The Mountains Made me Do It

Theodore Roosevelt National Park is on the west edge of North Dakota, so I quickly found myself in Montana.  Now I think of Montana as being in the Rocky Mountains, but like Colorado, there is a LARGE part of the state that is east of the mountains, and very flat.    I'd been away from the mountains since I left Colorado Springs, more than 2 weeks ago, and I was starting to really miss them.   So I drove and drove and drove and drove across Montana until I could see mountains.

And once I could see them I had to keep driving until I was IN them.   This turned into another 11 hour driving day.  

I finally found myself at a Forest Service Campground on the southern edge of Glacier National Park, just about on the Continental Divide.    Now I'm a retired career Forest Service employee, and I love FS campgrounds, but this one was scraping the bottom.   It was RIGHT next to the highway, RIGHT next to a rest area,  RIGHT next to the railroad tracks, full of mosquitoes, had ONE, 1-hole, outhouse, the water only worked at ONE spigot and the water was BROWN and full of sediment, though the campground host assured me it had been tested and was free of bacteria (I used it to wash my hair only).   There were only two other campsites occupied, I saw one young boy who appeared suddenly when I was getting water.    I never saw any sign of life at the occupied site next to mine.     In the morning I went to use the one outhouse and it was occupied by someone who just grunted at me when I tried to open the door.    I hooked up my trailer, used the outhouse at the rest area near by, and hit the road.   The whole experience was kind of surreal.

A short drive and I arrived at the West Entrance to Glacier National Park.   I found a camp spot at Fish Creek Campground, in the loop that doesn't allow generators.   As I was setting up camp I realized that I was feeling pretty grumpy.  This was NOT normal, and I decided there were a few factors that contributed to that feeling.   2 of the last 3 days, I'd driven for 11 hours (not a good thing), it had been a week since I'd had a shower.  I was about out of fresh food and I'd been away from mountains for WAY too long.     It turns out there was a shower in one of the campground loops, and the woman who assigned me my campsite told me that it was closed for cleaning between 11 and 2.  And you sometimes didn't get hot water, but at 2, it should be good.

So I headed into town to do some grocery shopping, came back and went for a hike and got back to my campsite just in time to head over to the showers right at 2pm.   After cleaning up in a lovely HOT shower, hiking in the mountains, eating some fresh salad and relaxing in camp, my attitude was drastically changed!