Snow!

Gold valley, site of an early pioneer homestead.

After two days of sitting in Ceili listening to rain on the rubber roof I was more than happy to hear from my cousin!  Could we meet in Virginia City?

Absolutely!

It was still raining.

I wasn't going to be out driving on mountain roads.

We had a lovely lunch and a good catch up.

It had been 4 years since I'd last seen them plus I finally got to meet one of their sons and his wife!

He and his wife live on Lake Roosevelt in Washington State but their two sons and grandchildren are in Montana so they spend quite a bit of time over here.

In fact they are planning to move over in the next year or so.

Virginia City is an old mining town now basically a tourist thing, this being after the season most everything was closed.  Including the candy store, darn it!

Today dawned partly cloudy, well mostly sunny here in Dillion, so Quinn and I 

headed up to drive the Pioneer Scenic route and into the Grasshopper Valley.

We drove this last year south to north so this time I went north to south-you see different stuff in different directions.

There was so much lovely fall color!  That splash of yellow on the mountain is an aspen grove.

See the clouds on the mountain? 

Yep, it was misting where I was standing to take this photo and as we drove on through the national forest and got higher it rained a bit harder.

Then it SNOWED!

Not really hard and not sticking but definitely snow.

When we started down into the Grasshopper Valley the snow stopped.

I stopped for lunch in Polaris at the Grasshopper Inn -yummy.

While I ate the clouds lifted and then I could see this!

Some of you know that I Beta read for Suzie O'Connell whose books are actually set in this valley,

Even though it's called Northstar.

The Grasshopper and other sites in the area are featured and I loved seeing the real places!

(Also, really good novels!)

This is closer to the South end of Grasshopper Valley as is the next one.

All in all it was a lovely trip.

We got back fairly early so we were off to the park for a walk and then some errands.

Then I re-arranged the trailer---again!