Hardin

 

We left Missoula around 930 or so, after getting coffee. Our goal was to get to Garnet to see the ghost town there. I don't think it was actually on our way, we went  miles off course to get there. The ghost town sits smack dab in the middle of land owned by the Dept. of the Interior. It was a few miles in before the pavement ended. I was driving. Up ahead was a gate with a hobble to prevent livestock from entering or exiting, as I soon discovered. I was about 30 yards from the start of the gravel road when I saw the longhorn. It was just standing there, chewing it's cud I suppose. I was driving so I didn't snap a photo. The road, although rustic, could handle two cars, so the beast wasn't blocking. At 30 yards I couldn't tell if it was a young anemic bull or a cow. I stopped the car. As I was contemplating what to do, a truck pulled up behind me, forcing me to decide. I stepped on the gas and drove up and through the gate, onto the narrow road, passing what I discerned was a cow. Down in the trees near the longhorn, were 3 more cows and a calf, just hanging out.  The long horn cow just looked at Abby's car with its dumb cow eyes as I passed, completely unimpressed with the 2001 Honda CRV and its passengers.

While the drive was easy, if you don't like heights or sheer drop-offa, I'd skip this. Had we come up the other way, on the old stage coach road I suspect I would have shat myself. The vistas were panoramic. The 12 miles of gravel road were bumpy and windy (whine-D).  Several miles up we came to a lonesome graveyard and two "warming cabins" used by travelers to the active town of Garnet in the winter as they were traveling to the town. According to the sign describing the site, snowmobile afficionados and cross-country skiers use it to this day to warm up using the pot-bellied stove.

The ghost town was not too busy when we arrived, we didn't have to be with others as we looked at cabin after cabin, a saloon, a speakeasy, a general store, a farrier's shop, and a hotel. Interestingly, no school. Hmm. Just realized that. 

My favorite place was the hotel. Lots of excavation has been done, and its treasures all sit out. You can touch the stuff, pick it up. Very little is behind plexiglass. Inside the hotel, which was three stories and maybe 8 or 9 bedrooms, was a large kitchen, bigger than many of the cabins at the site. Life's detritus had been recovered from the dirt, and the many recovered items were on display here. Pictured is a Frisbie's maple syrup container. Had Frisbie played his cards right, his name might be synonymous with a pancake topping rather than a flying disk (and yes, I know it's frisbee).

Abby drove down the mountain and back out on the road to I-90. That took a couple of hours. Summer road construction is such a fucking cliche, and yet so damned accurate. There have been so many times our side of the divided four lane highway has been closed on this trip, detouring us to the other side of the divide onto an ersatz two lane highway, with semis speeding past us in the opposite direction. Several of these sites have had speed limits of 65--a marked difference from the routinely posted 80. I don't love it. No slowdown, however has been at all substantial or inconvenient.

We ended up in Deer Lodge, a depressing little town which still had a Rialto Theatre showing movies from 10 years ago, a town whose largest tourist attraction is a shuttered penitentiary/auto museum.  The buildings were charming, I would guess, only because the city is dead. I mean dead. 

We drove around 4 hours more until we arrived here in Hardin, MT. Unfortunately, the town did not get its name from the murderous gunslinger John Wesley Harding,. He was "So mean he once shot a man for snoring," according to the old Time-Life commercial from my childhood.

Tomorrow, Little Big Horn, Devil's Tower and Rapid City, South Dakota.

The best part of my year is happening right now, traveling 3000 miles with Abby in her surprisingly speedy CRV.