Trout Creek, Montana

We are now back west of the continental divide, in northwest Montana along the Clark Fork River in Trout Creek. Lots of green here, lots of tall trees and welcome shade. No TV; Bud is coping.

The river here is beautiful and boating is popular. We are along the Noxon reservoir.

The reservoir is from a hydroelectric dam about 12 miles downstream…

along the Noxon rapids.

We stopped there yesterday as well as at the park in the village of Noxon, which sits at the downstream end of the rapids. You get to the village over this one lane bridge which crosses the Clark Fork from MT 200.

We had driven northwest to Clark Fork, Idaho, where we found a great disc golf course. It was built as a nine hole par three golf course. They added two baskets and one tee pad to every fairway to create an 18 hole disc golf course. It was pretty nice. It was being mowed by a volunteer who stopped to talk to us. He said the original golf course was made in this chunk of woods because the principal of the school wanted something other than the woods where his students would hide out, no doubt during classes. It was all built and maintained by donations and was free. Matey got to be off-leash and he loved it, too.

Today we drove 20 miles in the other direction, back upstream to Thompson Falls. Matey and I took a walk in Thompson Falls State Park.

It was a short trail but very pretty. It went through some big ponderosa pines. Too bad you can’t take an impression of smells, because the sun was shining on the bark of those trees and the whole area smelled like vanilla!

Then we went back to River Bend Golf Course and waited for Bud to finish his nine holes on what is one of the prettiest courses I’ve ever seen. Here he’s putting out on the ninth green.

We took the back road home, Blue Slide Road. (Love that name, wonder how it came to be.) It was a bit narrow and in some places very twisty, but gave us great views of the river.

I’m liking this western side of the Rockies. (By the way, the discolored parts of the water in this photo are where it’s shallow and the bottom shows. The whole river is very clear.)