The last two blogs I talked about fire wood. Finding, cutting, hauling, splitting. Now we talk about using, the final step! 🙂 Yep, it’s summer time. Lots to do and shouldn’t be thinking about firewood but summer means camping and camping means campfires! In the case of a recent two-night stay in Glacier Park, not only did we cook with it but we huddled around it and enjoyed its warmth, well, until it started raining too hard. Yep, it’s June in Montana!

So Jackie and I enjoyed the fruits of my labor. We hauled two crates of freshly cut wood for our two nights. It smelled good in the back of the Jeep. The first night I heated squash soup on the propane stove. What can I say? I’m a lazy camper. I did have damper, an easy camp bread that cooks in the coals of a fire, to have with our soup but we got the fire started too late so it was a good dessert. The second night we started the fire earlier and Jackie ambitiously made a game hen and veggies in the fire pit using both wood and briquettes to cook our feast. She needed both ’cause it was so damp – everything was damp – ground, wood, table, bedding, and, of course, dogs. Not long after dinner it rained so hard that second night it put our campfire out!

Did we have fun? Absolutely. We had a lovely, dry hike the first day. The woods were splattered with colored wildflowers in amongst the green…green everything! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it so lush. I’ve seen Lake McDonald in better light but it was still great, familiar and homey. And today, sitting here in a 93-degree afternoon at home a week later, though I cringe at the thought of lighting a fire, I sure wish I was back there getting one started to cook our dinner!