Kathleen's Window: Flooding, Back to the Mountains, and Butte

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

We spent another night at Fort Peck Lake after another day of torrential downpours. Cabin fever was beginning to set in and everything in the rig was feeling damp. Sunday morning we consulted Weatherbug and saw on the radar that the only weather in the whole United States was swirling on top of eastern Montana! Seriously? Two more days of rain were forecast. We had become a rain magnet and it was time to move on. But, where? Originally we were going to swing through the southeast part of the state, see the Crow Reservation, the Battle of Little Bighorn site, and then Bighorn Canyon before heading into Yellowstone. Flood warnings were posted for the route we needed to take, and since it involved desolate small highways, we were pretty sure they would be flooded, and turning around could mean very long drives back. Paved roads are scare in that area.

All weather bison are waterproof

Now we know why they have a life preserver requirement on our RV windshield hang tag for the Army Corps campground

The only reasonable course of action, if we didn't want to sit for two more days in the downpours was to retrace our route across Highway 2, the Hi-Line, back to Great Falls and explore the southwestern part of Montana instead. That area only had flood watches instead of warnings, the US highway was well constructed to stay out of the water, and the radar showed the rain stopping somewhere near Great Falls. So, off we went back across Montana.

Driving out of the nearest town, Glasgow, where we got back on the Hi-Line, we found flooding. The road was fine, but both sides of the highway were flooded, and we witnessed a young man with a backpack being rescued from his trailer. Every small town we went through had flooded side streets, all the roads going off the highway were dirt and flooded, and the fields were like lakes, many with just harvested hay bales sitting in the water. The rain pelted the rig, and then the wind picked up as well. Greg is a “Steady Eddie” and drove on through the mess. Sometimes the horizon looked brighter, and then would darken again. The Big Skies of Montana revealed hundreds of miles of downpours and gloom.

Resident wading away from his flooded trailer

Small streams becoming big streams

We stopped for lunch at a small rest stop that included a shelter for Sleeping Buffalo Rock, a sacred Native American artifact that used to sit on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River nearby. It was removed to a local town in the 1930's, but finally by 1967, it was moved to this site along the highway. For decades before the move, the residents complained that it wandered and bellowed at night! It looked pretty stable and content, and all we heard was the rain and the howling of the wind. We drove on.

Sleeping Buffalo Rock

Hay bales in 3 feet of floodwater

Over 300 miles later we arrived in Great Falls again. There were sprinkles and the promise of sun on the horizon. The rain and flooding lessened as we drove west, but now we needed to stop for the night. Greg was still hankering for a Montana steak. We hadn't had the opportunity to find a restaurant for a few days, so we pulled into the Montana Club, and tried the local brews and steaks. Stuffed, we drove over to the Walmart across from the refinery, we turned our nose up at several days before, found a level spot, and spent the night with at least a dozen other rigs. The trucks running up and down the road next to us were noisy, but it felt good to be somewhere else and out of the rain.

Steak!

Monday morning the sun was coming out from behind the last of the rain clouds. We went into Walmart to resupply the food, and also found a great little health food store to pick up a few more essentials. They had great looking local produce from a Hutterite colony. The Hutterites live an agrarian lifestyle on collective farms, but use modern equipment and methods. They are similar to the Amish in lifestyle and dress. We saw a bunch in Walmart, and the men were in dark suits and cowboy hats and had beards. The women had black bonnets, pinafore type aprons, and identically styled long striped dresses. Each woman had the freedom to wear a different colored stripe. In our travels we are always surprised to see Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish shopping at Walmart. Walmart and its corporate greed, and poor employee relations seems to be the antithesis of the theology of these religious sects. But, I guess if you need to buy something, it's the cheapest place to go and Walmart prides itself on supplying all your needs under one roof...

Before we left Great Falls, Greg pulled out his trusty copy of the roadside geology of Montana and made a decision about what he wanted to see in southwestern Montana, so we drove toward Anaconda and Butte. Leaving the prairies behind, we drove south on I-15 towards Helena. We followed the Missouri River valley, and said goodbye to it and drove over the Big Belt Mountains, and down into the flat valley that holds Helena, the state capital. Our route took us through town and out the other side on Route12. Another climb over McDonald Pass and the Continental Divide brought us to I-90. A short drive west on the interstate and we got off at Drummond and found the Pintler Scenic Loop and drove south down a broad valley. The mountains in this part of Montana are not crowded together like the Glacier area, and the ranges are separated by broad valleys with ranches and grazing cattle.

Heading southwest for sunshine and mountains

Volcanics north of Helena

The road finally climbed into the Flint Creek Range in the Beaverhead- Deer Lodge National Forest. We drove around Georgetown Lake, a reservoir at 6,300', thinking that we would find a secluded national forest campground. We settled into Phillipsburg Bay Campground with a half dozen other campers. Fine, but the lake has a lot of development around it for a national forest, and the road into the campground behind our site also led to a housing development, so we had traffic coming and going. Not what we hoped for, especially the trucks hauling earth moving equipment. Oh, well, it got quiet at night, and we only stayed one night.

Missouri River near Tower Rock

Heading east along the Big Hole River

Precambrian mudstone near Georgetown Lake

Georgetown Lake campsite

Yesterday morning we filled our water jugs and drove the rest of the way around Georgetown Lake. There were a lot of log cabin McMansions, and a very pretty lake to draw folks for fishing in the summer, and ice-fishing and snowmobiling in the winter. Cattle graze throughout the area too. We had a cow-jam to get through before we left the lake. We finished the scenic drive which led us to the town of Anaconda. This former company town is streets and streets of 50's era small ranchers. In it's heyday it supported many families with the copper smelting industry. Today the huge smelter smokestack, thought to be one of the tallest masonry structures in the world, is a state park. The tower and the huge black slag piles dominate the entrance to the town.

Our campground hosts saying goodbye

Georgetown Lake

Copper smelting slag and the big chimney at Anaconda

We continued on to Butte, home to the now defunct most prosperous copper mine in the world, and pork chop sandwiches. We wanted to see the first and taste the second! Driving into the downtown we found Pork Chop John's on Mercury Street. The streets leading up to it were Iron, Platinum, Gold, Garnet, and Porphyry. No problem finding parking downtown for the rig. There are a lot of free parking lots where buildings have been torn down. Pork Chop John's opened in the 1920's to serve the miners, and still endures at the same location. We sat inside at the old counter and ordered sandwiches and fries. The pork chop is a slice of pork sirloin, very thin and breaded. After it is fried it's put on a hamburger bun and dressed with mustard, pickles, and a slice of onion. Frankly, we never tasted the pork chop. The condiments were so strong!

Pork chop sandwich

After lunch we hiked the hilly downtown. The block across the street from Pork Chop John's was settled by Chinese immigrants and originally held laundries and noodle shops. At the top of the hill we found old mine structures, and a lot of old housing stock. Walking back downtown we were surprised to see the empty buildings, lack of traffic and traffic lights. Most of the downtown intersections had four way stops!

Downtown Butte

We drove over to the Berkley Pit viewpoint. The city has a nice park and information center there. We paid our $2 each and walked through the tunnel carved in the side of the pit to the view of the now abandoned open pit mine. The landscape is oddly photogenic. It was closed in the early 80's and has been filling with groundwater since then. It contains a toxic soup of all the metals leaching out of the pit. By 2023 it will finally be high enough to move into the city's groundwater supply. Next to the pit is the current mine. Water is drawn out of the pit, processed and used for their operations. The city of Butte exists for mining and it's fortunes rise and fall based on the ability to extract metal from the ground.

Ore haulers at the neighboring pit

Leaving Butte behind, we hoped to find a more remote area to camp. Driving I-15 further south, we exited west on Highway 43 and followed the Big Hole River valley until we reached the Pioneer Mountains National Scenic Byway. We followed a wide valley south along the Wise River until it narrowed and we reached a cluster of Beaverhead- Deer Lodge National Forest campgrounds along the small river. We picked out a site at Boulder Creek campground. There is little traffic on the byway, and only two other campers. We are overlooking a small creek, the sun is shining, and we signed up for two nights. Greg took off on his bike this morning to explore the trail behind us. Unfortunately he could only travel five miles. But, we finally found a beautiful forest with no rain and peace and quiet!