Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

 Tuesday, June 11, 2024

In the Middle of Nowhere

I found out there was a McDonald’s in Glasgow and we needed to go there for groceries anyhow, so that was a prompt for Joe to get out of bed.  

We made a run into Fort Peck to the wildlife pasture again.  We found our dozen buffalo that we saw this last night.  

We think we saw a wolf (could’ve been a coyote, but we don’t think so) stalking a deer.  And some antelope.  

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All veterans from all branches of service, including National Guard and Reserves, can be honored on the Wall.  Any veteran who is important to a NE Montana resident can be included on the Wall regardless of where they live.  A qualified Veteran is anyone who has served at least 6 months and has been honorably discharged.  

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 Heading on into town, we saw another antelope.  

Apparently, Glasgow is known as "the Middle of Nowhere." There were signs and other items in the Chamber of Commerce office with this picture, and this was on the side of a building.

After our breakfast sandwich, we went to the Chamber of Commerce and stocked up on brochures for the area.  The girl who took care of us, Morgan, was very helpful.  She knew a lot about the routes we were interested in, and we spent a long time there.  I bought a Montana cup.   Morgan talked about the shops in town and said the residents there have to go to Billings really to do any shopping. Most people fly there. Cape Air has two flights a day from here for $39 round trip --which is probably cheaper than the gas it would take. 

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Then we went to the grocery store. They had an Albertsons here, so Joe dropped me off and went on to the car wash next door to try to get some of the mud and bugs off of the jeep.  He came in to find me at the grocery store and we finished shopping, got checked out, and he stopped to talk to a lady waiting for a transit bus as I was pushing the cart to the jeep.  But the wind blew my receipt out of the bag, so I left the cart and went to try to catch it (unsuccessful).  And then the cart started blowing away. The lady said to Joe, "oh there goes a shopping cart over there."  Joe looked up and was quite surprised to see that it was ours!  But I got it grabbed, and we got the groceries loaded in the jeep so all was well.  We wandered our way back to the RV.

We went out for an evening drive about 5 o’clock. Went back on the wildlife pasture road again. We saw several deer and antelope throughout the day, this morning and again this evening, but nothing else except that wolf this morning, and the buffs.  

The next part of our drive was Duck Creek Road -- it started out paved, but then turned to gravel. We saw one deer on this road. We drove down to one of the points on the lake. This lake would make our Lake Roosevelt at home look like a pond.    The bridge over the dam must have been at least 5 miles long.

We’ve seen that several times with the lakes up here.  The lakes around the reservoirs are enormous.  This lake, Lake Peck, was formed when they dammed the Missouri River.  It has lots of fingers and lots of different camping areas and housing developments on it.

We have been in other areas where we felt like it was big sky country, but this truly is BIG SKY COUNTRY.  You can see forever.  Very few trees.  In the open prairie (away from the lakes), the ranches are far and few between.

Side roads are also hard to find along here.  Joe turned into one that had a gate across it, and said "authorized personnel only."  This always ticks him off.  A few miles further on,  he turned into another one and we had a cow blocking the road.  That cow looked like she thought she was on patrol. It was a standoff for a while, but Joe finally forced her out-of-the-way.  We drove 3 miles down this dirt road, and saw two antelope that we spooked. They took off running, and then a deer ran across the road in front of us.

I believe this is called "attitude."

 Joe was really just getting tuned up into this road and he said this might be "our road" tonight.  But just a short while later, we ran into a sign that said "Private Property, No Trespassing."   Well, that really  ticked him off, but he did turn around, reluctantly.  I had to do some fast talking to get him to turn around.

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This is the road we were on, Joe's kind of road..

We stopped at the overlook of the spillway.  The river meanders out of the main dam.  Thie spillway is only for emergencies or just to lower the level of the lake.  Looks like they had a small leak.

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This spillway is capable of discharging 250,000 cubic feet of water per second, or nearly 25 times the normal flow volume of the Missouri River.  At that discharge rate, the water may reach speeds of 65 miles per hour as it passes the cutoff structure.  

This is the Missouri River side of the dam.  It will eventually join the Mississippi in St. Louis, Missouri. There are numerous boat launches on both sides of the dam, and our campground is full of boats.  

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Lewis and Clark are well known in this area because they came down the Missouri River in their explorations.  They are famous in our hometown, Vincennes, Indiana, as well.  In fact, the George Rogers Clark Memorial is an icon in Vincennes.