Montana continued...

I'll try to keep the rest of the Montana stories/photos to a minimum, since I've already shown a lot of what we did on vacation. But there are still so many great photos to see!

One morning we decided to take rented ATVs up to the Benbow mine. It was a 4000' climb on a 4-wheeler, and the view was absolutely amazing. Gunnar stayed with Nana and Papa that day, since he's still too little for ATVing. 1/3 of the way up was the old Benbow Mill, where they processed the chrome from the mine. It's now just the remaining concrete foundations and beams, but looked really cool in the middle of the wilderness.

Here's the actual mine - almost at the top, and a photo of one of the mine shafts that was filled in when the mine closed.

We finally got to the top of the Grassy Knob, which is just above the tree-line. We could see over the entire valley. Here's a photo of Justin at the top.The trail down was great, but riding the ATV down the hill was so painful. The rocks didn't hurt so much on the way up the hill, but on the way down, we could feel each and every jagged little rock. About halfway through I thought maybe I would just walk down - or cry. Anyway, we made it, and if I ever go back up there, I'll definitely be coming back down the same way we went up.

The best time were mornings in Montana. It was nice and cool, and very sunny every morning. We all got up and had coffee and breakfast in the kitchen, and most mornings we had coffee out on the deck. Here's a photo of Gunnar and Daddy having coffee on the deck one morning.

We had pizza on the deck with Ray and Janet at the rock shop by the creek. It was a nice cool evening, and Gunnar had fun, but fell asleep right before dessert.

Before we knew it, it was time to come back to Oregon. Here we are on the morning we headed back. We got some good shots of the three of us, and Gunnar with Nana and Papa.

That's the end of the Montana photos... sort of. There were so many more, but I'll be using many of them to make Gunnar a laminated album for Gunnar to play with and remember his trip.