Saturday, August 1 - Garnet Ghost Town and Back to Yellowstone

We slept in today and it felt great! I had been awakened at 1:40 a.m. by someone pounding on the outside stairway door of the hotel, and yelling. I called the front desk and the clerk seemed to wonder what I expected her to do about it. I pointed out it was a security issue. I was not happy, I’d been sleeping really soundly. I woke up at 7:30, showered, and got all the dry camping gear packed up before waking Rosie. We were in the car at 9 (quick hotel breakfast eavesdropping on german-speaking Harley riders. Is it eavesdropping if you can’t understand what they are saying? I wonder…).
We planned to drive another “ new road”. By now you know I love new roads (meaning roads I've never driven before, so new to me), especially those in Montana and Wyoming. We took Hwy. 183, which goes down the western side of the rocky mountain front and eventually between the Mission Mountains and the front.

Llamas at the gas station-probably pack animals headed to or from the Bob Marshall Wilderness

It’s a lot like northern Minnesota, a long, ribbon of a highway with tall pine trees on both sides of the road.

The only difference, of course, is the glimpse of mountains on both sides. I’m not as “keen” on the mountains over on the west side of the rocky mountain front.

It’s just a little too green…I love the rocky, exposed eastern front mountains. But it’s still very pretty.

Mission Mountains

Sign at Summit Lake.  I guess we shouldn't take loons in Minnesota for granted.

 Rosie was writing a story so we spent some of the time thinking of names for characters. There are some beautiful, small campgrounds along the road and south of the town of Seeley Lake there is a beautiful lake called Salmon Lake, with a state park, a lodge (resort) on an island, and a campground. Very pretty!

We had decided (let me rephrase that…I had decided) to visit Garnet Ghost Town, an old, abandoned mining town between Hwy 200 and Missoula. Due to all of the ghost stories Scot had been reading, Rosie was not at all interested in visiting anything with the word "ghost" in it.  On the map I looked at (admittedly not good for topo things) the route looked pretty level and normal, just a gravel road. After we turned off and started going steeply up a gravel road I realized I was VERY mistaken…this was in the heart of the Garnet range of mountains, I discovered.

View from the road to Garnet Ghost Town

Flat it is one thing this road  is NOT. That will teach me to use the appropriate maps!  After a very long 11 miles on washboarded roads and a coyote sighting we reached the town. We had also stopped at an old cemetery where 5 miners are buried.

It’s a high, lonesome place and I wished we had brought flowers. The setting and  stark appearance of the graveyard and headstones made me imagine the lives of the men buried there.

 I was surprised to discover that one of the graves did have flowers…artificial ones, but they had been placed there within a year, I’m sure. A relative?  Maybe...I like the thought of at least one of them not being forgotten.,

We reached Garnet Ghost Town, which is high in the mountains in the middle of a heavily logged area.  There are  still there a lot of trees around. Rosie had been very apprehensive, expecting that we would be the only people there and she was "freaked out" by that thought. She was happy to discover a ranger and a dozen other visitors.

Part of the town had burned at one point but many original buildings remain. It’s interesting to see the original wallpaper, very faded and often in shreds, but still on the walls.

Saloon

Woodwork On the Bar In the Saloon

Broken dish piece

We have no idea what this was!

Two-door outhouse

The only “eerie” part was that in a mirror in a hotel bedroom someone had written “get out” in the dust. Probably a tourist. But who knows?

This was part of a "What Am I?" table but we have forgotten what it was!

Hotel

Store

We liked the hotel and the store.  I take that back…one other eerie part was in the back of the store in a half underground room where it looked like logs had been let down into from above and it was dark, lit by lanterns. I got a very creepy feeling in there...like I should get out and I wasn't wanted. 

Then the REAL fun began. We wanted to get to I-90 without backtracking on what I thought was a slow, bad road. There were two options, First Gulch Road and Cave Gulch Road. Cave Gulch says “one lane road with few pullouts” and looks like a bulldozed track, not a road. First Gulch Road says “Trailers and RV’s not recommended”. Hmmmmm….I didn’t like the sound of EITHER. We talked to the ranger and he said to take Cave Gulch, “that’s the way we send RV’s”. I asked about the one-lane problem and what we do if we meet another car. “You won’t.” he replied. “Well, what if I do???” “One of you has to back up to a pullout”. This doesn’t sound good, but I was in a hurry. We start down Cave Gulch Road and I am immediately regretting it. I forget to breathe. It’s steep, it’s barely wide enough for one car, and the pullouts are indeed few and far between. I finally realize I am not breathing and gulp some air and slow down even more. How long will it take me to go 11 miles at 5 miles an hour? Is there a lower gear than 1st gear? No? S!$%!   I say a quick prayer and tell myself “You can do this!” and think about other fears I have recently conquered and decide I am fine, I will get us down. I even at times enjoyed the view of blue, hazy mountains in the distance. At one corner of a switchback (remember, it was not a road….it was more of a track in the woods) we came to a spot where there is one road going to the left and slightly up. The other goes right. There is a sign in the middle (that I should have taken a picture of) with an arrow pointing straight. But, you cannot tell which road it refers to. I know that is hard to picture but trust me, the sign makes no sense. I decided they couldn’t possibly expect me to go UP again, so we continued down. It was the right road, thank goodness! At one corner of a switchback, I made Rosie go get me a rock. She gave me a look as if to say, “Are you KIDDING ME!?!? We are driving this road and you want a ROCK??????”. But she did it, she found me a flat one for my rock cairn. We were joking around at that point and it still wasn’t easy but it was better knowing I was almost down. I may never have been so glad to see the end of a road, ever. EVER. 

Rosie was quite glad that due to our long journey to Garnet Ghost Town (I thought it would be 45 min. extra…it was over 3 hours) I had to give up my plan to visit the old Montana Prison in Deer Lodge that was in Scot’s ghost story book. I was going to have her sit at the restaurant across the street and wait since since she was far too scared to go with me. Next trip…

We arrived in Bozeman at 5:15 and headed straight to the world’s greatest Laundromat, yes, Duds and Suds AGAIN. We did our grocery shopping while the clothes dried and were back on the road by 7. We picked up Arby’s for dinner, our new timeframe did not allow time for a picnic. It was only our 2nd fast food stop of the trip…not bad!

We got to our cabin at Roosevelt at a little before 10 pm. The only wildlife we saw on the way in was about 5 or 6 elk a mile or so outside of Mammoth. I do not “count” the elk at Mammoth as wildlife sightings (just like I don’t “count” the goats that are right by the visitor center at Logan Pass in Glacier) so I have to decide if elk a mile away “count”. Still pondering that.

We had a nice little Roosevelt cabin again that I reserved 2 days ago when I called on a whim once we finally knew when we were leaving Glacier. I was shocked to find a room available. Thank you, whoever cancelled! Tomorrow a.m. we will be up by 5:30 and out the door to the Lamar Valley and then to get a campsite at Slough Creek. We are hoping for spectacular wildlife watching!