Memorial Day in Southwest Montana

We took off this Memorial Day Weekend for a little Southwest Montana Roadtrip. Our first stop was Dillon to hit the (in)famous Patagonia Outlet Sale. We picked a route out on the Montana Gazetteer that looked pretty interesting we headed out west of Dillon to check out the Pioneer Mountains Scenic Byway. We drove out from Dillon and past the small town of Polaris, MT and adjacent Maverick Mountain Ski Area and continued down the road and set up camp. From there we headed over to Elkhorn Hot Springs. It was a small, pretty rustic developed pool that went from about 4 feet deep to six feet deep. It was pretty empty when we got there but soon after abnout 40 people arrived all crowded into the shallow end because the deep end was over everyone's head. Julia had been nursing a stuffed up nose all day and wasn't very excited about not sleeping in her own bed. She managed to stay awake off and on until about 3 AM because she couldn't breathe through her nose. By the time the morning came Jenny and I decided to scratch the whole camping idea and just make our way home. After taking down camp we headed over to a place called "Crystal Park" that someone told us about at the hot springs where you could just pick Crystals out of the ground. This place was crazy. It was a pretty aggressive crystal digging scene out in the middle of nowhere. We were 150 miles from the nearest city and there were about 50 cars in the parking lot and hardcore rockhounds from all over the place. The whole area was littered with huge craters where people had dug for crystals. There were whole families with the kids digging in a whole over her heads throwing dirt out while mom and dad sift through it. We continued down the highway looking for a good place for a hike. We pulled in at the Coolidge Ghost town trail head and walked in a half mile to a mining ghost town. Julia was pretty over it by that time and we checked it out for a bit and headed back to the car. On the way back we passed a wagon train of mule drawn covered wagons with with trailer tires, propane tanks and water holding tanks. The Mountains in the Pioneer ranger were awesome and the area definitely needs some further exploration.







Julia snacking on a graham cracker at camp
Julia and I digging for crystals with a stick at Crystal park
Jenny pointing out some old building in the Coolidge Ghost Town
A building falling in the river
Sweet Mountains
Montana RV

The new Right Angle Communications site is up and running.

It is late so I'll make it short and sweet.

We are now the proud owners of a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom home in a nice little pocket of a neighborhood on the West side of Kalispell. We're pretty pumped. We drove up to Kalispell Thursday night, closed on the house on Friday and it was ours. It is looking really good. The yard is awesome. There are a ton of huge trees and the previous owners did a lot of work with gardens all around the house and the flowers were just coming into bloom. We moved a couple loads of stuff in this weekend that had been sitting in the parents garage for about 5 years now and then we are moving up for good on the weekend of the 11th of June. I included a panoramic shot of the front of the house. A Quicktime VR of the backyard and a couple of other random pictures. Check it out.

Closing on the house up in Kali tommorrow.

Wish us luck.

Pretty good weekend went down here. Saturday Jenny, Julia and I hiked to to top of the Bridger Ridge and enjoyed the good weather. Sunday we took Julia down for her first visit to Yellowstone park to go check out the baby buffalo. She was pretty uninterested in the animals but had a fun time walking around and checking things out.

That was pretty much our last leisurely weekend for a while. Next weekend we head up to Kalispell, to sign our lives away and finalize the purchase of our house. Wish us luck. Then we go into full moving mode from then on.

It's May 12. snowing. nothing new.

This past weekend, Jenny, Julia and I went to go visit Keegan and Ryan, some friends who recently bought a house on the Rocky Mountain Front (location not to be disclosed). It was conveniently located just east of the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Continental divide. We went expecting a Unabomber style shack but they found an amazing little A-Frame situated on top of a gorge with an amazing view and large creek down and that bottom with numerous waterfalls, one coming in at about sixty feet high. Saturday morning we went for a walk up the creek and checked out all of the falls, and at one point there is about a 20 foot waterfall into this gorge, which at it's narrowest is only about 3 feet wide. We kept hiking up the river and into an old burn area and from there you could have just headed straight into the Bob Marshall. The weather picked up and started to rain so we headed back for the comfort of the house. From then on it just started dumping all day. I haven't seen it rain all day like that in a long time. Later that afternoon Keegan spotted some bright colors on top of the gorge and it was some kayakers. We went outside to check it out. We caught up with them just below the large waterfall and found that they had portaged around that and were lowering their boats back into the gorge. We hung out on the bluff to watch them run the rest of the creek and then retreated back inside because it was still pouring. The next day (today) we took off in the morning. We tried to head out the way we came in on the "highway" (one-lane dirt road) but two miles into it, it was super muddy and a car had already slid off the road. I touched my brakes and slide about 30 feet and found that I couldn't get out of the ruts. We bailed on that idea and opted for the much nicer dirt highway to the north that eventually turned to pavement again. Just a short 40 mile detour. On the way out we were driving through the plains and it was pretty amazing because Jenny and I had never really seen that part of Montana before. There were tons of Antelope, different kinds of birds and we saw the largest Eagle sitting on the side of the road that either of us had ever seen. We drove past a Hutterite colony out in the middle of nowhere where everyone was walking in the middle of the highway like cars didn't even exist. Good weekend trip.




Photos:
Prime Location
The View out the Window.
The House with the Creek Below
The Whole Creek Runs through this Gorge.
A Closer Look at the Gorge.
The Largest Waterfall
Creek Boaters
An Eagle on the Side of the Road

KGLT Bozeman is now streaming online