The cherry on the cake of my day

I’ve always loved that saying. Except this time it’s, The cherry on the cake of my day, or several days. The photo prompt from the Daily Post this week is “Cherry on top”. Something that is the finishing touch, the best finishing touch. And the last couple days have been pretty good.

We left Kalispell on Wednesday with a general idea of where we wanted to stay until we need to be in Bozeman for the next show. We headed south, Al thought he had found a good boondock spot, but we soon found out it wasn’t going to work. Right about the time we checked out, and rejected the boondock spot, Silver, the big ass truck, told us we had a problem. The computer informed us we had something going wrong with the DEF system and we had 150 miles to drive before we were thrown into limp mode. Which means you then only get to drive 5mph, and the truck won’t start if you turn it off. Consulting Mrs. Google maps I could see there was a forest service campground just a little way down the road at Seeley lake, we pulled in and luckily found a spot. Clearly everyone in Montana is on vacation, because this is a fairly big CG, and they only had a few spots…on a Wednesday.

Seeley Lake is a mid size lake, by Montana standards, and is very nice. The shore has beautiful waterlilies, and cat tails.

There are lots of people boating, kayaking, and generally having fun. We sat on the shore one afternoon and people watched, a very entertaining past time.

One evening we walked to the lake and saw a couple of beaver, they love the water lilies.

I did figure out that the lilies are only open in the day, by evening they are all closed. So on Saturday we walked to the lake a bit earlier to catch them open. So beautiful, and the fragrance is wonderful.

The water lilies also gave me a photo for the Dogwood 52, Patterns.

One evening I walked the dogs to the boat ramp, then let them off leash so they could get in the lake if they wanted. I waded into the water a little bit, and pretty soon Torrey was jumping into the water lilies. I am positive she thought they were solid ground. She jumped twice, then stood chest deep in the water looking around like, “what on earth just happened, how did I end up in the water?!” Completely cracked me up.

This area is covered with huge tall ponderosa pine trees. Some have fallen over and the remaining stumps are easy 3 and 4 feet across.

And the cherry on the cake of the day is sunset streaming through these tall trees.

It’s been nice to just chill for a few days, take the dogs walking several times a day, and relax a bit. All this driving, art show setting up and tearing down has been bad for my back. I was in a lot of pain after our marathon driving day in Glacier, but things are mostly back to normal now. Our Bozeman show is this weekend, then two shows the weekend after that, and another the weekend after that. It’s going to be a busy three weeks ahead.

As for Silver. I am writing this on Sunday morning and we are planning on driving to Butte today. The truck now says we can drive 141 miles, and Butte is 135. Missoula is much closer, but the dealership there was 100% non helpful, and also said they couldn’t possibly get us in for 2 weeks. Ya, that will work. I feel better about this other dealership anyway, at least they answered their phone, and a few questions. So this morning we should have answers, hopefully good answers.

Or that cherry on the day just may be a rotten one.