So many oddities come hand-in-hand with a ghost town. They are sieve for oddity: anything normal comes and goes but the strange curiosities lodge in the town to stay. In the case of Virginia City, that means a Nickelodeon that still charges a nickel to watch Bawdy films of scandalous women show their ankles and get your fortune told.
Montana has had its share of gold rushes. When gold was discovered in Alder Canyon in the 1860s, it was yet another in a string of strikes.
In front of the cannabis distributor, we came across the most interesting trailer of late: an oversized boombox. Questions remaining: does it actually play music?
After a day at the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, we thought it only appropriate to complete the day with dinner and beer tasting at the Lewis & Clark Brewing Co.
Dog on the move, relaxing in the bed of a truck.
There is an intense density of remarkable geology in Giant Springs State Park. The park hosts the largest spring in the country fueling the shortest river and merging with the largest river in North America.
Great Falls was an unexpected challenge to the Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery. At first, encountering a waterfall was an exciting moment. It meant that the Corps of Discovery—tasked with following the Missouri River and (hopefully) discovering a passage to the Pacific Ocean—was on the right route, according to intelligence collected from local tribes.
Cracker Lake Trail is a 12 mile hike deep into Glacier National Park through grizzly territory. The 1,400 foot elevation gain may be less than half of what we experienced in Big Pine but is still considered "strenuous" by many hiking metrics. In the course of the hike, we encountered waterfalls, glaciers, a wide range of ecosystems, a bull moose, and a grizzly bear.
Some people think that bacon makes everything better. I maintain that prosciutto makes everything better. Tonight, I wrapped chicken thighs in prosciutto to cook in the cask iron skillet. Having learned from my time consuming first experience of cooking chicken over a campfire, I bought boneless chicken. It was skinless—the prosciutto would make a more flavorful replacement. While I did add some salt and pepper, truly, the prosciutto was what defined the meal.
We had lunch in a ghost town. There were skulls on the walls, animal flesh on the table, and partially collapsed buildings all around.