WestwardGo!

So long Idaho, you've been great! Our first stop in Montana was at Lolo hot springs (a soak and a shower sounded too good to miss) where "NUDITY OF ANY KIND IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED (except Wed and Sun 9-12)", highly amusing! After a quick long stop in a rather excellent grocery store in Missoula we decided to head on up towards Seeley lake near Glacier national Park. On the way we got a bit distracted and ended up halfway up a mountain trying to find a ghost town, the view down into the valley and spotting of a snowshoe hare made the lack of a non-flooded campsite worthwhile. The ghost town of Garnet was, like most ghost towns, settled by miners during the gold rush era. This town was unique in that it was very family friendly so lacked the vices of other towns. The mine works were all still there (complete with hazardous shafts!) and the town is relatively complete and undamaged by wild fire. You can even rent some of the cabins in the winter! 

The next day (June 10th in case you were wondering) dawned sunny yet chilly. Mike braved a wash in the river and then we began our day of unexpected things. First was the blizzard we got caught in (Snow! In June!) Then, as we were driving along we spotted what looked like smoke by the roadside, this turned out to be steam from a small hot spring trickling down the slope and into the river, it was much too hot and shallow to bathe in though. Next up was blindly following signs to a ghost town, on the way we kept seeing deep emerald pools and huge scalloped mounds of river rocks. A huge steampunk style dredging machine loomed through the snow and we decided to take a tour. This volunteer led museum inside the only complete dredging machine left in the USA took us through the history of gold mining in the area. Despite the cutting edge technology of the 1930's experts estimate that 60% of the total gold was left in the piles of waste. Unfortunately for us the m