Day One - Bozeman to Salmon Lake

I get pretty excited before big trips.  Excited enough that I have a hard time sleeping, and my paranoia gets the better of me.  The night before we we’re set to leave, I spent an hour carefully selecting tools to bring along, noting which ones could double as levers and drifts in the event that I needed to change a wheel bearing or rebuild a transmission on the side of the road.  Of course, you never end up needing the tools you bring.

Our original plan was to leave early Saturday morning.  I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to sleep much Friday night, and it would probably be best to just get going after work on Friday and sleep off the excitement in a tent.  I “pulled the plug” on work around 3:00, and when Kait came back from work around 4:30, the BMW was packed and ready to roll.  A few quick checks and some high-fives, and we rolled out of our driveway.

A quick 150 miles later and we found ourselves at the Salmon Creek campground just south of Seely Lake.  Unfortunately all the regular campsites we’re taken, and all the bigger RV spots we’re reserved.  I don’t believe in “reserving” campsites.  The concept of camping to me is ease and simplicity.  Making reservations seems like it defeats the purpose.  I suppose if your looking for a place to park your 50 foot land yacht, it probably makes sense.

We asked the park ranger about just pitching our small camp on some flat patch somewhere and he kindly found us a reserved spot that would be open until 1:00pm the next day.  Jackpot.

Some boil-in-a-bag Pad Thai and hostess pies and we crashed rather quickly in our tent and slept like logs.  This was our last night in the United States for some time.  Tomorrow we’d be sleeping in Alberta.