I’m in Bonner’s Ferry tonight, just 90 minutes from home, but I think it’s wiser to sleep here tonight than to sleep at home. Wiser, but definitely not as pleasant. I’m staying in a nice old country motel for just $45 a night. It has a new bed, a hot shower and baseboard heat that even works. All it’s lacking is my sweet wife!
I’m having supper in a restaurant made of milled logs. It has a very pleasant atmosphere and the food is equally pleasant. I’m eating the cedar plank salmon. No bones in the salmon but the cedar is leaving splinters in my mouth…
Tomorrow morning I’ll head east to northern Montana and work my way east and south until I tire of all the fun and finally start home again.
Tonight I met a hunter who will have to buy his meat from grocery stores this year. He waited too long in the season and there’s not much left in the mountains. I politely directed his gaze across the street to where a herd of seven deer were grazing in someone’s pasture. He sighed long and with much emotion.
“You don’t happen to have a bow and arrows, do you?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Silencer for your rifle?”
He shook his head again.
“Reckless driving with your Toyota? Perhaps hit an icy patch and go off the road?” I prompted.
He shook his head yet again. “It’s my girlfriend’s truck.” he explained. “She’d be a little upset with the dents.”
Moral of the story: go hunting early in the season.