Rivers dominate the first few days of this trip.  Leaving Cascade and Long Valley we pick up the Salmon River.  Then it's over the Camas Prairie and down to the Clearwater and up the Lochsa to Lolo Pass.  Fall has begun on the Lochsa.  It's subtle but the patchwork of color and texture has begun - hints of yellow on the cottonwoods, the rust of ferns, an occasional flash of red on the hillside  and the light green in the tamarack that comes just before it turns yellow, contrasted with the dark green of the spruce and cedar that line the river.  The river bottom is lined with ripe blackberry and elderberry, the raw material of jams, pies and wine.  No wonder the NezPerce were so tied to this area. 

Over Lolo Pass into the north end of the Bitterroot Valley, through Missoula we pick up the Blackfoot River to our first nite destination of Salmon Lake State Park.  Continuing the next day on Hwy 200, the Blackfoot R. is alive with color along it's banks.  What a great road!  Hardly anyone on it, wonderful scenery and the Subaru finds it cruising speed of 70mph.  The breakout of the Rockies is abrupt as we head out onto a "Palouse" type of rolling grassland announced by the sign that said "you've entered beef country.  Toward Great falls the land flattens out.  We've hit the plains.  It will be 5 or six weeks before, in snobbish western fashion, we can say we're seeing mountains again.  Humps, mounds and rises will have to do.  Then there is the Missouri R. breaks.  What exactly are the breaks?? It appears to be a crack on  plain containing the Missouri River.  Ft. Benton, MT is our first into to this might river and a cool little town at that.  Then it's along the Milk River at Havre and the Missouri again at Ft Peck Dam and the Little Mo at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in No. Dakota. 

Like so much flotsom, people seem to coalesce, coagulate and gather up into tiny communities on this oceanic plain.  Otherwise, I'd say the population density outside these small towns in easter MT and No Dakota is about the same as Northern Canada (which was about 2 people per square mile when I was up there 29 years ago.  Honestly, ranches are MILES apart out here! (pictures, in order, The Salmon R. Lochsa, Elderberry, between Great Falls and Havre, The Might Missouri at Ft. Benton, MT