White Sulphur Springs, Montana

It’s hard to believe that a person could suffer from S.A.D.D. while in Big Sky country but it is possible, take my word for it.   Our stay in White Sulphur Springs was spent almost entirely under leaden skies with clouds hovering so close to the ground that they obscured our fine view of the Big Belt Mountains.  A combination of almost constant rain and melting snow has swollen many of the rivers and streams in Montana to flood stage.  Although we weren’t affected by it, at one point a long portion of I-90 east of Billings was closed due to floodwaters along the Yellowstone River.  The Smith River, which originates near White Sulphur Springs and is a favorite with serious “floaters”, has already claimed one victim this season.

I had a vague memory of White Sulphur Springs but it turned out to be totally inaccurate.  I was recalling a large white Victorian-era hotel with lots of shade trees.  The truth was closer to a ‘50s era motel with not so much as a shrub much less trees.  It is entirely possible I had White Sulphur Springs and Warm Springs mixed up…which means it wasn’t a Victorian-era hotel I was recalling.  These days White Sulphur Springs is no longer a bustling town midway between Helena and Harlowtown but rather a cluster of small homes, several bars and restaurants and a few miscellaneous businesses, most having more than one purpose, i.e. the state liquor store/shoe store/boutique. 

The Conestoga Campground was our home for six days.  We had almost all the creature comforts except that t.v. reception came and went at the whim of the weather and the repeater station.  We met some really nice folks and had a good time in spite of the depressing weather.  And we were able to watch the final episode of “Dancing With The Stars” thanks to the owner keeping the clubhouse open late.  We all appreciated it.

Our arrival was just a bit too early and some of the area attractions weren’t open for the season.  Memorial Day is the magic day apparently.  However, the Meagher County Historical Society Museum, known as The Castle, was open for business and we were given an interesting escorted tour.  Photographs were not allowed but there are several of the interior on their website.   A new structure to one side of The Castle houses a collection of donated items from area families, including a fascinating typewriter manufactured by the Blickensderfer Typewriter Company of Stamford, Conn.   Howie noticed it did not have a QWERTY keyboard and that a cylinder was employed instead of keys, very similar to the much later IBM Selectric.  A good description and an animated photo of the cylinder in action are available on an informative website we found.  We later learned that the fonts could be changed by changing the cylinders.  The model on display is the  “Blickensderfer 8”, which was also ahead of its time in that it incorporated a tabulator system.

We had picked up a brochure for the Bair Family Farm Museum indicating it was open several days a week during May and September, daily Memorial Day to Labor Day so, in spite of rainy weather, we took of for Martinsdale, a 30+ mile drive over hill and dale.  We should have called first because it had not yet opened for the season, in spite of what the brochure said.  On the drive over we saw no other vehicles going in our direction and only a few headed the opposite way.   And we learned an important lesson – a phone call in advance saves time in the long run.

In spite of the fact that the sun made only brief appearances during our stay, it did manage to produce several spectacular sunsets.  As it sat, the sun peeked under the dome of heavy clouds and created all sorts of interesting shapes and colors.  We even managed to enjoy one Happy Hour with some of our neighbors as the sun disappeared over the horizon.,.of course, we were all bundled up in heavy sweatshirts and jackets!

The Smith River flows nearby and the campground has a small pond so the Mayflies were hatching.  At evening the skies were filled with swallows darting about enjoying a feast.  These handsome little birds had already ousted the Western bluebirds from their boxes and established themselves all along the perimeter of the campground.

It was raining so hard the day we left White Sulphur Springs that we didn’t even go around to say formal goodbyes to all the folks we’d met.  We took U.S. 12 to Helena, along a stretch known as the Lewis and Clark Scenic Highway through the Big Belt Mountains.  I’m sure it’s a beautiful drive in good weather.  The road is quite narrow, with no shoulders, and Deep Creek was running fast and furious, sometimes right at the road’s edge.  Again, there was very little traffic and only a few isolated ranches and cabins until we got to Townsend.

We’ve hunkered down in Helena to wait for an improvement in the weather and to be off the road for Memorial Day.

Bozeman, Montana

Bozeman is a delightful little city, sandwiched in a flat spot between the Bridger and Gallatin ranges.  It’s big enough to have a Costco and small enough to get around in easily, two features which endear a city to me.   The downtown area has several blocks of small shops and interesting cafes and seems to be always pleasantly busy.  Bozeman is not all that far removed from its rip-snorting wild west days but is now one of the fastest growing cities in Montana, high-tech and entrepreneurial.   With major ski destinations nearby, it has become a hub for the schussing  set and has the mini-mansions to prove it.

The town was named for John Bozeman, a frontiersman who established a short cut for travelers on the Oregon Trail that branched off in Wyoming and headed straight through Indian territory and into Montana.  The natives took exception to the trespassing and the trail became known as “the bloody Bozeman”.  John himself was a handsome fellow who met an untimely death in his early 30’s.   There is still some controversy over the cause of his demise – was he killed by a Blackfoot band on the Yellowstone River or was he done in by a jealous husband?  The truth will likely never be known but the official answer is carved on his tombstone here at Sunset Hills Cemetery.

The Pioneer Museum, housed in the former county jail, sports an interesting collection of memorabilia from the town’s earliest days, including a full feather head-dress found at the Little Bighorn the day after Custer made his last stand.  Unlike most “hanging trees” this jail features an indoor contraption (used only once) that takes up little space and looks almost modern compared with other devices for that purpose.

It was a crisp sunny day when we headed west to visit Madison Buffalo Jump State Park near Three Forks.  The park has few explanatory signs, a lock-box for entrance fees and the jump.  And just about all the silence a body could handle.  “Remote” does not begin to describe the place and it’s hard to imagine the noise and confusion that must have accompanied the end of a tribe’s bison hunt. 

Somewhat less remote is the Missouri Headwaters State Park, not far from the town of Three Forks.  Here the Gallatin, Madison and Jefferson rivers come together to form the Missouri, which then heads north before making a dog-leg to the right and heading east.  The snowpack had only just begun to melt when we were there and the rivers were running at a good clip but not dangerously so.  The river was just a great place to romp for this herd of horses; they were splashing around, having a grand time and enjoying a find spring day.  Standing on the bank, listening to the sound of water, brings to mind the Norman Maclean book “A River Runs Through It”.  It’s also easy to picture Lewis and Clark poling their pirogue, at least where the water is deep and smooth.  And, once again, the quiet was all-encompassing except for the river sounds.  There’s not much traffic here this early in the season.

One of the quirkier museums we’ve ever visited is the American Computer Museum, housed in a corner suite of what can only be described as “a professional park”, mostly insurance offices and medical specialists, near the MSU campus.   The museum has room to display only about 6% of its collection but they have some fascinating items to show.  It can be a bit depressing to see devices you once thought of as highly advanced from a technology standpoint now viewed as “antiques”.  We were disappointed that a model of our first Xerox computer, or at least the daisy wheel printer, wasn’t  exhibited.

I wanted to get a closer look at the big white “M”, a symbol dear to the hearts of Montana State University alums, so we drove out for a look-see.  It was an extremely windy day so we didn’t even attempt the steep trail up to the “M”.   Not that failing knees would have permitted it.  This leads me to wonder where the dividing line falls in Montana weather reports – one day was described as “breezy” and the next as “windy” but both made the coach rock and stirred up a bit of motion sickness just sitting in the car.  As near as we could determine,  “windy” is 1 mph stronger than “breezy”. 

From there we headed across town and out toward Four Corners then up into Gallatin Canyon going toward Big Sky.  We had no intention of going that far but were looking for something called “House Rock” which a local had told us was a sight to see when the river was running high and the water went over the rock and not just around it.  We aren’t sure that this is House Rock but it was certainly fun to watch these rafters fairly flying downstream.  We saw one single-man raft flip over but the occupant soon righted himself and continued on to the pick-up point below.  There were spectators perched on rocks overhanging the river but we were content to watch from the safety of a nice solid highway pull-off.

Besides the ski areas of Big Sky and Bridger Bowl, Bozeman’s biggest attraction is The Museum of the Rockies, a fine facility on the MSU campus and one affiliated with the Smithsonian.  Montana has been a treasure trove of dinosaur bones and has active digs going on in various parts of the state.  And those big bones have to be displayed somewhere, hence the museum.  We spent four hours roaming around, gawking at the exhibits.  There were models, of course, but many of the actual skeletons are displayed.  It’s almost too much to take in all at once which is probably why the admission fee is for a two-day pass.

In addition to the dinosaur exhibit, there is a nice collection of Native American artifacts.  The beadwork was especially interesting and it’s always fascinating to see such modern-looking designs on primitive pieces.  Photographs were not permitted in that section of the museum.

There’s also a large space for rotating exhibits and we were fortunate enough to arrive in time to see “Frogs: A Chorus of Colors”.  Many zoos and aquariums have displays of frogs and toads but this exhibit featured the brightest and most interesting of the species.  There were the gaudy poison dart frogs, with their electric colors.  and the long-nose horned frog which was hard to locate thanks to his looking pretty much like a dried up oak leaf.  But these were our favorites, the waxy monkey frogs, who reminded us of those fine fellows in the Budweiser commercials.  At first they appeared fake, never moving or changing expression (can frogs smile?) but finally one swallowed and I was finally convinced they were real.

And so we said farewell to Bozeman and moved on a bit north to White Sulphur Springs.  We’ll be reporting from here early next week.  Meanwhile, we can mention that from the front window of the coach we have a grand view of a herd of black Angus, the snow covered foothills of the Big Belts and the Smith River which is nearing flood stage.  Stay tuned.

Dillon, Montana

Our stop in Dillon was brief, selected only as a place-to-be over a weekend, but it turned out to be one of the more interesting places to spend three days, even with the lousy weather conspiring to keep us confined to the coach.  Our campground had all the comforts of home up to and including all the peace and quiet a body could handle.  But we were eager to get out and explore the area.

Saturday promised to be nice enough in Dillon but nasty-looking clouds (the sort that produce snow) were lurking about in the general direction we wanted to explore, south and west to visit Bannack State Park.  But by late morning the skies had cleared and we hit the road.  We didn’t encounter any snow, even at Badger Pass which tops out about 6200 feet.  The terrain is mostly rolling hills with long views to distant mountain ranges.  Very pretty.

As a state park, Bannack is most unusual.  It essentially comprises what used to be the entire gold-mining community of Bannack.  But unlike so many other ghost towns, this one has not been commercialized.  As a matter of fact, even the visitors’ center is closed during the “winter months”.  The streets were empty of all but a few hardy folks wandering about, poking into those buildings which were not padlocked.  It’s all on the honor system; visitors are expected to place park fees in a lock-box, borrow a brochure (or leave $2 if you want to keep it) and wander through the town at will.

One soon becomes aware of an enormous lack of noise, only the wind whistling and whispering (and sometimes yelling), the slight creaking of the boardwalk as you pace along the street, laughter coming from unseen children.   Even those who don’t believe in ghosts would find this place haunted.

Gold was discovered along Grasshopper Creek in 1862 and within a year the town was established and in time reached a population of 3000 people, some good, some very bad.  The Methodist Church was the only structure specifically built for worship but I’m sure more than one miner left his gold in the collection plate of the Skinner Saloon.

The name Bannack came about thanks to an error on the part of the Federal Government.  The town fathers had intended to name the town after the Bannock Indians but thanks to a typo in Washington, D.C., the town went down in history as Bannack and became the first territorial capitol of Montana. 

Here’s a picture of what remains of the original  Governor’s Mansion which burnt down in the early 1900’s.  Logs salvaged from the mansion were used to build this cabin.  Please note the sod roof.  The jail is no more imposing than the mansion.  It hardly looks capable of confining any but the meekest souls and Bannack was not known for its meekness.  It was headquarters for Henry Plummer and his gang – he was the chief law enforcement officer and the chief bad guy as well. 

The Bannack Cemetery is atop a hill north of town.  If anything, it is even more quiet than the town.  A few of the graves were sporting bright plastic flowers, a jarring contrast to the muted colors of the sagebrush and native grasses. 

 

We zoomed back to Dillon in hopes of touring the local historical society museum but it was closed for the weekend.  Instead we strolled around downtown, stopping at the library for their used book sale.  What a handsome building!  It’s made from local limestone with a quartet of gargoyles for garnish.

This devilish fellow struck our fancy.  The librarian told us that the stonecutter hired for the library project died before it was completed and that his wife finished the job.  It’s these intriguing little factoids that keep us poking around wherever we are.

Provo, Utah – Pocatello, Idaho

Provo, Utah is a pretty little city pushed up against the Wasatch Mountains, which were snow-covered upon our arrival and even more snow-covered upon our departure.  But that’s another story.  On our first full day in town we stopped at the visitors’ center to gather whatever information we needed to make a thorough exploration of the area and were directed to the city library, a seamless grafting of old and new.  Behind the handsome old Brigham Young Academy sits the state-of-the-art new library so that both halves can be utilized together.  A stunning stained glass window separates the two. 
A librarian strongly suggested we attend the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art.  She was very helpful and tried to download tickets for us but there was some glitch in the website that prevented it.  So she suggested we just show up and act dumb (not difficult for us) and we’d be escorted right in.  Well, not exactly, but nearly so.  We arrived at the BYU campus, along with everybody else in Provo, and were told by the gatekeeper to check back at noon.
Meanwhile, we scouted the Museum’s permanent collection which leans heavily on “Western art” including a large collection of paintings by Maynard Dixon.  They don’t have much in the way of “modern art” – thank heavens – but we were taken with this featured piece.   Modern art is supposed to remind you of something and this reminded us of the back seat of our car.  Except we just might have more books.  It would be a toss-up.

The  Bloch exhibit, which was nearing its end, had attracted a large crowd, apparently everyone was waiting for better weather to venture out.    BYU owns a number of Bloch etchings but the large altar pieces were on loan from various museums and churches in Denmark.  Some of the smaller paintings which were on exhibit showed a remarkable facility with light; the larger paintings seemed to me to be almost too commercial; perhaps because they’ve been used countless times as illustrations for religious texts. 
After wending our way through the art, we did a quick walk-about on the campus.  Ornamental fruit trees were in bloom and contrasted dramatically with the snow-covered mountains beyond. 
The bell tower was pealing forth music across the campus as we climbed uphill toward the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum, a space filled with beautifully mounted specimens of fish, birds and mammals.  An enormous Kodiak bear dominates its space and one hopes never ever to encounter one in real life – they’re scary enough when they’re dead!

Weather continued to be a problem and we had to scrub plans to drive up into Provo Canyon to view Bridal Veil Falls.  Instead we grabbed our Cabela’s gift cards and headed north to check out the goodies there.  Along the way we drove into and out of a number of “snow squalls”, not something we relish, and we were relieved to arrive back in Provo to relatively mild temperatures and partly sunny skies.  The next morning, however, was a total bummer.
We may call our-selves “snowbirds” but that doesn’t mean we actually want to see the stuff!  Thankfully it melted off by noon, leaving us with a relatively pleasant day.


On Sunday we went out in search of a newspaper which led us to a shopping mall south of downtown Provo.  It was a sizeable mall, with all the usual anchor stores.  Most of the smaller stores were closed and if you’d set off a cannon down the middle of the mall chances are you wouldn’t have hit anybody.  It struck me as a fine idea to get a haircut at a franchise salon at this all-but-deserted mall; after all, the two stylists were just sitting there with nothing much to do.  Bad idea.  It’s one of the worst haircuts I’ve ever had and I can only hope that it grows out soon. 
We left Provo on a bright Monday morning and drove northward on I-15 through a broad handsome valley with snow-topped mountains on either side.  It was a stress-free and enjoyable trip, even if somewhat longer than we usually make. 
When we arrive in a city or town for the first time, our first stop is generally the Visitors’ Center and Pocatello was no exception.  A sign on the door indicated the center would be open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Unfortunately we planned to leave town on Friday so we were left to our own devices (and our GPS) to find the local attractions.  Because we had grocery shopping to do, we just poked around Old Town, hit the thrift stores in search of books and learned that the best wine prices in town were to be had at…are you ready for this…Ace Hardware.  They even had a wine-tasting schedule for the first Tuesday of the month….which happened to coincide with our arrival.  However, if wine samples were being doled out, we missed it.  Perhaps they were hidden behind the plumbing supplies on one side or the snowmobiling gear on the other. 
The Pocatello Zoo is on the reciprocal list so we headed off early on Wednesday to check it out.  The location is attractive but, as might be expected, they have very few exhibits…some mountain sheep, a lethargic bear and some bison who refused to take their faces out of the feeders.  Not every zoo can be St. Louis!
After the zoo we stopped at the Bannock County Historical Museum and Ft. Hall Replica.  The fort was closed, being open only on weekends during the “winter” months (and winter lasts at least six months in Idaho) but we did do a tour of the museum.  After that we trekked to the Idaho State University campus to check out their Museum of Natural History. 

Most of their gem and mineral collection was in storage with only a few major pieces on display but I was much taken with a 5200+ caret hunk of quartz which had been cut by a master, leaving it with more than 300 facets and enough glitter to shame the finest diamonds. 
As we were leaving the museum, we struck up a conversation with the gift shop manager who gave us tons of information about the area and admitted to his sideline business of coffee roasting.  Hearing that, we took off for the mall to seek out one of his products at a co-op of local crafters.  And thus we came into the possession of a pound of Mexico Oaxaca Pluma Tres Oros prepared by Bill’s Beans (www.billsbeans.com).
On Thursday we got an early start and scoped out the book sale at the downtown Pocatello library  then headed north on I-15 to the Ft. Hall Shoshone-Bannock Reservation.  We’d been told The Clothing Store had a large selection of seed beads and I was hoping to glom onto the size 8’s that I need for a project.  Unfortunately, the sizes jumped from 11 to 6 with no stop at 8 and so we soon wandered across the street to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Museum.  A small facility, managed by a charming lady named Rosemary Devinney, we were given a crash course in Shoshone-Bannock history and folkways.  It was here that we first became aware of a local celebrity named Randy’L Teton who was the model for the Sacagawea gold dollar introduced in 2000. 
Continuing north, we arrived around lunchtime in Blackfoot, the center of Idaho’s potato production and home to the Idaho Potato Museum. 

Housed in a former railroad station, the museum details the history of the white potato.  First grown in South America, the potato was exported by the Spaniards to Europe and then imported back to the United States.  Initially, the potato was avoided by the upper crust in Europe because it was thought to be poisonous.  Which it is, except for the underground tubers.  The nickname, SPUD, was coined from an English organization,  The Society for the  Prevention of  Unwholesome Diets. 

Our final stop in Blackfoot was the Bingham County Historical Society Museum, housed in a grand old mansion built by a wealthy merchant for his Southern belle bride.  The house became the center of society in early Blackfoot and now contains many artifacts peculiar to that era.  The furniture is all “of the period” and is in remarkable condition, including a rocking chair built by Brigham Young and several pianos and organs with their keys in fine shape given their advanced age. 
We are currently cooling (literally) our heels in Dillon, Montana where the weather is overcast and chilly.  We have our fingers crossed that it will be nice enough in the next day or two so we can make the run to Bannock State Park to see the remains of that ghost town.  Stay tuned for all the details.