Here’s a shot from Deadman’s Basin as the sun set. The camera did a good job of actually catching the deep blue of Montana’s sky that night.
Tag Archives: Montana
Lolo Pass
10 May 2013
I think I could just drive and drive and drive, checking out all that the American West has to offer. I never tire of the exploration out here.
A beautiful drive through the Helena Natl Forest. I’m thoroughly enjoying US Route 12. Today was my first visit to Helena. In all my visits to Montana I had never been to its capital. You have to love a city that calls one of the main drags: Last Chance Gulch. Not to mention, N Last Chance Gulch.
Did a quick pit stop in Missoula, before driving south to Lolo. I just love this part of the state, and the land along Lolo Creek looked like a great place for a cabin. The creek was high though, and I saw a couple of newly installed tubular levies put up to keep the rising water from homes.
Lolo Pass is a phenomenal drive, even in the lumbering Rover. I kept stopping at all the historical markers, which there are many, simply because I knew most would be about Lewis & Clark.
Coming around a sharp curve, I found a new Fiat 500 broadside to my grill. The 500 driver must have been “testing” the Fiats handling, as he swept his way around the curve and sideways into my lane and The Rover. I braked, but there wasn’t anywhere else to go, so I watched uneasily as the Fiat smoothly righted itself and zoomed off with only inches to spare.
It’s hard to be angry when you’re envious.
On the Montana side of the Forest, all access was still “Closed for the Season”, but Idaho wasn’t as soft. Maybe it was all for the best, because I’m camped at the best site I’ve had so far on this trip. The Lochsa River is roaring right behind my camp. In fact, I’m writing this now as I sit in my campchair on its bank.
We had rain & hail earlier as I grilled dinner. The sky has since cleared, and a thick mist has formed over the torrent of the Lochsa.
I think I’m going to sleep very well tonight.
Deadman’s Basin
9 May 2013
The last time I camped here, the weather was just as nice as it is tonight. I went to bed, leaving the stove and other things out, to be put away in the morning. I was awaken by the tent wall slamming into me from the high winds and when I crawled out from the tent, everything was covered in 6″ of snow. By the time i broke camp, I was soaking wet and ate a bagel for breakfast that had been thawed over the defroster.
Luckily, not everything repeats itself. A beautiful night camped here along the shoreline. I even had a campfire tonight after grilling up some more venison.
The Basin lies across Hwy 12 from the Musselshell. It’s incredibly quiet out here tonight, with only the sound of the waves hitting shore and the pine crackling in the firepit.
Circles
“Tell me the truth, how do you feel?
Like you’re rollin’ so fast that you’re spinning your wheels?”
——The Eagles
I was back in Little Bighorn country again today, and went by the Battlefield. It seems like I was just here.
“I’ve got a story, I ain’t got no moral
Let the bad guy win every once in a while”
——-Billy Preston
Rover Adventures Under the Big Sky
I-90
We had a little bit of everything on this day.
First there was the stark surrealness of Little Bighorn. Quite honestly, I don’t care that the edit feature on this computing device does not recognize “surrealness” as a word, because I control this blog, not the Ghost of Steve Jobs.
I found out that one can piggy back onto the wifi of a tour bus in the parking lot of national monuments. Up till now I thought the buses had no real function.
When one wanders for too long among the dead, one must pay the price of the rising mercury. It was 92 when we passed through Billings.
At Little Bighorn, I met a fellow who was driving up to Chicken, AK to work at a mine. He had a Toyota pickup with one of those little Scamp trailers behind it. He said he’d watch for me on the highway up, and that he’d stop if he saw me on the shoulder. Note: he didn’t say he’d help, just that he would stop. The conversation made me wish that the Rover was running a little better.
We experienced head winds between Billings and Bozeman that made me cuss & cringe. I saw a wild turkey cross I-90 that was felled by a gust and bounced several yards eastbound until it finally gained its footing and dignity. The poor bird had my sympathy, and I told the turkey so.
The NAPA electric fuel pump crapped out on me while climbing a steep incline. That was discouraging. It either died or could not pass through the vapor lock veil. I pulled off at the next exit & replaced it with the backup pump while parked in a field.
We hit a t-storm west of Bozeman that forced me to pull over because the wiper couldn’t keep up with the rain and hail. Hail makes a very unique sound on an aluminum roof, I must say.
Crossing the pass into Bozeman was torture. That’s all I’m going to say.
Finally, I exited on Hwy 2, which took us on a beautiful drive through a river valley to Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park. It turned out that the place was packed with kids on some sort of retreat, but I stopped anyway. For the most part they avoided me, but I did overhear the quote of the trip so far when a group of them walked to the shower house as I drank a scotch & read some Hunter S Thompson. One of the guys in the group said, “That guy is living the life… He has a fucking treehouse on his truck.”
Little Bighorn
It was a very early start for our first full day in Montana. Which I dutifully used up walking the grounds of the 1876 battlefield. The ranger gave a great talk about events leading up to & including the battle. Afterwards, I found it hard to pull away from the place, but eventually I managed as the temps began to climb.
Little Bighorn is a very spiritual place, and well worth a visit if you’re traveling through the area. Last Stand Hill has a beautiful view of some magnificent country, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the chaos of that battle that altered the lives of so many people.
Custer National Forest
The view from my tent:
Custer National Forest, Montana.
Custer National Forest
A nice drive without the headwinds, and the MPG rose back up to 13.5. I’ve given up on the idea of anything higher than 14 without doing some engine modifications.
I stopped earlier than I had to with the gain of an hour heading into mountain time, but I reached my goal of Custer NF, with free camping, so I pulled off, set up camp, then hiked about until hunger overcame me. It’s a beautiful forest, with stunning open vistas once one gets away from the main roads. I stumbled upon a herd of pronghorn today while out walking. They allowed me to get fairly close, so they must have known I was unarmed. I also walked up to some bovines, one of which allowed me to scratch between its ears.
The gas tank has made it two driving days on the Ivory soap.
I ran into another Alaskan here in Custer. I wasn’t overly chatty, which seemed to put him off a bit, but it wasn’t worth the effort for me to try to talk over that knocking, diesel Suburban of his.
Montana
The snow started to fall again when I was in Bozeman. The Cats were taking on the Griz in Missoula, and the state was stoked up for the annual football game. There was a pep ralley, for lack of a better term, in town for students and alum of MSU, so I stopped by briefly to check out the insanity.
The drive from Bozeman to Billings was through six inches of new snow. The only affect on the Rover was to slow traffic down to our speed. In fact, I actually passed several people including a line of thirteen vehicles, all in one, slow, methodical shot. It was euphoric.
The motels in eastern Montana were booked rather solid by hunters. So I found a quiet side road in T. Roosevelt NP to park the Rover and set up the tent. Quiet, until the wind picked up and it howled throughout the night. I could have been back in Alberta. By midnight, the snow had caught up with us and was falling once again.
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