Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

 July 12, 2024

Around Helena 

Joe thought we should spend time in the camper until it got warm so we didn’t leave until about noon. Then we headed to the state capital and did a brief self tour of it. They did have guided tours, but we didn’t think we wanted to walk for an hour so we did our own.  We saw the Governors Office, the Senate Chambers and Old Supreme Court Chambers and the rotunda. There are scenes in Yellowstone of John Dutton being in the Governors Office. I don’t know if they actually used that office or not, but we got to see it. We didn’t go into it — there was someone at the desk on the phone.  I'm sure there were a lot more areas to be seen.  Not sure what all was included in the tour, but we saw what was available through the door we entered.

Senate Gallery.

I thought the chairs in the Old Supreme Court Gallery looked uncomfortable.

The Mansfields. A 7-foot tall statue with the caption "Together they did their best for Montana, the nation and the world."  He  represented Montana in the U.S. House of Representatives from  1943 to 1953 and United States Senate from 1953 to 1977.  

Next up was the Cathedral of Saint Helena. It’s not listed as a Basilica and I don’t know the criteria for that, but it is certainly beautiful enough. The altar was stunning, and the rest of it as well: marble pillars along the sides, stained glass windows all around with beautiful scenes. The organ room looked very impressive as well.

They are doing some construction on the other steeple.

Those beautiful marble columns.

We found our Pizza Ranch for lunch. While there, I signed us both up for haircuts at Great Clips. The wait time was 112 minutes. So we took our time eating, then went to Murdocks, a store similar to Rural King or Cal Ranch. Killed a little time there. Then we just headed to Great Clips. We were at least an hour early.  They had 3 cutters/stylists so it took a while. We were 14 and 15 on the list when we arrived (21 and 22 when we signed up), so we had a long wait. My left calf is sore today for some reason and we weren’t up for shopping, (although we were next door to Target) so we just waited it out and made friends with the other people waiting. It was probably close to 2 hours. It was 5:00 when I got done, Joe beat me by a few minutes.

The only other thing on my "things to see list" for Helena was the Great Northern Carousel, so we drove downtown to it. It’s also an ice cream shop so we had an ice cream cone and sat and watched the carousel for a few minutes.

 

“Located in Helena's Great Northern Town Center, this world-class, hand-carved work of art consists of 37 animals carved by a renowned Walt Disney World carver and 14 Helena scenic-carved rounding boards and stained glass artwork. In fact, the National Carousel Association said it is the finest carousel in the nation, if not one of the finest in the world.”  We considered riding on one of the benches but didn’t see anyone else sitting on them, so we just watched the kids.  The artistry on these animals was phenomenal.  

I had some favorites.

Since the carousel was right downtown, we decided to drive through it. It seemed to be mostly upscale restaurants and shops. It also had an area closed off for pedestrian traffic that looked interesting but we didn’t walk it.    Some of the buildings looked pretty old.

We passed the Civic Center with a tower that we could see from all over town. I was glad to know what building it was on.

Around town, we have noticed these electric boxes with art work on them.  I don't know if this is Helena's response to the buffalos, horses, fish, etc., that we have seen in other cities.  I googled it and all I found was this: "Streetlight electrical box painted with the slogan go outside and explore. "  More research gave me the following. 

"Eight traffic signal boxes around Helena now don vinyl wraps of original artwork by Montana artists.  The Helena Public Art Committee began the project in spring of 2017 to transform the utilitarian boxes to avoid vandalism and promote local artwork displays.  . . .  Several other cities around Montana like Bozeman and Missoula have also wrapped their traffic signal boxes in art."

We didn't notice any in Missoula but will look for them in Bozeman.

We managed to stay gone all afternoon. We got back to the RV about 6 o’clock and it wasn’t too bad inside.  It was 92 outside so it didn’t get  quite as warm today and with our fans, we were comfortable. We can’t get much on tv, except Youtube, so it wasn’t too exciting an evening.  We did watch most of the Diamondbacks game, but it kept rebooting about every minute.  Took a long time to get the game over with.

 Apparently, the Horse Gulch Fire is still raging, more than doubled overnight.  12 hours ago it was 10,849 acres.  Everyone in town is talking about it and the evacuations.  We did see a few fire-fighting airplanes fly over us.

Tomorrow is a free day, but is supposed to be hotter again (96).  If we can't come up with anything else, there's always laundry.