorded in Montana. We passed a landmark sign saying "Destruction highway" and were too curious to pass it up. After a beautiful stroll on a winding old sidewalk covered on both sides with wildflowers, I came to the river where pieces from an old house were still floating in the water. The resort owner had lived in the house until the historic earthquake of 1959 had rumbled through and destroyed the campground, houses, and highway in the area.

We decided it was the perfect spot for dinner and I made my version of pad thai while out on the trail. After dinner, we biked a few more miles to a little dirt road in the middle of nowhere called Beaver Creek road. Thats where we found one of my favorite spots so far. It looked like one of those picturesque landscapes of Montana that you see in documentaries or in great wild nature paintings hung on office walls. On one side, a river ran through a steep ravine and up from the river grew a great mountain covered in wild Montana grasses and flowers. On our side of the river, there was an open patch of sedges and Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Montana's wild version of the sunflower, the soft big leaves of this plant are also my choice substitute for toilet paper). We set up camp and Ben did his best to hang a bear bag with our obnoxiously heavy, twenty something pound bag of food. I eventually convinced him to just climb the tree himself, (I actually just wanted to see if he could do it) and I tossed the bag up to him.