We are driving in a leisurely fashion through Montana, more or
less right down the middle and the landscape is ever changing. We are crossing huge valleys guarded on all
sides by huge forested mountains, the Garnet range much deforested by fires,
the Mission Mountains down one side and then the Sapphire mountains loom above
us as we head into Philipsburg. Often
the lush pine forests are starting to give way to hilly scrub land with much
smaller Christmas tree like firs on them and the valleys are filling up with
once green but now straw-coloured plains with cattle grazing.
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| Changing Landscapes |
We have seen a lot of deer by the road side
and we are driving past classic ranch style entrances with huge log gateways
with big cow skulls hanging off, The Lost Moose Ranch or the Grizzly Claw
Ponderosa. RAWHIDE!!!!!
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| gateways made with quite impressive logs! |
The actual buildings are usually out of site way up
the tracks. We seem to be moving away
from the worst of the forest fires but can’t seem to find any news so not sure
really. The air is cleaner in fact we
have just had a bit of a rain storm… on a few occasions we spotted these open
fields full of small tents in rows and bigger tents at the sides and it took us
until yesterday to realise they were for the evacuees from the fires. We stayed on a campsite last night that had
several families camping in RV’s who were evacuees and they were taking it in
their stride very well- expecting to go home in a day or two to unscathed homes
so they were lucky.
After a couple of hours driving we stopped for morning coffee
at Philipsburg, a quaint old gold and gem mining town. All the gold has gone now and its sort of
billing itself as Montana’s answer to Cober Pedy and there are loads of Gem
shops selling seriously expensive sapphires and diamonds.
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| Brewery Building in Philipsburg |
It’s a very picturesque place, a mixture of
old square brick buildings and ornate clapboard houses. We stopped in a classic
diner and had endless coffee refills for a dollar each until we were caffeine
buzzing and then had a walk round town.
Much of it is aimed at tourist trade, gift shops, jewels, and
cafes. It has its own craft brewery
which is housed in a lovely old building as it was early in the day and Dr Fred
was driving we didn’t sample the wares stopping instead later in the day to buy
a Big Sky Mixture box which includes such delights as Moose Drool and Trout
Slayer.
Even in a small place like Philipsburg there is a Thrift shop
- I love the thrift shops here. They are
the equivalent to our charity shops but really really cheap. We have kitted out a lot of our trip with
thrift shop silver wear (cutlery to
those in the uk) pans and table cloths and today I found a quilting frame for
75 cents and a wine glass for 25 cents - bargain.
We drove through Anaconda, great name for a town but other
than the Anaconda Smoke Stack there wasn’t much else to be seen and the Smoke
Stack didn’t exactly fill us with awe and wonder but I photographed it
anyways…. note the seriously black skies we had a pretty amazing thunder storm 5 mins later...
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| Anaconda Smoke Stack |
We are heading for ghost town country, and tonight we have
found a completely empty campsite up a two mile gravel track up Toll Mountain,
(good job the merc had a practice run up Mount Marston) where we can finally
have a campfire, and the best bit is it is surrounded by rocks!!!! Dr Fred’s
knee is easing up and he feels able to go and slowly amble around allowing his
natural instincts to take over – a joyous relief (to both of us).
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| Love a campfire ( and yes sadly that is shorts over leggings...first time I've been cold this trip) |
We’ve been on the road for four weeks now a little over three
of them in the Merc and its starting to look a bit messy – a little untidy and
very lived in. We on the other hand are unwashed, and somewhat slightly dazed but easier to clean up then the car which
has to survive us another 5 weeks!!!
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| HOME!!! ha ha |
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