Tripometer – 5029 mi
Gas Gauge – 398.417 gal
Location – Diamond S RV Park, Ronan, MT
Lodging – $36
Cans of OFF – 4
A Smoky Drive.
We drove from Livingston to Ronan, MT today. On the way we passed through Butte and stopped along the way to see what was reported to be a ghost town. Not really a picture taking day but we both got a big kick out of Mentzer’s Used Cow Lot.
Butte was really interesting. I think we both were aware of Butte’s mining past but neither of us knew the extent. As always, we travel with Google Maps up and running to give basic directions. We were floored when we noticed the sheer size of the mine north of Butte. (Go ahead and look it up – it’s as big as the entire city.) This same mine has the distinct feature of containing ‘The Berkeley Pit’ – An old open pit copper mine so polluted that it has a pH of ~2.5 and is filled with so much heavy metals from the surrounding soil that it has been known to wipe out entire flocks of birds that have landed there on migration. They now have horns in place to scare off the birds.
The ghost town – Bearmouth, MT was a complete bust. There was only one small shack remaining in town. We tossed around the idea of travelling up a dirt road to see Garnet, MT – an intact ghost town just North of Bearmouth but towing the trailer up one lane dirt roads has gotten us in some difficulty already that we don’t want to repeat. 🙂
We pulled into a nice little RV Park fairly early in the evening and enjoyed dinner and a few episodes of ‘The Walking Dead’ in our fully hooked up trailer. This is the first time this trip that we’ve had a full hookup (electricity, water, & sewer). Its a rare luxury on the road.
Place Name Soup: After hours of intensive study we believe there is a pattern to naming roads, creeks, trails, etc. in the Rocky Mountains. Here’s our hypothesis – Pick three words from the following list, string them together and voila(!) you have your place name:
Animals – Bear, Wolf, Moose, Elk, Deer, Trout, Beaver
Minerals – Copper, Gold, Silver, Iron, Coal
Nature Related – Rocky, Timber, Pine, Ridge, Trail, Path, River, Creek, Lodge, Gulch, Range, Prairie, Mountain, Hill, Run, Lake
Other – Vista, View, Lost, Old/New
Here’s a few for example:
- Pine Creek Lodge (This was the place that started this line of thinking.)
- Copper Ridge River
- Trout Gulch Creek
- Prairie View Road