Farley Visits the Little Blackfoot River

I wanted to go camping even though our weekend plans fell apart.  So we headed out yesterday afternoon to the Little Blackfoot River just outside of Elliston, Montana, for a quick overnight.  We figured we could find a free spot to park Farley along the river and, if not, we'd hit up Kading Campground at the Blackfoot Meadows Trailhead.

We did find a spot, luckily, because Kading Campground has changed tremendously in the four or five years since we last visited.  The vast majority of the trees are gone.  There was only one tent and probably 10 campers and trailers and far, far more four-wheelers and motorcycles.  What was once a peaceful, shady campground is now an ATVers' heaven.

We hiked the 10-mile round-trip to the meadows.  It's a long hike, obviously, but not strenuous.  It took us about two hours to get to the meadow.  I was looking at the backpacking site we went to a few years ago on my very first backpacking overnight when Marc hissed at me, "Kel, come here.  It's a moose!"  I didn't believe him.  Who would expect to see a moose at 4:10 in the afternoon?  But it wasn't one moose, it was two!  A male and a female. We wandered through the meadow to get as close as we could before deciding we didn't like the staredown the male was giving us.

We headed back to camp, and I picked a handful of huckleberries along the way.  Not many were ripe yet. Dinner, a fire and a cocktail, and off to bed, and we came home this morning!

The trail passed through a thistle patch
and butterflies were everywhere.

Those two brown blobs on the right are moose!
If you click on this pic, you can see better,
but still might not know what they are.

Marc's impromptu "end table," containing
my muddled-huckleberry whiskey and Sprite.

Farley at the campsite.

Ten miles makes for one exhausted hounddog.