Missoula, Montana

It was another long day of driving yesterday. We're nearly all the way across the state of Montana now. Happily, we've given ourselves a day of rest before embarking on the last two days of our journey toward home. 

Of course, we couldn't leave yesterday morning until Smitty had finished yet another photo shoot for the upcoming issue of Cosmeowpolitan magazine. When you're the sexiest cat alive, the pawpawrazzi won't give you a minute's peace. Here, he was doing his final "cheesecake" shot.

While he was busy with the photographers, I finished another section of my redwork piece.

I moved my hoop to the next position, and then it was time to get going.

We started our journey under moody skies.

The clouds grew less threatening as we went, and they cast some nice shadows over the landscape, making for a very pretty drive. Below, you can see the Yellowstone River flowing through the middle of the image.

We paralleled the river for a good part of the day. Here's another shot from a different location.

This is a landscape of wide open spaces and lots of ranches. Of course, there is the usual assortment of barns.

We were headed toward the Crazy Mountains. Eventually the road would take us north and around them.

We passed by the Greycliff Prairie Dog Town. It was tempting to stop, but we visited here when we started our USA Perimeter Tour back in September of 2017. 

I wrote a blog post about our visit. You can find it here and see more photos of the prairie dogs. For this post, I'll show just the one that went into the Sketchbook I was working on at the time. My one word for this photo: "Endearing." 

To see more photos from my One Word Wonders Sketchbook, click right here.

Okay, so moving on, we saw more barns and abandoned structures. After visiting the Homestead National Historic Site on this trip, I'm more appreciative of these structures.

We drove through diverse terrain yesterday. We began to see more evergreens, and more rocky outcroppings.

We saw lots of fall color among the aspens and cottonwood trees.

We came to an interesting valley that wasn't formed by a river. Instead this valley is the product of a force known as a "thrust fault," and "decollement." And, not being a particularly good student of geology, I can't really explain this. On the other hand, I've linked to a couple of good pages about it. The "thrust fault" page includes some animations demonstrating the movement of various kinds of faults. (Who knew there was more than one kind? Geologically speaking, of course.)

The same forces were responsible for this rocky landscape just a few miles down the road.

We crossed the Continental Divide at the place I've circled on the map.

Now that we've crossed over, the trek will be all downhill.

Approaching Butte, we saw this enormous pit left over from Butte's significant mining past. It's an interesting story, and I would encourage you to click on this link to read more about it. 

A quote from the article reads:

Butte, Montana was once known world-wide as The Richest Hill on Earth. A combination of geologic circumstances produced a mineral wealth that made hundreds of men rich and, more importantly, gave high-paying jobs and opportunities to thousands and thousands of immigrants from much of the rest of the world. An oft-told story is of emigrants being told, “Don’t stop in America, go straight to Butte!”

The pit stretched on and on, and it's clear there was a lot of mining here, and for a long time.

And even more...

You may be familiar with the Anaconda copper mining operation. Quoting the article again:

In 1882 the district produced nine million pounds of copper. In 1883 production leaped over 250%. By 1884 there were four large smelters operating and [construction was underway for] what would become the world’s largest metallurgical plant at the town of Anaconda, thirty miles to the west.

* * * * *

Anaconda took a fatal blow in 1971 with the nationalization of its Chuquicamata mine by the Chilean government, along with the Cananea mine in Mexico. Doomed by bad investments, the once-mighty company was sold to Atlantic Richfield in 1977. ARCO soon closed the underground mines and by 1983 all operations had ceased. The Anaconda smelter was scrapped. Only the smokestack remains.

And here it is. We stopped at a rest stop along the way where I could get a good picture of it. It's the tallest free-standing brick structure in the world, and it has been designated as a state park. It is also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Also at the rest area, I saw shrubs bearing these red "berries." I'm pretty sure I've seen these before, but I couldn't find where I'd written about them. They are about the size of cherry tomatoes. They look like rosehips, but the leaves on the plant are wrong for that.

Okay, but looking again at the pictures I took while in Bar Harbor, Maine, I came across these photos...perhaps I didn't include these in any of my blogs at the time:

They look the same to me.

Back on the road, we passed by another herd of antelope. I tried to get a picture, but I was just a millisecond too slow. You can see them just at the edge of my attempted photo below. I've circled them in yellow just to show you I'm not lying. And, yeah, it's not a great picture, but I'm posting it anyway, dammit! No herd of antelope can escape my shutter finger. Any questions?

Okay, so we were approaching our final destination of Missoula by then. We passed by more barns.

This one just shortly before arriving in Missoula.

We're in an RV park with lots of tall fir trees. When the kitties see that, they know we're getting close to home. I love it when they sit together like this.

I went right to work on my slow-stitching, and finished up the next section. I'm hoping I can finish the rest of the block this afternoon.

Also today, I'm going to try another dessert recipe I saw recently. I'm cutting it down to make it a dessert for two. I'll tell you all about it in tomorrow's post, assuming it turns out as expected. If not, then we'll never speak of it again.