Eureka, Dickey Lake, and Whitefish

We stopped 7 miles short of Eureka, in the tiny town of Rexford. Highway 37 along Lake Koocanusa proved to be quite a challenge. Possibly the inspiration for the roller coaster. We started at the bottom of the river, climbed up to the top of the dam, looked down and thought, "wow that was quite a climb." That was followed by us going up a good 600 feet more, looking down on the reservoir, and thinking, "wow, what a beautiful view of that lake from way up here!" The rest of the day consisted of descending and climbing and descending and climbing repeatedly until we just gave up at the first available campsite. Which was, fittingly, rubbish.

"Mariner's Haven" allowed us the privilege of pitching our tent on their grounds, away from all the RV's in the isolated area beyond the hill in what they call the "Tent Meadow." We gave it a similar yet slightly different moniker, "The flesh eating fire ant and beehive pit."

We were, however, kindly greeted by a deer rummaging through the nearest garbage. With ease. In bear country.

We did not sleep like babies.

The next day, we had plans of getting all the way to Whitefish, over 100km away, but due to a late start and an awesome roadside restaurant serving pastrami burgers for $6 (a fully loaded burger with 4oz pastrami thrown on for good measure) we called it a day at the beautiful Dickey Lake, where we de facto showered in the warm-ish lake and also allowed for Matt, a guy who had been following our blogs and trailing us by half a day, to catch up to us.

We slept much better that night.

The road from Dickey Lake to Whitefish was somewhat treacherous, with minimal shoulders and trucks not too interested in giving us more than about 6 inches of space, but we somehow managed to absolutely fly, staying well above the 30km/h mark 90% of the day. We hit some horrid hills and construction approaching town, but that was really the only setback.

We plan on relaxing in Whitefish and Columbia Falls for the next day and a half, as the scenery promises to become desolate and boring for the next couple of weeks with the prairies looming.

And there's that little matter of Marias Pass. We've been ignoring it but at 5236', it is going to be somewhat of a challenge.