After publishing the “Easy Livin” post and talking about how great it is to camp in a Walmart parking lot two days in a row, I might have been pushing our luck a little bit. No more than 5 mins after I hit the “publish” button, did a legit biker gang pull up right next to our Airstream. I know they were legit because they all had long gotees and real leather vests with no shirts on underneath. There were about 7 of them, talking loudly and smoking their cigarettes right outside.  I don’t say this unnecessarily just to scare my mom, but I’m pretty sure they were planning a robbery of some sort (they were talking about 4 feet away from me after all). I then caught one of them saying, “stay out of jail man, jail sucks.”  Uhhhh yeah, that’s some pretty good advice there Biker Gang Bro. All of our windows were open as it was in the low 80’s before the cool mountain air took over. With that said, I decided it was in my family’s best interest if I closed up in the event that these guys were less than friendly. I can attest that it is a really awkward situation when you are closing your door and then your windows on a group of big dudes that are right outside your home. Thank goodness I happen to be an intimidating guy myself from the rough streets of the D.C. Suburbs!  However, they didn’t seem to mind at all and acted like I wasn’t even there. 10 mins after, they drove off to rob a Smoothie King or do whatever dudes like that do on a Monday night.

Feeling good about surviving our run-in with the Missoula Outlaws, we headed out of town, hitting the Rattlesnake Recreation Area on our way to Flathead Lake. “The Rattlesnake” is a series of trails in the Lolo National Forest. I tried a little Mtn Biking but failed to get on the right trail as there were tons of them. Montana is blessed with an unreal amount of natural areas.  Which brings me to, if Montana was close to any population and didn’t get 1 million inches of snow a winter, everyone would want to live here. The quality of life is just outstanding, but if everyone moved here it would probably just turn into the same big city that everyone moved from. For the time being, we’ll stick to travelling around the state in our trailer like the rest of out of towners.

Leaving the Rattlesnake we made our way to West Shore State Park right on the Flathead Lake. J got us a nice camp spot underneath the trees and just a short walk to the lake. It definitely feels good to be out of a parking lot and back into bear country.

Of note, I’m writing this post from a picnic table just outside Tin E as our kids sleep. You can be sure that as soon as I hit the publish button, I’m gonna run inside and close up shop. If our luck is anything like last night, there is a gang of bears coming this way as my thumbs type away…