Monday, 15 August 2022
At the headwaters state park, I ended up not moving across the street, but instead waiting at our site until 7 AM when I could run the generator to heat up enough coffee for the road.
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| today's route |
Bozeman was less than a half hour down the road. Just past Belgrade, I saw a hot air balloon flying near the mountains. Glad to see they're not exclusive to Albuquerque.
We passed an open pit mine that I think was for gravel.
In Bozeman we first stopped at Cooper Park, a lovely place. Hidden behind a bed of roses, I found a small historical marker that said Bozeman tried hard to be chosen the state capital; as a consolation prize they were allowed to be the home of the state's agricultural college. That school was sited on the area that had been set aside for the capital buildings.
So I drove by Montana State University. It's an attractive campus and is definitely an ag school. For instance, I saw separate buildings for various plant sciences/fields.
I saw a sign in town touting the "Montana Pitmaster Classic." It's a BBQ competition later this month that's a benefit for the local YMCA. Sorry I won't be around to taste Montana's idea of barbecue.
Back on the road, a sign said, EXTREME FIRE DANGER - TAME YOUR FLAME!
On the radio, during a discussion about a drop in the stock market I heard somebody say, "In the category of NBD - no big deal," which wasn't a phrase I'd heard before (probably because I'm not on Twitter).
For an hour we headed east on I-90 toward Big Timber. We passed the Absaroka Mountain Range (per a sign) and crossed the Yellowstone River. And we battled some very strong crosswinds.
The town of Gardiner looked bigger than it was - they had 833 residents at the 2020 census - and I wondered what industry supported it, because I didn't see anything. Turns out it's tourism from Yellowstone National Park not far south of here. Only this year, the Yellowstone River flooded, requiring evacuations and business closures and the closure of the northern entrances to the park. (That's why I'm not able to drive in this month on a highly touted scenic drive to and from Montana.) Here's a newspaper article about the situation. https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/gardiner-faces-loss-of-tourism
I'm reduced to listening to C/W stations around here (it's that or religion) and I heard a song with the refrain, "Let's meet in the middle - if you don't tell lies about me, I won't tell the truth about you."
When I see dead animals in the road - porcupine, skunk, raccoon, deer - I think about how their protective defenses work well against most predators but are useless against cars. Evolution just doesn't work fast enough to keep up, I guess.
In Big Timber, a Conoco station offered regular for $4.18/gallon. I guess the price is definitely coming down. That's good news. From here we turned north on US-191.
We passed the Crazy Mountains (Montana's often kind enough to provide a sign labeling these landmarks).
I saw a large herd of cows with calves.
I came up over a small hill and a guy at the side of the road waved me down - just in time, as it turned out. By the time I decided he wasn't planning to rob me and came to a stop, I saw what was just over the hill: a very large herd of bison milling around, going back and forth across the road. They couldn't decide which side of the road they wanted to be on and kept going back and forth. Lots of them had calves with them, which added to the confusion.
There were several humans on the roadside, trying to convince the bison that they wanted to go to a particular side of the road, but after a bit I realized they couldn't exactly walk up to them and grab them by the horns and lead them across the road. This may be a semi-domesticated herd (I'd seen a sign earlier that said something about a bison ranch), but bison don't have many generations of breeding in captivity as cows do (and I hear even cows can get peeved now and then). These guys clearly didn't want to go too close to the bison.
Which kept milling back and forth. I watched several mama-and-calf pairs in front of me go to one side, then one of the pair would go back across the road so the other would follow. Over and over. I was there for easily 10 minutes. And I was finally just howling with laughter. It was hilarious to watch.
It reminded me of that video that was around a year or so ago that showed up on Good Morning America or The Today Show - the one of the mama bear trying to corral her 3 cubs and get them across a road, and one or another of them would run back across and mama would go fetch it so the others would follow along behind. Over and over. Any parent can relate. I was really sorry when the guy that had told me to stop managed to create a small window of opportunity for me to get by. And I still wouldn't have gone except I had a couple of vehicles stuck behind me that didn't have the same front row seat to the show that I had.
I met a filled logging truck on the road, but I have no idea where they got those trees. I sure don't see any forested areas around here.
And then I got to Harlowton. With a population of less than 1,000, it seems like an old tired town to me. But to the people who live here, I think it may be as vibrant as they want it. I'll give some examples.
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| Wheatland County Courthouse - built 1910 as a school and converted 1938 to be a courthouse |
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| Historic Graves Hotel - its grand opening was in 1909 |
Tonight's campground - at Chief Joseph Park - had electric hookups but no water or sewer. The park is owned by the city, and when I called to ask where I could dump my waste tanks, she directed me to the "Clothes & Car Wash" down the street. It's both businesses in the same structure, with the tank dump beside the car wash. They ask for $5 for dumping, and give a little metal box with a slit for the money.
The campground was equally on the honor system. They had little envelopes to put the $20 payment in, and those too got slid into a little metal box.
If you take another look at today's route map, you can see that Harlowton (which locals call "Harlo") is in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing else around here but farmland. It's pretty peaceful.
Except the park adjoins the local fairground, which seemed to be gearing up for an event, because I watched horse trailers arrive and decided not to include that area in the range for Dext and me to walk. I was surprised at the number of RVs that stayed overnight here - big class A rigs - but then I realized there really isn't a lot of choice if you're going through on your way to somewhere.
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