Monday, July 15, 2024

Moving on to Butte, Montana

After a run to McDonald’s and the grocery store, we got on the road about 11:00.  The Horse Gulch fire is still in the news.  It has grown to 12,797 acres with zero containment. It is 2 miles north of Canyon Ferry Lake where we were yesterday.

We’re headed to the town of Rocker, just outside of Butte, for six nights. We think the temperatures there might be 6 to 10° cooler than here in Helena. At least we hope so.  We are supposed to have full hook ups and Wi-Fi which will be an improvement over our last four days at the fairgrounds.

Our drive today took us between mountain ranges again. I saw a sign that identified the mountains on the left as the Elkhorn Mountains. I don’t know if the ones on the right are still part of that Sapphire Range or if we have another range now.  It was a very pretty drive but it only took 1 1/2 hours.  We almost wished it was longer, it was windy but a nice day for a drive. 

Like most of our drives in Montana, we have a river (Boulder River) running along beside us.

  At one point it was running in the median between the four lanes of traffic.   Joe said he bet the river was there before the highway. It switches back-and-forth from side to side, tumbling over rocks. It’s not very deep, but it’s pretty.

We are driving through the Deerlodge National Forest. Somewhere along the way we picked up some roadkill on the front windshield. Joe is really looking forward to getting that scrubbed off.  That was a conversation piece for miles.

As we came down the last hill, we could see Butte spread out before us. With our short drive today, we actually had some downtime in the RV this afternoon. Watched a little TV, took a nap, and then we went out to dinner and drove around the east end of Butte.  

So we are now in Butte, Montana, of which we know nothing about, but we have already learned that it’s a very historic mining town with an area of copper mines. we saw at least seven derricks still standing and there’s a sign in town  "The Richest Hill on Earth." 

After that we drove around through the old part of town. It’s really smoky here. Mountains are clothed in smoke and haze from the fire.

We followed Main Street north out of town and got into their mining community, Walkerville. We saw at least 8 of these derricks still standing

Most of the derricks had a flag on top.

One mine, The Con, with the 3 derricks (there was another one over the hill) looked like it might offer tours.  I'm sure we will learn more about that later.

Walkerville still looked like an old mining town.  There are people living there, and some traffic on the streets.  Most of the buildings are old, but some still have businesses operating in them.

Here's a picture of the smokiness as we headed to the RV.  We could even smell the smoke at the camper.  We don't know if this is smoke from the Horse Gulch Fire, or another one.  There is a new one over toward Missoula.  And Butte is in a valley so it seems to accumulate here.

Tomorrow we will go to the Visitor's Bureau and get  information on the fires, mine tours, and see what else there is to see here.  We also have to do laundry again.  Predicted high is 86, so that will be an improvement over Helena.  

 Sunday, July 14, 2024

Townsend

This morning it was 78 degrees, and cloudy.  I could see a layer of smoke below the mountaintops behind the camper, and I still see the fire-fighter airplanes flying over.  It grew to 11,600 acres yesterday and still 0% contained.  No structures have been lost, but a fire-fighting pilot lost her life when her single-engine air tanker crashed into Hauser Lake.  We heard that one of the ballasts failed to fill and when she took off, she crashed right into the mountain in front of her. 

We did our drive to Canyon Ferry Lake today.  We thought we were going to Townsend, then turning across the bottom of the lake and coming back up the east side, but the turn-off to the lake was 22 miles before Townsend.  This lake is where the helicopters are filling their buckets and snorkels to fight the fire.  We crossed the dam and stopped at a pull-off to watch the helicopters and planes for a few minutes.

We could see the burnout on this side of the mountain.

We drove on past the dam to the road that comes up the back side of the lake, but we were soon stopped by road closure due to the fire.  We turned around at the Sheriff's Command Vehicle.

This is the Missouri River flowing into the dam.

Right across the road from the dam we spotted an osprey in its nest.  We couldn't see if there were babies in there.

Since we had missed Townsend and our drive got cut short because of the fire, when we turned around, we drove back down to Townsend just to see what the town looked like. We drove beside Canyon Ferry Lake for a few miles.  The sky is cloudy and smoky and that is reflected in the color of the lake water.  Not our usual sparkling blue.  

We stopped for lunch at the Commercial Bar and grill/casino, which took forever to get our order in, but the food was pretty quick.  Nothing outstanding, but it was ok.  But I spotted our very first heart-shaped pothole in their parking lot (use your imagination).

We stopped at the edge of Townsend so Joe could buy some cherries.  $7.50/lb. so he only bought one pound.  They also had Ranier cherries but they were really expensive so he settled for the plain ones, whatever they are called.  She told him they had orchards on their property.

Then we headed back to Helena.  We had spotted a school bus made into a haywagon. I guess those school buses are so versatile that they can just be made for use for whatever crop is local.

It had clouded up more, and we have a chance of rain. We could see the smoke from the actual hotspots on the side of the mountain in the Horse Gulch fire off to the east.  It rained a few drops on us, and I'm sure everyone is hoping for a big rain to help get that fire put out.

Travel day tomorrow, although only 68 miles, to Butte.  We have 6 nights there, then finally we move on to Bozeman where we have an appointment to get the A/C fixed or replaced.  Can't wait.

Our internet is awful here.  There is nothing in the park, so we have to depend on our own, and it is so weak we can only get the YouTube channel.  We are supposed to have WiFi in Butte, so better days ahead.

 Saturday, July 13, 2024

Gates of the Mountains

I took some trash out this morning and spoke to our next-door neighbor. I asked him if he was ready for another hot day and he said they were headed to the river. I asked him what river and he said they were taking a river cruise on the Missouri.  The name of the place was Gates of the Mountains, so Joe and I discussed that as an option while we were at McDonalds (we had not heard of this). I looked online but there were no tickets available today so we decided to make the drive which we thought would take us down the road to Townsend, where we had planned on going. We put the address to the marina in the jeep GPS and it took us to a residence, north of town.  So then I got the address on my phone and it turned us around by going on a 5 mile dirt road loop. But we did see six deer on it so not all was lost. It brought us back to I-15 and it was about 15 miles up the highway.

We found it easily enough with the right directions and walked to the ticket office to see if they had any openings on the next boat, which was leaving in 20 minutes.  They did and so we got on the boat ride and had a nice two-hour cruise on the Missouri river. 

Our boat, an open-air, was the oldest in the fleet.  We later saw another tour boat out of this marina, and our captain said it was the newest in the fleet.  It had partial cover, comfortable seats, air conditioning.  

Right away, we saw a white pelican flying over us, and as soon as we entered the river channel, there was a bald eagle high in the tree. Tour Guide KARI was very good with the history of the river, Lewis and Clark,  the Mann Gulch fire which we had heard about at the Smokejumper Museum, the geological formations along the side. It was a very pleasant ride. We did see three big horn sheep along the way, and an osprey as we came back out of the channel.

This is the gulch where the Mann Firefighters lost their lives.

There is one camping area/picnic area on the lake, but only accessible by boat or walk-in 22 miles.

Since we decided to make this trip after we had left the RV, we were ill- prepared: no water, no Chapstick, no sunscreen, Joe had a hat, but I did not, so on the boat ride we were in full sun. I tried to keep my hand over my mouth to keep my lips from getting sunburned, and eventually Joe put his hand on the back of my neck to keep it from getting sunburned. The lady sitting in the seat behind us offered me sunscreen and even applied it.  We thought that was really nice of her.

We had one stop at a park with toilets. Most of the people got off, but Joe and I stayed on and moved up to the shade for a few minutes.  The group oin the row behind us also came up to the shade.  The lady who had given me the sunscreen asked how long we had been married. I thought that was a strange first question. We told her 55 almost 56 years.  She nodded her head and said she thought so since we were so loving.  She mentioned Joe taking care of me by putting his hand on my neck. We reminded her of her parents, and she was not surprised that we were born and raised in the Midwest.   I thought that was very nice of her to say.

We were very fortunate to get to see 3 Rocky Mountain Sheep.  2 adults and a baby.  They were very hard to see on the side of the cliff, their color blended right in.  Another boat had spotted them and pointed them out to us.

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The Missouri River is the longest flowing river in the United States and joins the Mississippi at St. Louis. When she turned us around, she went from one side of the lake to the other, showing us how the river channel got its name Gates of the Mountains (that's the Rocky Mountains).  From one side, the channel looks wide open, but as you’re near the other shore, it looks like it closes and there’s no way through.  That's was Merriweather Lewis saw and how he named it.  

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The Horse Gulch Fire here is about 20 miles east of this river. The potty break had been shortened from normally 20 minutes to 10 minutes because of the fire and tomorrow they are not allowing that stop anymore. Kari said she can take out tourists if she can cut the ride down to less than an hour.  An hour or more requires a restroom break.

Kari talked about the geology of the canyon walls and how old the rock walls are. She used the term “BCE”  Before Common Era. I had never heard that before so I googled it when we got back. Simply put, BCE (Before Common Era) is a secular version of BC (before Christ.)  Wouldn't want to offend anyone and  another attempt to change history, I guess. 

Our captain, Kari, was excellent.  She was great with the history and very interesting.

So we got that done and came back to town.  There is a ranch just before the lake, and apparently they raise sheep.  After we started traveling, I wished I had taken pictures of all the "XING" signs we had seen, but that was after Alaska, so I figured I had already missed the most of them.  However, here was one I don't think we had seen before.

At the turnoff to this place was a statue of a very tall man and his dog.  We didn't walk through the weeds to see who it was but assumed it was the man who settled here.

We were still thinking about taking the drive down to Townsend, but I told Joe I thought by the time we stopped and ate we would be tired from being in the sun for two hours and maybe we should save that drive for tomorrow so that’s what we did.  We stopped for lunch, went back to the RV and rested and then went to the new Kevin Costner movie Horizon.  Just before we left the the RV the electricity started cutting off and then coming right back on.  Joe walked around outside and decided the whole park was doing that, but we really don’t know if did it. It probably did it three times.  We are hoping it would be all right, so we headed downtown to the movie theatre.  Next door to the theatre was a bike shop with this interesting piece of artwork.  Mazie was our bike lady and she would have liked this.

 When we got back, the electricity was on, and the movie was OK.  It's three hours long, typical of those kinds of shows but it had Cowboys in Indians and so Joe was in his element. That was Chapter 1 and there are supposed to be 4 more Chapters.  I heard they had intended to release Chapter 2 in August but decided to delay that to allow more people to see Chapter 1.  Sounds like they are not getting the viewers they expected.

Tomorrow is our last day here.  We have done everything we knew to do, plus the river boat ride, so we are ready for the next town, Butte.  We will probably do the Townsend drive and be done with Helena.