Three Weeks In Missoula, 1

As readers of this blog will recall, our next stop after Paris/Frankfurt/London/Denver was Missoula, Montana, from which we retired in 2008. Interim update #1,279 will bring you up to date. We were in Missoula three weeks, coping first with the lack of luggage arriving with us, then with the weather, then with going through as much of our stuff as circumstances permitted, then with packing up the U-Haul truck for another cross-country road-trip. When not coping, we did get to see a number of new and old friends and to visit a number of favorite places. We lived in Missoula for 13 years before our retirement travels and still think of it as the best place in which we lived and worked. 

At CDG July 4th, our checked items disappearing into
the checked luggage void, not to be seen again for a few
days...reports were that it spent a couple nights in Frankfurt... 

Yet another rental car to get us here and there and back again

Approaching Missoula, the Hub of Five Valleys

We always visit our old home, five wooded acres on Horseback
Ridge, overlooking the city and the Missions...Blue Pine Lodge we
called it*; as it looked in the early 00s

The "Cow Store," aka Dale's Dairy, closest business establishment
to where we lived, only a couple miles away, up the Bitterroot, across the
(one-lane) McClay bridge and onto the Flats; seriously upscaled and
gentrified now...I hope Dale and Betty Jo have had as good a retirement
as we have

Where we stayed the first couple weeks, down the highway a bit
from our storage unit; in non-gentrified East Missoula

Can't grill in the motel room? No problem...

One day we drove up to Lolo Pass and beyond

In the De Voto Grove of giant cedars

Killed Colt Creek...named by Lewis and Clark...De Voto often
camped here while writing Across the Wide Missouri

Lochsa Lodge, another favorite

"Our" table (in the winter)

Bird city

Our favorite wild and scenic river, the Lochsa

*we also called it Llazy LL Lland and Llama Company, LLC, but that's a whole different story...