On the Road...

Well, here I sit on the second morning of our vacation watching the sunrise in Big Sky Country...Montana. It's spectacular!

The first day of our trip we drove down through Patterson to Colville and then across the pass to Tiger and Sandpoint. We stopped for some gas there and picked up something to drink. When we paid for our stuff, I noticed a jar of chocolates on the counter and asked if any were sugar free. The woman said, "no, they are too expensive for Trick or Treat"...we were laughing at our miscommunication and of course Tom, being ever supportive, pipes up with "nice costume, Honey!" What a guy! Then the woman at the store says..."Oh, it's my hearing...I'm older, you know. I'm 52."

We stopped along the way at a few antique stores...glad we brought the truck! and then carried on almost to Missoula. We stopped at a little town called Arlee and had bison burgers for supper then found a campsite at Jocko Hollow. There was no wi-fi there so couldn't get online. By the way, I sat in the camper last night struggling to get wi-fi connection, and then realized I was sitting in an aluminum box and signal was weak...anyway, I'm outside this morning and it's beautiful...hear the cows???...they are a couple fields over...must be feeding time.

Yesterday we drove through Missoula and headed down toward Drummond. At Rock Creek we saw advertisements for the Testicle Festival...hmmmm...only in America. I guess they have a big get together every August where the cook up a bunch of bull testicles....and eat them!....yuk! Must be a guy thing. We left Drummond and carried on down toward Anaconda. It's actually quite a nice little town. You could pick up about 10 acres with a house on it for less than $100K...sounds kind of enticing. Maybe in a few years. Anyway, we stopped at an antique store and asked the fellow there if there were any sights in the area we shouldn't miss. He said to drive up to Coolridge, a ghost town in the mountains....so, off we went. Coolridge was cool to say the least. It is an abandoned mining town who's hayday was in the late 1800's. There are all sorts of buildings, most of them falling down, and lots of remnants of days gone by. The road up there was twisty and narrow and there were snowy patches. What a rough life people must have had living there...lots of hard work and survival for the most part. Spending your wages at the company store...probably only making enough to pay your bill there. Quite interesting. We did get lots of pictures and if I can, I'll post some this morning.

After Coolridge we went to Crystal Plateau. Now that was fun. It's in a National Forest, but we're able to dig for crystals in the pits. You didn't really need to dig much as they were laying all over the ground. The bigger ones are in the deeper pits I guess, but since we only had sticks and a little hammer to dig and break stones open with, we didn't get too deep. We found a good handful of crystals...could have spent much more time there. As I was digging, I was thinking of Leslie Anderton and FrankFowler and how much fun they'd have digging out there and teaching the students about how crystals are formed. I'd like to know myself!

Anyway, it was almost dark by the time we left...drove into Dillon, Montana at nightfall, had a good supper (Tom's a good cook!) and called it a day. All that fresh air and mining are hard on a person!

This morning we're off to Nevada City and Virginia City, both in Montana, and then we'll head into Yellowstone. Nevada and Virginia City are both ghost towns, but I don't think they are as primitive as Coolridge...guess we'll find out today!

Can't say I miss work yet though am thinking about it. Might take a few more days to wind down and get to the point in a person's vacation where they forget what day it is and just enjoy what they are doing.

Will try to post some pictures now and will update when we find another wi-fi connection.
bye for now....
T&C