When we woke up Essan wasn't feeling all too well and so it became clear that this would be a short day, as she needed to be warm and relaxed. The previous evening I computed that the sun will shine into
Essan's favorite Hidden Creek gorge at 10 in the morning (courtesy "Planetarium", the ultimate software for the Palm) we got there around 9:30, just to be safe. And indeed, at 10, the entire gorge was nicely lit, unfortunately too contrasty for getting a good picture. We also visited some other areas in the park as we drove towards the west.
To diversify from just plain
sight seeing, I was also trying to find out what it was that smelled like burning rubber, a smell that has infested the car since the service in Bozeman. Other than the general area from where the smell was coming I could not find the source, as the engine is so nicely encapsulated in plastic covers that a simple inspection is impossible. The only thing I found was four
under inflated tires and one which was not wearing quite right, definitely not the source of the
smell.
For lunch we stopped at a lodge in the park. I was very pleased with my pizza, which shows how deprived I was of even halfway
decent food I was. We exited the park in the early afternoon and Essan got her warm bed in Kalispell, where I took care of the laundry which had accumulated over the past week. A steak dinner and some highly mediocre TV was a wonderful conclusion for this rather lazy and slowly paced day.