Unfinished Business: 16/08/11

Tuesday 16 August 2011

I totally heart Montana and it's wonderful to be back. We're staying in a massive log cabin between Anaconda and Butte and plan to visit old mining towns and ghost towns. As much as I love the jaw-dropping views that you could roll in, I am fascinated by all the early history and the lives of the pioneers.

We slept last night in Missoula. "So what brought you to Missoula?" a man asked us. "Did you take a wrong turn?" And we saw a bumper sticker which read 'Keep Missoula weird.' Not much else to say about Missoula, except I managed to catch on TV a live webcast of the local council's meeting which work colleagues know would have made my day and, on the way out of town, we saw billboards advertising the Testicle Festival. Apparently it's the world's largest testicle festival - whether that's to do with the size of the testicle or the size of the festival, I don't know - we just missed it. There's a website, though. (Find the link yourself!)

Steve gave me the choice: Visit an old prison or an old mining town called Philipsburg. Family can guess which one I elected (and genuflected). Philips with one 'l'? A no-brainer. Little album on the right hand side. Then we drove to a ghost town called Granite which was four miles up a mountain track. Very interesting and I've done a timeline down the left.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch

The Bar-U was Canada's first corporate ranch and is now a historic site. (As a by the way, in 1919 Prince Edward the abdicator visited it and loved it so much he bought the one next door).
It was quite a community, with some of the ranch hands out with the cattle living in wagons -which have now been restored and are on site - while at the ranch itself the other men were working in the smithy, fixing things, mulching the grain, harvesting hay - all kinds of agricultural stuff. And everything has now been preserved.
It was also the biggest breeder of Percheron horses. When we went into the stable, there were all the right horsey noises and smells, so imagine our surprise to see the horses were cardboard cut outs! Then we went into some other stables and, again, there were all the right horsey noises and smells and we thought, "Not going to be fooled again" and these ones were real!
There was a cookhouse where all the men ate, and upstairs a dormitory where they slept. There was even a post office on the ranch. Only the manager could have his wife with him, but fortunately there was a brothel nearby.
Everyone who works at the Bar-U now is so enthusiastic and full of it all, it really was a fascinating thing to do and some photos are here on a slideshow. I think you'll like them.

Medicine Lake

This is a weird one: it's a lake with holes in its bottom. So, rather like a bath when the plug's not quite in, in summer when the water run-off from the glaciers fills the lake more quickly than it can drain away, you get a deep, expansive lake. But in winter, when the run-off slows right down, the lake shrinks to a small stream. The water flows out through the holes into an underground cave system, re-emerging 10 miles downstream. In the 1950s people tried to plug the holes with sandbags, mattresses and bundles of magazines! So that's where all those council magazines went.

Glacier National Park

In 1850 there were about 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now, thanks to global warming, there are only about 26 left, and it's reckoned they'll all be gone by 2030. Wonder if they'll have to change the name.
It's 1600 square miles with, essentially, one road running through it so lots of trails and tracks for walking and exploring. We did a great ride, just five of us. All these stables have different rules, regulations and attitudes. This one, you had to sign and initial pages of waivers, basically agreeing that riding is a dangerous and rugged sport and you understand that you might die. No cameras allowed, but if your horse stops to pee you should stand up in your stirrups and alert the wrangler to halt the ride by calling out "Potty break!" As you can imagine, Steve said very firmly that was something to which he could not agree.
We also had a boat trip on Lake Macdonald in a 1920s wooden boat in the most wonderful weather. The lake is ten miles long and 4 1/2 miles wide. It's all very big here.