Sunday, July 21, 2024

To Bozeman, Montana

We have a short drive today so we were in no hurry to get started.  The McDonalds near us has a beautiful picture, almost a mural, of the "Lady" statue.  Since we didn't go up there, I took a picture.

 By the time we fueled and Joe got the roadkill off of the windshield, it was about 11:15.  The highway between Butte and Bozeman is supposed to be scenic so we’re looking forward to that.  We could see the Blacktail Canyon Fire off to the south, the one we spotted yesterday. 

We had a truck pass us with an "oversize" sign on it. He had a helicopter on his flatbed. We don’t see that every day.

I thought I should elaborate a little on the Pizza Ranch restaurant we like. That chain was started in Iowa and the first one we went to was in the town where John Wayne was raised, Winterset, Iowa, several years ago. They don’t just offer pizza. It is all you can eat, and they have four "islands": one is a pizza buffet and they usually have 6 to 8 different types on it.  The second is a fried chicken bar with mashed potatoes, pasta and a couple vegetables. The third one is a pretty decent salad bar. And the fourth is a dessert pizza bar. They also have ice cream.  So a family could pretty well get anything they want. With our senior discount and veterans discount, both of us can eat for about $21.  It sure beats bar food. The pizza is pretty good and the chicken is better than KFC.

Today's drive was a lot different than the one from Helena, but although we’re in the mountains, we’re not really in the forest. We see more rolling hills and low mountains. We did see a herd of five antelope and there’s always cattle and horses.  Montana has a lot of both.

Today's drive was only 90 miles, and we arrived at 12:40.  This is a nice campground, and well it should be for the price we are paying.  But we are having trouble getting the internet to work on the TV. 

Tomorrow is our appointment at the repair service to determine what's wrong with the back a/c.  We hoping for good news and a quick fix.  It's supposed to be in the high 80s, low 90s all week, with the lows in the 60s mostly, so it's heating up here, just like every place else.

After we got set up. Joe messed with the TV. We’re supposed to have Wi-Fi but we could not get it to connect on the TV, although it did connect on our phones and on his notebook.  We even called the office and they sent their guy over but he couldn’t figure it out either. We finally gave up and went for a drive. Joe wanted to see where the RV repair place we’re taking the RV tomorrow to. It’s actually a straight shot across Main Street, about a 15 minute drive.  We passed a Texas Roadhouse on the way and Joe thought that sounded pretty good so after we went to the RV dealer, Bish's' we stopped and had a nice dinner at Texas Roadhouse.   When we got back to the campground, Joe got the lawn chairs out of the jeep and we actually sat outside.  I think that was the first time all summer we’ve done that. This campground is really nice and our spot is really nice because we have a little room on the side.  Even the weather was nice.

We saw interesting things in town.  A bank has a very nice elk statue display.  I think there are 7. 

 

They have more of those electric box wraps.  Here, they seem to be almost on every corner.

Main Street was hopping.  They have a lot of eateries with outside dining, and they seem to be very popular.  I think everyone is enjoying  this short "summer" here.

 Saturday, July 20, 2024

Mining Museum

Our final day in Butte, we had two things on our agenda.  When I was looking through the literature this morning, I found a Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church with "hand-painted frescos visually depicting scripture." I thought we probably should check that out, but reservations were required. The door was locked, so I just got a picture of the outside, and the painting above the door, which I thought might be a fresco painting.

Next we were off to the World Museum of Mining. This took us right back up to the area we went through on the trolley. We had to detour around a street fair.  We found our way back to the route and continued on.  At the end of the street was Montana Tech, and we had to circle the campus to get to the Museum because that road was also closed, for road construction this time.  It was a nice-looking campus, but we don't really know much about it.

We did find our way to the Museum and went into the ticket office/gift shop area and checked it out. Ultimately, Joe decided it was probably too much walking for me so we didn’t do the tour. 

It was about 22 acres, all outside, and we had seen mines before.  Joe was able to drive around the backside of the building so we were able to see most of what we could have walked through. He didn't see any huge machinery, just "junk" he said.

And then, of course, he just continued on these back roads through the hills.  I'm sure we had mine tunnels beneath us the whole time.

We made our way back to old town and Joe found the street fair somehow.  I had given up on finding it.  It actually was a Farmers Market about a block long. It’s hours were 8:00-1:00 and it was probably 12:15 when we got there. We did walk it (mistake, my leg killed me the rest of the day), but didn’t buy anything.  That was all the walking I had in me. I have something going on with my left calf that I don’t know what it is, but it’s painful to walk on.  An Urgent Care next week when we’re in Bozeman might be on the agenda.  I've had this for about 10 days, and I don't know what caused it.  

They had baked goods and interesting craft items.  Most of the baked goods were already gone.

We went back to our Pizza Ranch for lunch and to rest my aching leg, then Joe decided to look for a road to drive. We really hadn’t been south of town so he found Basin Creek Road which took us out past the cemetery and the airport, and then turned southwest.

We have seen a few of these "wrapped" electric boxes here in Butte, like what we saw in Helena.

A new forest fire started southeast of town yesterday. I think so far it’s burned 150 acres but we could see the black smoke boiling off of it and planes and helicopters fighting it. 

As we drove along, we spotted some animals out in a field. We first thought they were cattle, then horses, and then we decided they were elk.  He found a place to pull off so we could get out the binoculars, and there was probably 60 to 70 cow elk out there grazing, we never did see a bull. We finally drove on until our road dead- ended into a park with a lake somewhere behind it, but we could not see the water -- there was a gate.

We turned around and headed back. We had passed another side road, Herman Gulch Road. It started out as blacktop and took us past some houses, but then it turned into dirt.  We continued on for a mile or so, but it was getting pretty rough and we didn’t want to get beat up again today, so we turned around and headed back to the highway. One side of the road was the gulch with a strip of recently mowed hay, but the other side of the road was hilly with huge boulders. We think they’re granite but we don’t know that for sure. 

We got back to our elk look-out, but they had wandered further away from the road. We were hoping they were grazing closer to the road. We could still see them, but not very well. 

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We took our highway back to the edge of town and picked up Highway 2.  We took it down a few miles and then turned north  on Continental Drive.  To the right of us is Blacktail Mountain where the fire is.  From here (and almost anywhere), we could see the "Lady" statue at the top of the mountain.

This road brought us back to the interstate and we headed home.  As soon as we turned onto the interstate, we saw a bunch of emergency vehicles pulled off on the other side.  As we went past, we could see motorcycles parked on both sides of the road.  We wondered if perhaps there was one over the embankment, but we couldn’t see anything.  It must have just happened because we met two vehicles with flashing lights just down the road.  

We spent the rest of the day in the RV.  We feel like we have seen all we need to see around Butte and are ready to move on.  And get the A/C fixed!!!

 Friday, July 19, 2024

Trolley Tour and Wildlife Management Area

We finally got the Butte Trolley Tour worked into our schedue this morning.  Joe wanted to do the 10:00 tour before it got hot, although he struggled to get out of bed that early.  We had not made reservations, but fortunately we were able to get on.  The bus had 25 people on our tour, and I believe it was full.  Our driver/narrator was very knowledgeable about the mining history of Butte, which is rich.  As I said earlier, this is known as the Richest Hill on Earth.  After a 10-minute introduction to the story of the mining, he drove us to the open pit mine just north of town.  As we got close, we could see a shovel and truck on display.  Both had been retired because they were too small.  This was once the largest truck-operated pit copper mine in the USA.

The "Berkeley Lake" is the pool of water from the mines.  It is part of the SuperFund cleanup process going on around Butte.  The water, although pretty to look at, is toxic.  Interestingly, they are able to remove the hard chemicals from the water -- copper, gold, silver and molybdenum (molly)  -- which actually pays for the cleanup costs.

The trolley tours stop here, but you can also drive up here on your own.  Our trolley tickets were $20 each, but the ticket to enter this was $5.00 which I assume was part of our $20 trolley ticket.   We entered through a visitor center/gift shop area, then walked through a tunnel to a platform overlooking the "lake."

The green color of lake is from the copper in the water.  The SuperFund cleanup also includes cleaning up all the homes and yards in town.  They go in and check the insulation in the house, among other things, and if they find even a speck of contamination from the mine, they completely strip the wiring and replace it.  Likewise with the yard, if they find contamination in the soil, they dig it down to bedrock, remove all the dirt and replace it with fill dirt, and vegetation.  This has been going on for years but they are not done yet.

Berkley lake is toxic.  It is 1100 ft deep, the water continually coming from the underground mines.  There is a pump station across the lake and it pumps 10,000 gallons of lake water a minute, and they clean the water up and reuse it for mining.  They clean the water through a cleaning building, then through a pipeline to creeks on the other side of town. But with the water generated in the mining tunnels, the level of the lake stays even with what is pumped out of underground mines.

Those "derricks" we saw the other day are actually called "gallus" frames.

"Sometimes called “gallows" or "gallus" frames, the headframes are a symbol of the cost of human life to extract those precious metals, as well as of the strength of America's trades and labor organizations."  These are their "elevator," beneath the frame, they raise and lower the workers and supplies to the bottom of the mine.

The walls surrounding the lake are solid granite, and prevent water from soaking into the ground.  They can't make the lake any deeper because it would go below the level of granite, and then the water would soak into the soil, beginning the contamination again.  There are over 10,000 miles of mine tunnels under Butte, beneath the streets and everything else.  There were once hundreds of mines on the Butte hill, and workers (immigrants) from every country.  At one time Butte had largest Irish immigrant population in the country.

To protect birds from landing or drinking from the lake, noises go off periodically to scare them away: sirens, air cannons, music blasts etc. 2 workers also patrol with drones when migrating birds are in the area.

There is a botanical gardens right next to the Visitor Center here, honoring the Irish heritage. You can see a shamrock, a celtic symbol, and a harp.

The conversation came around to "Our Lady of the Rockies" which is a statue up on the top of the mountain overlooking Butte from 8,015 feet above sea level (one foot shorter than the Statue of Liberty, he said).  Built in the likeness of Mary, the mother of Jesus, it stands atop the Continental Divide and is dedicated to "all women, especially mothers." A bus tour is currently the only way to get a close-up look at the 90-foot statue, and the bus crosses the Continental Divide 5 times.  He said there are plans to build a tram to it.  The bus ride is an hour up and just under an hour back down, so we decided not to do this.  The trolley we were on was "of the era" and the wooden seats were pretty uncomfortable, the bus ride didn't sound much more inviting.

One tidbit our driver shared with us was that Evel Knievel was born, raised and buried here in Butte.  He said he didn't hang out with him too much because Evel was always in jail.  Once, Evel got arrested for riding his motorcycle on the courthouse steps.

We finally drove on into the old mining town.  Our driver knew the dates most of the old buildings were built, many are still in use.  I took a photo of the old brothel, a 3-story red brick.  He said the basement offered the least expensive services, the main floor a little more, and the top floor was the most expensive services.  He didn't elaborate.

There was a little garden of statues on one corner in town, but I don't think he explained that. 

As we ended the tour, he talked about some of the millionaires (and took us by their homes) from back in the day.  Montana Resources now runs the mine, and they donated funds for a beautiful park in town, Stoddard Park.  It has a water park, zip line, golf course, and a beautiful carousel with hand-made wooden horses.  We decided to check it out.  The water park and carousel had just opened when we were there, and there was a long line for the water park.

There was also a very cool playground, with mine-themed equipment.

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I seem to really like carousels.  I guess because I love horses, real or wooden.  But these are beautiful.  I'm pretty sure we can no longer ride them (can't get our legs over the saddle), but there was another booth we could have probably sat in.  But we didn't.

There was a small display of carousels in a glass case.  I don't know if they were for sale, but they were very pretty.

People were enjoying the golf course on this beautiful day.

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Having finished with our touristy things, we headed back to the camper, but we decided to take an evening drive so at 6 o’clock we headed back to Anaconda to a wildlife management area I had found on the map. Before we got to Anaconda, we spotted a small herd of antelope well-disguised in the middle of a herd of cattle.  

Driving around in Anaconda looking for a place for dinner, we passed a little city park and there were five deer in it. One of them was standing on a raised flower garden eating either the flowers or the tree.

We turned off of the main highway just after 7:00.  We’re really on a wild goose chase. We’re trying to find the Mount Hagan Wildlife Management Area, which is off of this road, according to the map. We came home on this road the other night as part of our "marathon" day, but we’re not sure if there’s any side roads into this area, so it’s good that we saw the antelope and the deer before we started on this drive. The good thing is there’s no traffic on this highway, so we can poke along at our own speed. We just hope we see something.

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About a half hour in, we turned off on our first dirt road and Joe saw a sign that said Wildlife Management Area in small print (along with instructions about food storage because of bears).  

We followed this road/trail (California Creek Road) for about 3 miles. We met a through-hiker on this little road and stopped and talked to him for a minute. We asked him if he had seen anything and he said he’d seen a lot of things since he left Canada.  That wasn't exactly what we meant. He was hiking the Continental Divide Trail.  There was a pickup in front of us that we had seen turn onto this road.  He turned around and was on his way back out so we talked to him a minute.  He said they had seen 2 cow elk at the very beginning of this drive.

We took a side road off of our side road back a little ways but ran into a fence.  Joe had to make a four- point turn to get us out of there.  One side was a mountain and the other side was a cliff.  Some of the things he loves about his little Jeep is that is turns around in small spaces, makes u-turns, and is easy to park.  He uses all those features every day.

We only went in about 3 miles but the road was pretty rough so we were only traveling about 5 miles an hour. We turned around at 8:00, hoping to our return trip would be more fruitful. We have a fleet of flying insects pacing us and we sure we’re not outrunning them.

I don’t think they’re managing this wildlife management area very well. I think they lost all the wildlife.  We know they lost five deer. They’re now residing at the park in town.  25 minutes later, we were back on the main road highway (and we did not see those 2 cow elk). 

About a mile down the road we came to another side road and there was the main sign for the Wildlife Management Area.  Now it’s 8:25 so we’re gonna give this road a try for a little bit. We saw one cow elk, but as soon as we stopped, she ran off into the trees. There were three different campers on this road so we think we found the right road this time.  These roads are in really bad shape. It’s not very much fun to drive them, even for Joe. 

This road took us about a mile and a half before we hit gate number two. This was a three-point turn around, same situation. We saw a couple squirrels on this drive.

Back out on the highway, we continued on Hwy 43 to I-15 and just made a loop out of this drive. We probably saw half a dozen deer and an osprey in a nest on this last part of the drive. The Hwy 43 part was very pretty, and we were beside Big Hole River again.  Had it been earlier, I'm sure we would have pulled into some of the camping areas along the river.

We got home just before 10:00. It turned out to be 100-mile loop with our two little side roads We got to watch the sun set and the moon rise on this drive.  My picture of the sunset is through the buggy front windshield.  I didn't even try for the moonrise.

As we neared Butte, we could see the "Lady" statue lit up at the top of the mountain.  We could see her for miles.  We probably should make that bus trip but it does not sound very appealing, and I think it's about $25/person, plus you have to make reservations.  Our trolley tour only took us through the old mining part of town.  We thought it would stop at the Mining Museum but it didn't so that's one thing here left on our agenda.  The weather has been pretty nice high 80s/low 90s but 50s at night.  It's supposed to be 87 tomorrow, and 86 on Sunday when we leave.  We can deal with that.

Butte has been interesting.  We have certainly seen a lot of southwestern Montana

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 Thursday, July 18, 2024

New Tires

Well, this morning after breakfast, Joe went tire shopping — no surprise there. So we’re now the proud owners of four new tires and an alignment which apparently was much needed.  This trip has really been expensive and we’ve bought a lot of tires.  He thought the Jeep needed an alignment too, because sometimes it would start shimmying after we hit a bump. He had it in for alignment before we left home but apparently they didn't do what he paid them for.

Anyway, after he got the Jeep fitted with the new tires, he came back and got me — I opted out of the tire shopping — and we ran a couple errands, then got some lunch/dinner.  As we came off the freeway at our exit, we both noticed a road behind the truckstop going off into the mountains. We thought we should take the new tires on their maiden voyage on a dirt road, so off we went. We were literally less than a half mile from the campground when we made this decision and went off on this little jaunt. The road was pavement to start out with, but soon turned into dirt, with some road construction.  Perfect -- that's how we roll.

Right away, we came upon 2 bucks. Joe thought they were blacktail but we don't know if there is such a thing in Montana. Anyway. We backed up so Joe could see them, and I got a good picture.

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With that incentive, we put in 25 miles and an hour of our evening looking for anything else that moved, with no success.  But we enjoyed the drive and the scenery, and got back to the campground about 6:00. At the end of our third road was a ranch or something, with some interesting outside decorations.

That was the end of our day.  I have something going on with my left leg, in addition to arthritis, and this morning I woke up with a scratchy throat, so we both took it pretty easy after our long day yesterday.  Hopefully, tomorrow the Trolley Tour.