Joe & Wilma's Excellent Adventures

 Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Anaconda and Philllipsburg, et al.

It got down to 54 this morning, chilly in the RV but nice.  Going to a high of 89. We paid for yesterday's short day with a really long day today -- longer than we planned, for sure.

We decided to go for a drive today and save the Butte Trolley for tomorrow, so we headed west to the towns of Anaconda and Phillipsburg.  It is supposed to be a scenic drive in there somewhere.  And the sapphire mine is supposed to be around Phillipsburg. We’re not sure if there’s wildfires in the general area so we’ll have to be alert to that -- we've been told there is. We think this is a loop drive which we like, so we’ll see what we see.  We still see some streaks of snow on the highest peaks of the mountains, but there is a lot of smoke haze in the valleys.  But as we got to the far end of Anaconda, visibility became better.

.

Entering Anaconda, we could see a tall smokestack off to the left and evidence of mining around the town. I googled it and found this out. 

"Copper continued to rise in price, primarily due to the growing use of the metal in electrical light filaments, and in 1919, the Anaconda smelter was expanded to its largest size.  It included the still standing 585-foot stack, the largest masonry structure in the world, and a smelter that was the world’s biggest non-ferrous processing plant."

Much to our surprise, the town stretched out for a few miles and was in nice shape. Several businesses seem to be thriving here. It was a clean town with a big statue of moose and elk on a couple of the properties.  It is less than 20 miles from Butte, nestled in between two mountain ranges.

Continuing on, we came up on a pretty mountain lake called Silver Lake.  Just passed the lake, we saw our first deer of the day. He was headed to the road, but fortunately changed his mind when we came by and he ran back into the woods.

About a mile past that lake, we came up on a bigger lake named Georgetown Lake.  It had a pretty good size marina.  It had several fishing boats on it.  We are traveling on Pitner Veterans Memorial Scenic Highway.  We’re driving through the national forest and this road definitely qualifies as a scenic drive.

We made it to Philipsburg by noon. Apparently Philipsburg‘s claim to fame is that it is halfway between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. I had two agenda items for Phillipsburg, the sapphire mines/jewelry store and the world‘s greatest candy store.

We saw two Cowboys riding the range on their horses as we approached the town, we took the turn off to Philipsburg. It looks like the town is splattered on the side of the mountain and at the base.

There were a lot of people in town, and parking spaces were hard to find.  So were seats in restaurants.  The candy store had a line too.

.

We stopped at a jewelry store, they had a lot of very charming wood carvings in addition to beautiful geodes and sapphires and other jewelry.

I loved the polar bear one but it was $999.

This is amethyst stones.  I have a bucket of these in the RV (along with a sore shoulder).

 This is one of the stores that you can buy a 2-gallon bucket of dirt from the mine for $45. You then wash it and pan through it for sapphires. We watched another couple do that, but what they were finding were pieces about the size of a piece of rice.  I didn’t think that was worth it and they just really looked like Crystal, although the guide said they could be red green or clear.  He pretty well got it ready for them, then they took it to a table and picked through the gravel.  They started out inside the building but then moved outside to the sun, thinking the stones would be easier to see.

276 

.

After we went back in the store and shopped for a few minutes, I checked back with the couple they had found maybe half a dozen of these tiny pieces.

It was time for lunch, so we went into a Mexican restaurant first but all the chairs were stacked against the wall and we couldn’t see anybody working so we went across the street to Does Soda Shop.  There were people waiting outside, and they could put us on a waiting list and seat us in 45 minutes.  He said there were 6 restaurants in town, so we went next-door to the Silver Mill Restaurant and Bar. We probably waited 15 minutes but finally got seated here.  The waitress was working by herself so it took a while to get our order in, but we finished lunch and walked back across the street to another  sapphire jewelry store--the Sapphire Gallery. They have beautiful pieces, very expensive. 

We decided to spend our money next-door at the candy shop, which is advertised as the world’s greatest candy store. The Sweet Palace had a wide variety of all kinds of candies, $10.95 for a pound for mixed candies, including taffy. I think the fudge was $13.95 a pound. We bought some of both, 

then we left town and headed further northwest on Montana 348 which is partly dirt road. This road takes us into the Sapphire Mountains, and we actually passed the sapphire mine.

15 miles out of Phillipsburg we saw our first moose of the whole trip and she had a calf with her.  They were right beside a rock creek, eating the bushes.  Joe had slowed way down so we could look at the creek so we didn’t have to come to a screeching halt when he spotted them.

We turned around a couple times and watched the moose and her calf. The calf wasn’t real small so we’re not sure how old she was.   When we started again, we encountered a fisherman walking down the road and talked to him. He said there’s always moose in this area and that there’s another one up the road. (We never found it.)

Sometime in the last few years, a forest fire has ravaged this area.  Grass has started to return so it’s probably been a few years. This mountain side across from us looks like pick-up sticks from all the trees that are down.  One can see that it would be impossible to fight these fires. 

.

We didn’t end up on the road we thought we were on, but since we saw the moose, obviously we were on the right road for us, but Joe’s goal for the day was to go across Skalkaho Pass, which we did, so I guess we were on the right road.  We had come to a crossroads, and we thought we were heading north to come out on I-90, but instead we were heading south.  He had the GPS on elevation instead of direction, so we really never knew what direction we were heading.  We never saw a summit elevation sign but our GPS read 7243 at the top.  A nice surprise, even though we had seen a sign, was the Skalkaho Waterfalls. It continued on under the road through a culvert and we could see the water tumble on down the mountain.

We saw several ground critters on this mountain drive, from tiny to squirrel-size. We’re not sure what any of them were. We are in the 

Bitterroot National Forest. As we came off the mountain and neared town, we came up on a big bird, trying to pick up some roadkill in the middle of the road.  We are pretty sure this was an eagle.  I wish I had snapped the picture a few seconds earlier when he had the roadkill in his mouth.  But he dropped it as we approached, and flew off.

We got back to Highway 93 and turned south to pick up Highway 43. We forgot we had been on this highway before until suddenly I said "that looked like Yellowstone" and sure enough we were in Darby and had just passed the Yellowstone ranch again. So guess what, we turned around.  I got more pictures, even though they’re still out there saying no photography, no turn in, do not slow down -- all that stuff. There was even a police car parked there this time, but I snapped away. I even got one of me getting the camera ready through the side mirror -- Joe told me to be ready, and I was.

We followed the East Fork of the Bitterroot river for several miles.  We really enjoy all the creeks and rivers that accompany our drives in Montana.

As we were speeding along, I caught a glimpse of a sign that said "viewing area," but I missed the first word.  So we turned around --  there was a pull-off with signs before we got back to the viewing sign, so we pulled in there to see if it was about the viewing area.  But it was all about Lewis and Clark (again)  

and so we went on past that to the sign that said "wildlife viewing area."  This was just past the town of Fort Sula, which was just a wide spot in the road.

Joe said we were only going to go back 2 or 3 miles, but I saw a deer right away so he added a mile to it.

.

There were huge fields of pasture land, apparently for the wildlife.

 But then we came to a little turn-off with a clubhouse on it and Joe took it.  It was really a driveway. He swung through there, and I spotted a bunch of heads sticking up behind the clubhouse.  I yelled, "stop, I see heads, and I think they are elk!"  H backed up, and sure enough, there was a herd of elk bedded down right there.  He thought we might be able to see them better from the other side of the clubhouse, so he drove past the clubhouse and we got out.  There were probably about 40, with several babies and one bull. You can see the bull's antlers at the front of the herd in the last photo. We got to watch them for several minutes before we finally drove on.  It was awesome!  

And so we continued on.  I saw an eagle flying up river probably looking for his dinner.  It was almost 6:00 and we were probably an hour away from home (Joe says two hours) so we turned around at a residence just passed the 7-mile marker. There was a bunch of bunnies in her yard, and it looked like she had her garden off fenced off to protect her plants from them. There were probably a dozen rabbits that we saw.  As we came past the house after we turned around, there was a deer in her backyard. 

She had some ceramic bunnies at the front of her yard.  We saw 3 more deer on our way back to the highway, and the elk were still grazing in that same pasture. 

We’re still in Lewis and Clark country (those guys really got around). We just passed a trailhead with their picture on it. Our return trip brought us over Chief Joseph Pass, elevation 7264. Our turn-off to Highway 43 was right at the top of the Chief Joseph Mountain -- we are 100 miles from Butte and still climbing. We crested the mountain about 6:15. Our GPS said 7272.  And Joe was right, probably 2 hours from home.  BUT

we got a flat tire just past Wisdom, 80 miles from Butte. We turned around and looked for a white spot to change the tire, which came up pretty quick. As we were limping along to find a pull-off, a farm truck passed us and waved. Joe got the jack out and started cranking and the farm truck driver came back and asked if we needed help. We said we could use some and so he pulled over and proceeded to take the lugnuts off and took the crank for the jack from Joe.  Joe told him he could do something,  and he told Joe just to stand back and watch and he would do it. That was great news. With the help from our Good Samaritan, 30minutes later, we were back on the road (10 minutes of which was Joe getting tire stuff put back in its proper place in the Jeep.  This area is called Big Hole Valley, and there is no phone service on the highway through here.  Our Good Samaritan said the residents here (of which he is one) like that because people drive through and think this looks like a good place to live, but when they see there is no cell service, they just drive on.  He also said there are a couple of elk herds in the area. 

We headed on to Butte.  Joe had noticed these "structures" a few times today and wondered what they are.  We still don't know.

 

Besides the town of Wisdom, we went through "Opportunity" over by Anaconda, and another inspirational-named town over there, but I can't remember the name of it.  I told Joe maybe the Pilgrims settled this area. But I read that "Opportunity" was named by the founder of Montana's copper industry.  "Wisdom" was named for the Wisdom River, later renamed the Big Hole River.

We got home at 8:30.   It was a very long day.  But we saw great things today, and had great help with the flat tire.  But probably no trolley tour tomorrow.  I imagine we will need an easy day.  We were in the Jeep almost 10 hours today, 276 miles (way more than planned) and that's a lot of hours of bent knees.