Ending summer in Thompson Falls, Montana

Before we knew what a stressful event getting our house painted would be, we'd planned a weekend getaway to a random destination within a 4 hour drive (a sane distance for weekend travel with 2 kids) to Thompson Falls, Montana -- a place we hadn't yet explored together. I'd found what appeared to be a fabulous place to stay on airbnb (& it was fabulous -- our accommodations were in the walk-out basement apartment at this spectacular location!).

Pict from here

After the stress and utter exhaustion of our getting our house prepped and painted, we were so so so glad to have a getaway booked so that we didn't have to look at (or think) about our house for a couple days.

Thompson Falls is not really a "destination," which was perfect. It's beautiful and great for exploring but you don't feel like you're going to miss something important if you just hang out and relax. Truly perfect for where we're at.

We had the added bonus of a beautiful drive.

Our accommodations were set up with tons of space to roam and lots of fun activities to entertain the kids with.

For those of us who miss having an outhouse (which after 3 years of using one, we DO actually miss them), there was even a super cute outhouse ready for use :)

Thompson Falls had water, mountains and trees. Super pretty and extremely refreshing after spending our summer in the rather vanilla Moscow.

Smoke from some area wildfires made a rather eerie landscape at times.

We visited the beautiful Ross Creek Cedar Forest where some of the Cedar trees are 1000 years old.

AND went blueberry picking - one of our favorite northwest summer activities. YUM!

Lastly, we'd found a hike above the Clark Fork River to do on our way back to Moscow. Another beautiful day.