I took a couple pictures first thing this morning, but I accidentally deleted them.  They were of a hot air balloon flying among the mountains.  That was the first of several interesting things that happened today.

We started to enter the mountains in earnest this morning.

We crossed the Continental Divide at 6393 feet above sea level.

This river was a long way away, but I honed in on it because of the colors and the reflections.

We stopped at a rest stop, and this was where things got really interesting!

Mark was looking intently out over this fence and I asked him what was up?  He said he could hear meowing in the bushes.  We thought it was an abandoned cat.  I went in calling “Here Kitty, Kitty!”  Mark went back to the RV and got a can of cat food and put it out in the bushes for the cat.

I took a path as far as the river.

I got a little side-tracked by the beauty around me…

…and by the textures…

…and by the little burrs that clung to my poncho.

Then I heard a man call, “Golden Eye!” I heard Mark say something and the man replied, “I’m calling my cat.” So I started calling, “Golden Eye! Here Kitty, Kitty!”

I looked high and low for that cat.

I followed a number of paths…

Then Mark saw me through the trees and called for me to come back.

When I came back out, I saw a black cat streak across the parking lot and jump up onto the front step of the RV next to ours.  The man, Tim, let the cat in and then came back so that Mark could introduce us.  Turns out Tim’s a Workamper too and he just finished the sugar beet harvest.  (Yuchh! Ptooyie!)  He’s on his way to Olympia, WA to work there.  He said that whenever he stops at a rest stop, he lets his cat out.  Sometimes the cat stays near the RV and other times he goes exploring.  When it’s time to go, Tim starts calling and his cat comes back.  He had noticed the map on the side of our RV which shows all the states we’ve slept in (all but Hawaii!) and asked Mark how long we’ve been Workamping.  Mark told him we’ve been at it a little over four years now, and Tim was impressed.  He’s been a Workamper for nine years and hasn’t covered as much territory as we have!

We said our goodbyes and continued on.

It looked like a mix of deciduous trees and pines up in the hills, but later we discovered that a bunch of the pines are turning yellow, possibly with some kind of disease.

This was the best shot I got of Missoula, MT.

At a truck stop just west of Missoula, Mark unhooked the truck, thinking that we were about to be in for a steep climb.  We each had a walkie-talkie so we could keep in touch.  We had done a lot of climbing up to that point, but as soon as we were in separate vehicles it seemed to me like it was downhill all the way.  I kept teasing Mark, and he kept telling me the altitude readings on his GPS that seemed to indicate we were going up, but it sure looked downhill to me.

At one point as we were driving, Mark called back to me to watch for the deer.  I saw two deer start to run out onto the highway in the oncoming lanes, but fortunately they decided to turn around and run back when they saw cars coming toward them.

I asked Mark if we could stop at the border so I could take a picture of the Idaho state sign.  Usually visitor information centers are about a mile or so into the state, but this one was right on the borderline.

You don’t see too many “Exit O” signs around!

At the border, we not only crossed the state line, but we also crossed into Pacific Time.

As we were taking the exit, I drew in my breath and said over the walkie-talkie, “Wow!” As soon as we got stopped, Mark suggested we walk back and take pictures of what we had seen coming around the bend of the off ramp.

Note the yellow-orange pine trees across the highway.

From this point it was only about another half hour to our stop for the night.  Because of the time change, we arrived around 4:30, but in the mountains it started getting dark early.  Pinehurst is east of Coeur d’Alene which, for those of you who aren’t from the Pacific NW, is in the narrow upper neck of Idaho.  We’ll be crossing two borders tomorrow!