This morning I was greeted with a loud “Wake Up Ben” outside of my door. Ken was seemingly keen to get some sports in before lunchtime. A quick shower and shave later I was ready for action

Today was the first full day at Ken’s in Thompson Falls, Montana. A place we are planning to stay at until Sunday morning.

About 14 years ago my family and I visited Ken and Penny when they still lived in California. I remember Ken being a gentle giant with gadgets, a mad man and someone who kept checking the “prop” (it took a while for me to work out what it meant).

In the time past things haven’t really changed. The toys are just bigger and better It was Erwin Honegger (another family friend) that coined the phrased Ken Sports, after he decided Ken’s love for crazy sports was just too much and thus branded it Ken Sports and to this day maintains “sports with Ken are dangerous”.

Ben’s little intro to the day

We started off the morning by off-roading with his ATV four-wheeler and motocross bike around his property. Clearly very proud of this new home, he showed us where the land started and ended. Lets just say it wasn’t exactly small! It has a lovely stream, space for two huge ponds and plenty of woodland to go off-roading.

Ben and Ken ready to head out (Ken on dirt bike, Ben on ATV)

We then headed off up a dirt track with his Rubicon Jeep which was to take us up to the top of one of the mountains that overlooks his property. Unfortunately we didn’t quite get to the top because some of the trees that fell during a huge storm hadn’t been cleared away yet. As Ken pointed out, there wasn’t really any reason for the trees to have been cleared yet, nobody had been this far up the mountain this year. It was covered in snow until a few weeks ago Virgin territory as he called it!

The fallen tree meant it was over!

Normally a guy lives at the top of the mountain in a little hut from May until September. He’s the fire watch guard and does this voluntarily. Lonely chap!

After lunch Ken and I went for another trip on the ATV and the dirt bike. It was great fun. Riding a bike on a dirt track is a completely different challenge to riding a fully laden Harley along straight roads. I loved every minute of it!

We finished off the evening by heading out for some food at the local diner. Unfortunately there aren’t that many restaurants in Thompson Falls, nevertheless the T-Bone steaks were delicious and the strawberry cheese just heavenly. Three rounds of bowling followed by the off chance discovery that the diner also had six lanes of bowling out the back. Phil won on consistency alone

That’s Montana, mountains and trees