Day 20

Day 20 - Saturday July 11th, 2009

Spring Hill Campground, Deerlodge National Forest, MT to Buffalo Campground, Caribou-Targhee National Forest, ID

The only real complaint that I had from the Spring Hill Campground off of MT-1, was its proximity to that road. By no means was the road busy but you could still hear the cars and trucks rattle past from the tent. Following our ritual of packing up, we headed to Butte, MT for a WalMart to see if we could get some sort of bug screen. When we arrived we found that all of the screens were larger than tents and I argued against getting one for sake of space in the car and that aside from the one night in eastern WY with the thumb-sized beetles we really haven't needed a screen. With a knowing look, Tara said fine, but made it clear that I would suffer if I was wrong. You will later see that I was wrong and have suffered. Lunch time was approaching as we were paying for our goods and the friendly register jockey reminded us of the Folk Music Festival and all of food from local restaurants that was there. Thinking this could be fun, we set out toward the festival. It turns out every person in Butte was heading there at the same time creating a traffic jam that will likely never be repeated. As we were driving through the city we passed a Pork Chop Johns

and recalled a radio ad that we heard while on the Scary Road for the famous pork chop sandwiches. We gave up on the festival and pulled into Johns. We both ordered the pork chop sandwich, loaded (with mustard, onions and mayo) and deluxe (lettuce, tomatoes, pickles). I added a fried egg to mine. Do I even have to mention how good these were? The only disappointment was that it was like a chicken patty formed from chopped up pork chops and not a full pork chop on the bun.

The plan for the day was to stay at Lake Henrys State Park, ID, but when we arrived we realized that the campground was in the open and about 5 mosquitoes flew into our car as we were talking to the ranger. She suggested a couple of the National Forest Campgrounds

to the south that had trees, highlighting them for us on a map. We headed to her favorite campground, found an open site near the camp host from Texas, and set up for the night. We then headed to Buffalo Run RV Park for a shower. It was the best shower we had all day. We returned to the campground to make dinner and settle in for the night. As the campground was close to the Buffalo River, I was besieged by mosquitoes who magically avoided Tara. A bug screen sure would have been nice.

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