Driving through Ashland

Earth Date: 2014 July 18th
Location: Idaho and Montana

Another long day of driving today. Our first stop was at a small diner in Moscow, Idaho. [Morgan cannot see Russia from his house, but he can almost see Moscow.] I looked for postcards that read From Moscow with Love, but much to my disappointment I could not find anything. However, we were treated to a Red Dawn, and a red sky in the morning, and afternoon,.....

We were aware of the fires in central Washington, however we were not aware of the fires in Oregon (many lighting strikes), Idaho, and Canada. The smoke reached all the way across to Helena, Montana. Pictures of the smoke cover can be found here.

The red sky in Moscow, Idaho

Other than the odd color of the sky, the drive was uneventful. Half an hour from our final destination, we stopped at the small town of Columbia Falls, Montana for dinner.

It was harder than we expected to find places we could all agree on. I was certainly surprised by the variety of the eateries. The first thing we vetoed as a group were the large commercial chains: the Pizza Hut, the Dairy Queen, and the Burger King. Next we tried some of the local establishments downtown, with the boarded up windows and the extras for Sons of Anarchy inside. As we made our way around these fine establishments (and crossing them off one-by-one) we noted an officer making the same rounds.

After wandering through the town we finally settled on one of two eating establishments that seemed small and local, without being future or past set pieces on Cops. It seems that everyone else in town had the same idea, so it was a bit of a wait. All in all, our "detour to grab a quick bite to eat" swallowed up about 2 hours of our time.

It was dark by the time we set up camp at Fishing Creek Campground (by lake McDonald), so we would have to wait until the next day to see how bad the ash was.