Drive to Helena, Montana

 Day 57: July 19, 2021

Heading eastward, we move into Mountain Time again

Today’s post is a short one; we “lost” an hour driving from Coeur d’Alene to Helena and while the scenery was generally pretty, it was turned into a 40-50 year old antique postcard because of the ambient smoke in the air for the entire drive. And, it may have been somewhat overcast as well, because after we stopped for lunch just outside of Missoula, we saw a few scattered raindrops! The first that we’ve seen since the end of week one when we were leaving Illinois. It didn’t last. Too bad that some of that rain that’s been the “July Plague” back home couldn’t be transferred out here!

Besides the smoke, we were viewing pine trees, and lots of rocks. At some point, a river joined us along the side of I-90 and if we weren’t on a freeway, I’d have wanted to take a photo of the shallow water running over rounded river rocks. There was a uniformity in size of the rocks, all soft round edges, but no uniformity of color. It was pretty. (I will keep it all “right up here”…)

PM Truedeau announced today that the Canadian Border would open to vaccinated Americans on August 9. Kind of an odd date, given they’ve been going from the 21st to the 21st of the month. Too late for us, as we will be home by the 7th of August, but maybe we can go up sometime in the fall? Something to ponder…

I find that the scenes that are jaw-droppingly impressive in real life, are just so-so through a windshield and on a flat 2-D screen. I will always love the blue layers of mountains!

Smoky—we could smell the smoke in the air too

The Big Belt Mountains and the Helena Valley

Tomorrow we explore downtown Helena. Stay tuned!