Tuesday: Idaho and Montana

Today we said goodbye to Beth and drove into Idaho from Lewiston along Hwy 12 through the Nez Perce Reservation, then along the Lochsa River toward the Montana border. We fell in love with Idaho; there's no way our photos will do it justice.

The Lochsa is part of the "Wild Scenic River Corridor" and we saw rafters bumping along the rapids. There were also several pedestrian bridges spanning the river. We pulled over a few times just to enjoy the river sounds minus people and car noise.

We expected to make better time to Bozeman, MT; here's the main reason it took us 10 hours to reach Bozeman:

The weather was great - 70s the whole way. It made the waiting periods a bit less frustrating.

It was Burger Day on the road, in spite of good intentions to eat healthy. In tiny Drummond, MT we succumbed to a little old shack sporting this sign:

Approaching Butte, MT we were so excited to see the Continental Divide! John has crossed it many times but I'd never seen it before so it was a big thrill. Even better, we spotted Our Lady of the Rockies, a 90' tall statue of the Virgin Mary placed atop the Divide. Apparently it is meant to be a non-denominational tribute to motherhood. It took 6 years to build and was airlifted into place in 1985. The road to the statue is not open to the public, but a tour bus will take you up there and you can go inside the statue.

You may notice some technical glitches on the blog - bear with us, we're still trying to get it all figured out. Some of you who already blog know what we're just finding out -- it's more time-consuming than you think it will be!

Time to snore - tomorrow we head for South Dakota.