Seeley Lake - Ovando
Time Traveled: 5 hrs
Distance: 38.59 miles
Food Eaten: Coffee w/sugar, veggie omelet (gross), hashbrowns, toast, Probar, Whole Food Country Square, pistachios, dates, macadamias, trail mix, huckleberries, granola, tuna w/crackers, tomato soup, brown rice
Today started off easy, but ended up lasting forever. First off, we tried to take a short cut, but the road we were looking for didn't exist. We ended up spending over an hour in the neighborhood foothills of Seeley Lake before we got onto the right path. Thank goodness we had those goodies in the package that we picked up that morning from my mother. The kept us going all day. Thanks Mom!
We stopped in the mountains for huckleberries and some nude yoga sunbathing. That felt so very nice to just stop and relax for a moment. However, I was still very sore by the time we finally reached Ovando.
A ranger tracked our path from the mountains and met us there in the middle of town. He told us to camp on one side of the road and after he left, we met an organic farmer who was on his way to the weekly Volunteer Fire Dept meeting. He informed us that we should camp across the street on the lawn of the museum where there is an outhouse.
So we moved over there, ate dinner, and then Skip showed up. He sure is one strange character. He just kind of stood there looking at us and we'd try to think of something to ask him just to make conversation. Soon enough, we were learning more than we ever wanted to know about this bespectacled man with rubber boots and wild, gray hair. Things like how he was turning 50 in November and how he does odd jobs for everyone around town. How he lives here because of his family and that its been early 18 years in this town with its human population of 50 and its dog population of over 100.
Skip sticks around for at least a few hours as he lives right across the street, and he tells us all about life in Ovando. He shows us where the water is and finally, when the sun is down and the sky is threatening rain he leaves us and we retreat thankfully into the tent.
I have a hard time falling asleep at first because I was getting crazy ideas that "not quite right" Skip was going to kill us in our sleep. As I lay there waiting for my eyes to get heavy, I could hear the clumping of Skip's rubber boots on the street. Or course, we slept well and in the morning we couldn't wait to get out of town.
