Friday, July 5, 2013 (White Sulphur Springs, MT)

Wow, were we surprised last night.  White Sulphur Springs firework display was amazing, especially when you consider the town is about 900 residents.  The fireworks display went on and on and on and on and the best part was that we could view it from the comfort of our 5er back windows.   Sometimes it was hard to tell which was the town fireworks display vs. the residents, there were fireworks going up in the air from every direction and for a good solid hour.  Montana is different in that the fireworks that fly in the air are not illegal.  We stopped at the one stand they had here in town and Rich took a look, but wasn't sure if we could set them off in our RV park, so we didn't buy any this year.  We had fireworks going off until well after midnight but then it got quiet so we could sleep. 

This morning after breakfast, Gracie and I went for a long walk behind our RV park, we saw a big hawk and a deer.  It was much cooler today than it has been in the past couple of days which was a nice change.

After our walk, we headed into Helena which is 73 miles away, a little over an hour since the speed limit in Montana is 70 mph.  We had to make a Walmart run to pick up a prescription and some other various sundry items.  Along the way, we came across this vibrant yellow field, I know I posted a similar picture a while back but it was not near as vibrant as the fields are now - I've got to find someone who knows what this stuff is. 

We checked out the local visitors center, but didn't really find any good information that we didn't already know about, so we headed home.  We decided to check out the Canyon Ferry Lake as there are quite a few campgrounds located around this big lake.  This is a picture taken from the dam as we drove across the top end of the lake.

Looking back at the dam

View of Canyon Ferry Lake - north end

We found one campground that we could fit the 5er in, it was a BLM campground called Court Sherrif Campground.  It was packed full of people camping and enjoying the sunshine and water.  There were maybe two vacant sites left, but they were very small.  I think most people were camped in some kind of RV with a couple tents thrown in here and there which is probably why they were left vacant.  This may be an option when we leave White Sulphur Springs, we still haven't decided which direction we will head when we leave here on Monday.

We checked out a couple other campgrounds but they were down dusty and washboard gravel roads and not something we would consider taking the 5er down.  There are a couple on the other side of the lake that we could see from the highway when driving to Helena that also looked pretty nice. 

As I'm sitting here, the sky is dark and it is starting to rain and I hear thunder in the distance.  Looks like we are going to get a thunderstorm after all, they had been forecasting one for this afternoon.  Maybe the rain will wash some of the dust off our pickup and some of the grass pollen out of the air.  We saw a lot of hay fields being cut today on our drive, this rain will disappoint some of the ranchers I'm sure.   

Thunderstorm clouds

rainbow at the end of the storm