This is what you see out the back door of the Schnaus cabin.

This is Lake McDonald.

This is what we, mostly, did this past weekend.

Schnaus was for us the last of the four cabins along the North Fork of the Flathead, and it could certainly be argued we saved the best for last.  Schnaus is as clean and kid-friendly and modern-ly convenient as Ben Rover, more spacious and graceful than Wurtz, and in a much nicer setting than Ford.  The only knocks which might be set against it are that it is far too nice and big to count as a cabin at all, and that there is no especially convenient (walking) river access.  Though as I discovered while hunting the willow and beaver bogs which lie between the bench and the beach are extensive and mature.

We were both tired after the recent trip, and happy to sit around, read, and let Little Bear run.  In two months he’s gone from nerve-wracking, tentative walking which was a menace and outside padded rooms a safety hazard to confident problem-solving.  Between the stairs, deck, grass, rocks, gravel, and tile he only had one faceplant in two days.

Many years ago our timing belt snapped on the highway while driving through Butte, MT on Sunday morning, and we spent a pleasant 24 hours waiting for the shop to open and the belt to be replaced.  That revised excursion drove home to me that for all our purpose driven adventuring M and I have always been best at not hanging out together, and being content not doing anything in particular.  As our baby transitions into an amusing, intensely interested toddler this has become an invaluable feature of our marriage.  It’s endearing, and academically fascinating, that LB can sit on the floor and kill 10 minutes playing a coathanger and talking to himself (right now), but is not that interesting.  If we didn’t have each other for waiting out the next few phases, I fear they’d get rather tedious.