So far camping is working out pretty well.  There is the possible exception of sleeping though.  We’re all still getting used to sleeping with 4 people and a dog in a tent when the kids have only ever really known having lots of space in quiet rooms for an extended period of time to sleep. I sleep pretty well anywhere, and Geneveve seems to have picked that up from me for the most part except the first night was so exciting and it stays light so late that she didn’t go to bed early.  However, Xena is adapting a lot more slowly, costing Kim more sleep than anyone.  Xena’s been waking up screaming every couple hours and has to sleep on top of Kim to keep her quiet for any period of time.  However, the 3rd night Xena slept without any screaming so that I actually woke up at 4 AM wondering why I hadn’t been awakened yet.

Aside from sleep,  everything else is going great.   We’re camping at Seeley Lake for 3 nights.  There’s a beautiful beach the kids and dog can play at, our neighbors have a 5 year old and an almost 3 year old that Genevieve loves playing with, there’s firewood nearby we can forage for campfires,

and some great hiking.  We attempted to camp at Holland Lake a little farther north on highway 83, but it was full.  Someone had taken the last open site a few minutes before we got there.  We were a bit worried that everything was going to be full on a Thursday night.  Fortunately there’s a ton of campgrounds and lakes all up and down highway 83.  It seems like it’s hard to go wrong finding a beautiful place to camp around here.

Overall it was a lot cooler than it’s been the rest of the summer (70s F instead of 80 or 90 F), so one morning we woke up and decided it wasn’t a beach day and we should do a hike.  We probably wouldn’t have attempted the hike we chose, Morrell Falls, if we’d read the mileage correctly which listed it at 3 miles,

because that was just the one way mileage.  It ended up being over 7 miles according to the GPS on my phone, which is by far the longest we’ve gone with the kids up to this point.  Geneveve didn’t hike the whole way, but she probably did 5 miles on her own.  Xena needed a lot of carrying since she hikes pretty slowly and slept almost the whole way back.  The hike itself wasn’t anything spectacular, but the lake and the waterfall at the end were.

And hopefully no campsite will be complete without a beach for the girls to swim (splash mostly) and for Ubu to bite waves.  It was barely warm enough to do it these last few days, but we made the most of it.  Even the locals say it’s been unusually cool for August, especially compared to the previous month.

We’re leaving camp today to head toward Missoula.  Depending on how we’re feeling when we get there we’ll either head farther south and setup camp again, or find a hotel for the night to get cleaned up and sleep in a bed.  We don’t have a certain number of miles or a destination we have to reach anytime soon, but at some point we might have to assess that to make sure we’re going to reach Mexico in time.  For now, though, it’s early enough in the trip there’s no need to stress over that.