Saturday, June 15, 2024

Today, we got up with the intention of picking up where we left off yesterday -- in other words, going to the "Beneath the Streets of Havre" "museum. Because of our poor planning yesterday, we had to drive 10 miles west this morning back to Havre to go through the underground museum, and then 10 miles east of the campground to Chinook to go to the Chief Joseph Museum. After our McDonald's stop, where we saw this strange-looking rabbit, we got our day started.

 The history here is that there was a fire, started by a couple of drunks who got thrown out of a bar and went outside and started a fire.  That fire destroyed 6 blocks of the town of Havre.  There were underground steam tunnels under the town, and a lot of the businesses had basements.  So, in order to get their businesses back up and running, they rebuilt "Beneath the Streets."  So this is now a museum, some of the artifacts are original, many have been donated and added over time.  This tour lasted about an hour and actually took us into the tunnels and through some of the businesses, and other businesses that were added later.  Some of the timber still remains.

These operated between 1904 and 1920-1930.  This town has a rough history, Milk River flooded the town in 1938 and 1952, but it seems to be thriving today.  Although we did notice that there were probably more casinos than any other business.

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Complete model railroad.  Havre is very big on railroad history.

The Sporting Eagle Saloon (there were many, back in the day) with poker tables.  This was a turn-of-the-century honky tonk where cowboys gambled, kicked up their heels and drank good old-fashioned frontier rot-gut.  Beer was 30 cents.

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A brothel.  This brothel had 20 "cribs, and a bouncer kept things under control.  The "ladies" were known by number, not name.

Some of their dresses.

This is a "wheel barrow" made out of a barrel.  Probably how it gots its name, but the spelling was changed?

A photo of Havre after it was rebuilt.  The stores are now made of brick, although the floors are still wood.

The furniture has been moved around and stuffed in different rooms, but there were many businesses represented.  

Of course, there was also an opium den, and a bed to lie in until they recovered from their high.  There was also a gurney in here.

And a Chinese laundry.

These were called "First Call Transfer Baskets," not coffins, and were used to transfer the body to the funeral home.

 

I think this was at the blacksmith shop.

Well, it turned out. The Buffalo jump wasn’t in Chinook. It was back in Havre, but we did do the Blaine County Museum, and watched the video "Forty Miles from Freedom," a documentary film about the Battle of Bear Paw and the Nez Perce Flight of 1877.  This museum had other sections, including a dinosaur exhibit, some Indian stuff, some church stuff.  

This is a woman's sidesaddle.  I don't know if I had ever seen one of these before, even a modern one.

These are the original furnishings from the Fairview Catholic Mission Church

We had to wait a few minutes for the 20-minute video (which wasn't exactly right).  The video had blank spaces, where the picture below would like up depicting the battle.  That was a little disappointing.  But this very nice bronze exhibit of the battle was outside the theater.  

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 We went back to the RV and had a little rain storm with lots of wind so we had to bring the slides in on the camper. We took a little break but the wind was so bad I couldn't sleep. The awning covers were flapping so badly it was like something was pounding on the side of the rv.  We drove back to town and out to the Buffalo Jump, but it was closed. 

We didn't realize there is actually a tour.

This is the cliff behind the building.  The person at the Museum in Chinook said there was a better buffalo jump in Great Falls, so we will try to check that out.

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We had dinner at the Mexican restaurant, Guadalajara, again and then went back out on our evening drive to see if there were animals hiding in that brush we saw yesterday. We left town about 6:45 and saw a coyote (could have been a wolf) before we actually got into the park. 

It started drizzling on us again. The temperature had dropped about 11° after our afternoon thunderstorm. 

This is a really pretty drive.  The mountains are green-covered slopes, occasionally a grove of trees, the pretty Beaver Creek tumbling alongside the road, and wildflowers.

This drive was more productive that the one we went on yesterday afternoon.  We saw: 

10 deer

4 turkeys (one was a big, old Tom)

and the coyote (wolf)

Of course, we didn't stick to the pavement.  Joe found a few more dirt roads to check out.  After the rain, we were slipping and sliding on this wet dirt road.

Joe spotted some trees that looked like beavers had been chewing on, but we did not ever see any evidence of beaver huts, and these trees were a little ways from the creek.  Would have loved to see a beaver in action here.

We got back to town about 9:30, not quite dark.  But it was soooo windy -- 20mph with wind gusts up to 37.  We are in for a rough night.

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Beaver Creek..

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 Friday, June 14, 2024

Around Havre, MT

We took it easy this morning but about 12:30 we headed into Havre to check out the highlights in town. We found a Mexican restaurant for lunch that was pretty good. We hadn’t had Mexican for a long time and it was nice to get a good Mexican meal. We stopped at the historical Underground "Havre Beneath the Streets" museum and just missed the tour, so we’re going to try to make the next one at 3:30. 

In the meantime, we decided to drive the Beaver Creek Road, the other item on our check list for Havre. We had about 1 1/2 hours to make it back, and it's about a 30-mile trip down a good highway, but I was pretty sure we would not make it back in time. (Probably be dirt roads along the way.)   We stopped at one point and hiked down to Rotary Falls Access which took all the energy we had. It was probably only a 10-minute hike each way but parts of it were pretty steep and pretty rough. There was a lady with two kids coming off of this trail to the Falls as we pulled up so I asked her how far it was. She said they had just gone to where they could see the falls, but it wasn’t too bad.  Joe now wants to put out a warrant for her arrest for misinformation.

It was a struggle.

After we managed to get back in the Jeep, we continued our drive.  The next road led to Bear Paw Lake.  As we crossed the little bridge, we could see part of the falls (they were not much). 

The lake was gorgeous, and there were a lot of campsites around it.  Some individual campers on points, then a row of them in another area.  This would have been a great place to camp had we known about it.  That's the problem with these little gems, only the locals know about them unless you have traveled through here before.

The brushy area behind the lake would be great for wildlife, but it's mid-afternoon, not a good time for wildlife to be out and about.

Some of the campsites looked like that had electricity at least, possibly full hook-ups.

By the time we got to the end of the road on my map, it was obvious that we weren’t going to make it back in town. It's now 3:32, so we will have to try for tomorrow for the Underground museum.  The road continued on out of the park, so so did we.  The map says there’s a ski bowl 7 miles further on.  We’re pretty sure we’re now on the Indian reservation,  Our elevation here is almost 4,800 feet. Joe  thinks that’s probably the highest we’ve been since we left Arizona and New Mexico because we’ve been mostly on low plains.  We found the Ski Bowl.  Nothing like the ones in Arizona.   At the bottom of it was a little pond with water flowing over the steps.

There were  some cows in the road and cows under the ski lift. This was the end of the paved road, but of course Joe wasn’t ready to quit so we had to go down the bumpy dirt road for a while to see all the cows.

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This was a very pretty drive.  Parts of this area on this drive look like the Big Lake area in Arizona (the prettiest part of Arizona, in my opinion) with the rolling hills and mossy-looking ground cover.  Lots of wildfires blooming along the road and on the banks, yellow and purple and white. And pretty little Beaver Creek just keeps tumbling along from one side of the road to the other.  I wanted to stop and walk down to it, maybe put my toes in the water, but we never did stop.

We got back to town, made a trip to Walmart, then headed back to the RV.  That little, steep hike really wore us out so we were done for the day.  We were able to make reservations for our next campground while we were in town, so we will be heading to Great Falls on Sunday.  We don't have a phone signal at the campsite and I had a hard time connecting with the next campground, so it was a relief to get that settled.

 6/13/2024

On to Havre, Montana

After our long, hard day yesterday, we didn't have much left for today.  We moved up the road 173 miles to our next campground, which is between Chinook and Havre.  We have no phone signal here, which was a surprise since it is right off the highway.  Occasionally, we get one little dot, but then it goes away.

It was warm today, 70s.  Our drive was about 12 miles longer than necessary because Joe missed the turnoff to Peck, that we had taken several times.  So he just drove on down to the next intersection with Hwy 2, he said we hadn't seen all that road yet.  

We crossed the Milk River every time we went out, but today I finally got a picture.  Joe said it was chocolate milk.  It must be a really crooked river because we crossed it a lot of times.  But it was always chocolate.  When we drove through Malta last evening on our way home, there were kids on floats playing in it.

We saw a few pronghorn and a deer along the way today.  It was windy but not too bad.  We arrived at our campground about 1:50, got checked in, hooked up to the utilities (we have full hook-ups here), went into the RV and never came out.  Yesterday was just too much!  Fortunately, we could see 2 horses (wild?) and a pronghorn grazing on the hillside out of the window, so that was something. 

 This campground is the opposite of the COE's we have been staying at.  First of all, it is $48 with our Good Sam discount.  We have been paying $13 with our America the Beautiful discount at the COE's.  It is wide open, no trees.  The last two COE's were beautiful, grassy, shaded, view of the river.  But we are seeing some trees along the road now, and we are thinking we may be moving from Eastern Montana to Central Montana.  We are heading for Great Falls from here, on Sunday. But there were only a couple other campers in here.  The worst thing is the phone signal, or lack thereof.  They do have internet.  And a little zoo of geese, a rescued donkey, and I'm not sure what else.  The office person gave us a lot of brochures and information about the area so there is plenty to see and do if we so choose.

 

We paid $3.39 for gas yesterday.  Looks like that is about what it is at home.  Keep hoping for better prices, but we also know they could be worse.  It got down to 53 last night, and we are supposed to have a little rain this morning.  Our windshield is awful -- those little gnats come by in herds.  And we hit another bird yesterday, that makes 7 on this trip.  

Today might just be a rest day.  We will see.