Salmon Lake State Park, Montana --> South Willow Creek Campground, Beaverhead National Forest Recreation Area, Montana

June 29, 2004

	<-- Have you ever seen a vending machine like this? Put in 4 dollars or 16 quarters and out comes a bundle of firewood! This campground did not have a shower so we washed ourselves by swimming around the lake.
	And then we drove off deeper into Montana. The landscape was really nice - some areas were flat and perfect for farming, others covered in forest, we saw quite many lakes and rivers as well and lots of fishermen.. The smaller roads were mostly empty and every now and then there would be a long empty road stretching out in front of you - a ribbon of highway.
	As opposed to Washington, the cattle is kept on the pasture and not inside. Lots of people have horses, some just a couple, others big herds. <-- We saw a lot of wooden structures like this. They look fascinatingly complicated contraptions and we have no idea whatsoever what they are. This is the post office where we sent a package to Estonia.
	It was in Montana that we crossed the Continental Divide [suur veelahe] first. The pictures of me and two rows under this text are taken just at the Continental Divide. The forest-covered mountains were magnificent. This is where we saw the first snow-covered mountaintops after Mount Rainier.
	After passing through a town called Helena (what a name for a town!) we kept driving toward the east and hoped to see some ghost towns on our way to Bozeman (a small town in Montana where they have a youth hostel). The clouds started gathering above us and it started raining. We passed the roads to two ghost towns without even trying to go to them.
	Finally it cleared up and we turned on a smaller road towards a ghost town. The scenery was beautiful. As the evening was nearing all kinds of animals came out. We saw antelope (other common name for American antelope is pronghorn), elk and deer.
	The ghost town turned out to be a disappointment - there were some old abandoned buildings and around them were new inhabited ones; it was not a true abandoned town.
	We turned off onto an even smaller road, this time gravel, and followed it to a campground. This was one of the nicest campgrounds this far and the first one where we made a fire. Since we foraged for the wood and it had rained very recently it took a lot of effort to get it going. After a lot of matches and quite a bit of paper it finally started! It was also the first place where we got asked for weed. Since we have a Volkswagen people assumed that we have weed to share..