Day 11: Yaak to Eureka, MT

Yaak River Lodge turned out to be a nice place to stay for the night. From there we would spend the next 4 hours climbing 30 miles to the top of Dodge Summit several thousand feet higher than Yaak. We would coast down to Koocanusa lake and then find our way back to our starting point in Eureka for the end of our trip. We had originally planned to go down to Jennings, spend the night, and then head up to Eureka. However when we saw the route through the northern country we decided to cut the trip a day short so we could spend more time with our daughter’s family on the way home..

We never actually met the caretaker but the next morning we met the owner. He now lives in the Tri-City area of Washington and drives back and forth. Apparently with the caretaker that he’s hired he’ll be driving back and forth a lot more than he expected.

We were glad he came because he was a good cook. When we walked into the kitchen he listed off about 7 things on the menu and I said that would be fine. He actually fed us all of them. We had a stack of eggs, bacon, sausage, fried potatoes, and toast with his homemade Huckleberry Jam. Perfect start to what would be a relatively long day.

Gloria thought she saw Bigfoot on our way back into Yaak. It’s possible but it might also have been someone still trying to find their way home from the bar last night. While many people from outside of Montana have second homes in Montana, natives of Montana also have second homes but it’s the bar.

The first 20 miles was generally easy with not much climbing. We were going up stream but that made for pleasant scenery along the road. What was especially nice was having a paved bike path for about 40 miles. There were a handful of cars but in a four-hour time, you could just about count all of them on both hands.

One of the many small side dirt roads along our path was the Boyd Cemetery. This was one of the strangest and nicest I’d ever seen. There were multiple gravestone scattered through these trees with small wood chip paths between them. The strange thing is that there’s not a town for many miles and this road is not even passible in twinter. Maybe they just lay dead bodies on the snow until spring thaw.

At 32 miles we finally arrived at the top of the pass. We had been rained on while climbing about 3,000 vertical feet so we didn’t stay long  but it was beautiful as we could see out over the trees.

Down was definitely easier than up and we quickly covered about 12 miles. We found a picnic site not far from Lake koocanusa and enjoyed our last lunch in the woods. Miraculously, Gumby was still with us.

I never like to backtrack but there was only one way across the lake at this point and that was the bridge we crossed at the beginning of our trip.

A few miles up the road on the east side of the koocanusa lake and we were back on the rail trail. Rail trail would take us a few more miles along the tobacco River into Eureka.

We had one last wilderness experience but couldn’t quite captured on camera. As we came up on this corner there was a bald eagle sitting on a branch overlooking the river. Of course it flew off just before I could snap a picture.

Eventually we climb the hill back to the Reynolds home and our car. He still had hundreds of miles to go but this time we would both enjoy a power assist with our Subaru. Thanks to Tim Powell Gumby was able to finish the ride. We likely won’t win any parenting Awards for keeping in throughout the trail and the backup but now maybe our kids won’t be quite as afraid to leave their kids with us.