September 16 - 19, 2021 Starting the Journey South

 Thursday (16th) arrived and we got up and had breakfast, got dressed and took our walk. We didn't do any chores. Today we are leaving our summer spot to head south. Leaving is always bittersweet. We finished locking everything up outside. Then we cleared the inside for travel. Steve cleaned the windows. It was a lovely day for a drive. We stopped at Seeley Lake Museum and took a short tour.  We had a very chatty museum guide who gave us a lot of information. I want to stay here overnight sometime, but it seems to be too close to our destination whether we are coming or going. We arrived at Deer Lodge Montana about 4:30 and got gas before we parked at Indian Creek Campground. Supper was leftover pizza.

Echo Lake, MT

 

Echo Lake MT

Ready to Go

The beautiful Swan River (looking South) at Ferndale, MT

Antique wagon

Crosscut of very old tree, labeled with significant dates

Seeley Lake Museum

Friday (17th) we did all our usual things and then loaded up the pick. Today was an adventure day. We drove to Garnet Ghost town. It was quite a drive. I drove so Steve could have a nice sightseeing time. Anyway, we evidently did not take the easiest route and maybe Deer Lodge was a little too far away to tour the ghost town. It might have been more easily accessed from Missoula. So we kind of doubled back to get to it. It was a nice drive until we got pretty close, then we had about 5- 6 miles of hairy forest type roads. This place is operated by the Garnet Preservation Society in partnership with BLM and if you go a different way you can bring an RV up here. I was surprised to see how many were in the parking lot. I figured there would be very few people here. I was wrong. We toured the many buildings and the dogs had a blast snooping around. This is a well preserved ghost town. We arrived home about 4:30 or 5:00. Next time I would pack a lunch because they have picnic tables! Although today it was pretty windy!

Saw these on the road to the ghost town

It's a pretty good hike downhill to get to the ghost town and remember, you have to come back up when you finish. Thankfully there are some benches where you can rest.

Sorry about the shadows in the pictures! The sun was directly overhead. We really enjoyed this place and I think Steve could have stayed longer. So more ghost town tours on our next adventures!

Who do you want to share your potty time with?
A Three Hole Outhouse!

I had to include these pictures since we do clean an outhouse during the summer! We took the easier route back to the interstate and found a stage stop and an old cemetary. There is a lot of neat things to explore in this area. We need to return!

There is an RV Park nearby called Bearmouth Chalet and RV Park at 1611 Drummond Frontage Road Clinton, MT. It looked pretty nice!

Saturday (18th) We decided to stay another night because we were a little tired from our excursion and we wanted to watch football!  So I went to the office and renewed our site for one more night. Then I did a load of laundry. First we watched OU and in the evening we watched OK State (OSU) beat Boise State by one point. A pretty exciting game. I wanted us to head down to Henry's Lake in Idaho and then through Yellowstone and the Tetons. But it looked like the weather was going to drop down to 20 degrees at night and we didn't want to deal with that. So we changed our plans and decide to route through Billings, MT.

Sunday (19th) we left Deer Lodge about 9:30. That is pretty good for us considering we had to eat, dress, walk the dogs and hook the pickup back up to the RV. 

We headed east on I-90 to Billings. We arrived at KOA in pretty good time. The first site we were in didn't accommodate our satellite dish, so we called the office and they let us change to a different site. We were glad because we wanted to watch Sunday Night football. We ordered pizza from Domino's (I think) and it took about 50 minutes for it to arrive.