Along Canyon Ferry Lake

Just a quick note to let you know where we are; nothing much has been going on to tell you about (which can be a good thing). We’re back near Townsend, Montana, to visit again with my old friend Tom, who has very generously accepted a load of packages delivered for us.

A few other factors have come together to put us here: the heat wave seems to be over, so we don’t have to camp up in the mountains anymore and can go down by the water, and it’s Labor Day weekend, so we have to find somewhere remote early in the week and stay there for the duration of the camping mobs. Near Townsend has hit the spot for all these factors.

Canyon Ferry Lake is a reservoir where the Missouri River has been dammed near Helena. It’s long and calm, with mountains in the distance every way you look. The land around the lake is BLM land, and there are pull-offs all along the lake where tons of people are camping for free; they look like this:

And this:

We drove right past them, though, and found a spot that, from the road, looks we’re all tucked away like this:

From the campsite, though, we have a direct view of the lake:

And sitting out away from all the bugs (there are a lot of bugs), looks like this (that’s my book on my knee):

So far we’ve done a lot of sitting. It’s very quiet, and very beautiful. Banjo and I saw pronghorn antelope on our morning walk today, and I got my kayak into the water later. I expect more campers to show up over the holiday weekend, plus motorboats on the water, but until then, all is quiet.

The only excitement is that the zipper on our tent finally, entirely, completely broke. Which is bad timing, seeing as how this is about the buggiest place we’ve stayed in quite a while. Right now, our batik from Costa Rica is doing a passable (and colorful) job of blocking the insects from coming in the tent.

We have a new board game that I bought in Missoula, and we’ve taken several evenings to unbox it, read some of the instructions, and try to wrap our heads around it. When we do give it a try, that batik is going to come in handy for long nights with the lights on in the tent and the bugs beating themselves against the netting. That sound is a lot like rain, oddly. Should make for an interesting sound track to our game. I’ll keep you posted.