July 5, 2013
Day 1: Missoula, Montana to Wallace, Idaho
Amazingly, the children waited until 7:30 to declare that the day had begun. We were able to load the van and be away quite speedily.
Since we are dealing with still quite small kids, we were sure to stop for a rest fairly soon. The rest stop featured volunteers with chocolate chip cookies, so it was a great choice. We also encountered our first wildlife, ground squirrels. A great time for the kids to break out their cameras.
The gas station/gift shop at St. Regis was also a good stop - kind of nostalgic. When we are on our own we always stop here, and always look at the toys and doodads, saying Öh, Avi and Violet would likee this" and "Oh, Avi and Violet would like that". Now, for the first time the real Avi and Violet were there to give their own assessment.
Before long we arrived at the now disappeared town of Taft, which is the start of the short road to the Hiawatha trail head. Short as this road is, it defeated us in 2011 as we tried to ascend it in an SUV - too much snow then, in May. So it was a bit triumphantly that we arrived at the trailhead and finally got to see what it was all about. One thing that it was about, as expected for the July 4 weekend, was about 200 other families, triumphant or otherwise, jamming up all available parking. That's ok, though, we are super tolerant when it comes to other cyclists.
This was just a looksee, and we descended into the historic town of Wallace in the van. Wallace is a miracle town - with evocative old buildings making up the downtown and recalling the silver mining heyday. The miracle is that all this was saved from the Interstate road builders, by an ugly but compromise overpass over the whole thing.
The only camping in town is the Depot RV Park. This features, naturally enough, piles of RVs. Yet the staff was friendly and helpful, and our spot did have grass for the tents. What was lacking, though, was a table. In Europe this is standard, but in the US it is not really acceptable. Basically, it's who cares, when your RV has lots of table space plus probably a recreation room and sauna!
Avi and Violet approached the site with kid-like enthusiasm. They climbed the rocks, picked the flowers, learned how to punch in the code for the washroom door, crossed the bridge over the stream, and explored the adjacent brew pub (whiile ordering no brew!)
When Laurie joined us, there was a great mother and child reunion, followed by a trek into Wallace to find (of course) the bakery, plus some hot dogs. The kids chose this as a good time to throw some tantrums, demand to be carried, and squabble over who would be carried by which adult. We did eventually drag them back to camp and into a tent for some quiet recovery. Before long, a campfire with hot dogs and marshmallows should complete their rehabilitationţ
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