Here it be. We woke up in Missoula and it was nice and cold. My favorite kind of mornings. Only thing that got me rolling was the smell of coffee somewhere within the RV. Not quite fair, wanted to sleep in more, but now I had to rise for the goods. This was the day we planned to hit the Rattlesnake NRA (Not Rifle related). We drove about 5 miles north of town and hit the trailhead. This was some nice trails, it was wooded and gradually rising. The gradual turned into accelerated climbing until I was hiking and biking and wheezing. It was an awesome trail, but tough. Then Sandra thought she heard a bear...so we turned around; which was good with me. We did about 1700ft elevation climb in less than two hours, so yeah, I'm kinda done.
This is also the day we pushed into Idaho. We left Missoula and headed due south till we hit the boarder. Not without repeating the Bitterroot climb and descend. This time we were waaaay more cautious on the down, and took our time coming off the pass. We Found that Idaho actually was one of the most scenic parts of the trip. We drove along the bitterroot and salmon river till we hit a campground north of Challis. We camped along the river, mad some hotdogs and packed it all up into the RV once we were done. We kept an eye on the sky, as it appeared that we were going to get a big storm. When it hit, we had just finished dinner and packed in all the outdoor gear. It was quite a show, directory over us. The thunder shook the RV a bit, and the downpour was torrential. That was OK, as we still had a bottle of wine and no worries of waking up in a puddle of water. Tomorrow, we will be home.