Missed a day -- sorry. Gone from Clear to Smoky September 13, 2020

Yes, well yesterday I was able to kayak twice.  Once in the morning and once at night.  And look at how clear it was.

Today, the smoke settled into Montana like this

I fear it is going to be like this for the rest of our journey which, of course, makes me less sad to have it end.

The last two days have been full.  Saturday we visited Philipsburg, MT which is the site of another ghost town called Granite.  This one has not been tended to as carefully as Garnet as you can see from the pictures but it has a lot more stuff in it including the stamping mill.  Most of the photos show what is left of each building and most of that is masonry and granite.  The boards that formed the homes or offices on top of the rock foundations have either just collapsed and  been left to lay where they fell or are gone altogether.

Here is a picture of the only bank in Granite.  I assume that this is just the vault because it was only big enough for money -- not people.  And those brown bars on the ceiling of the interior are iron -- pretty sure they were to keep robbers out. 

Most of the "homes" were humble little cabins -- the Superintendent however, lived in this place:

And this is where the gold was extracted from the rock -- the stamping mill.  I'm pretty sure there was some water and mercury involved and I didn't get a picture but there were pipes leading out of the ground down the hillside which I am sure contained the toxic residue of whatever treatment was applied here.

You really have to be in front of this thing to appreciate the size and work that went into it.  The Egyptians had nothing on the folks here that wanted to build a plant out of indigenous rock.   

Philipsburg had something else to offer so we hit the brewery and sampled a bit of their IPA.  Kind nice!  This town has really spruced itself up for tourists.  Check out this cool architecture:

This morning (Sunday) like I already said, dawned smoky and sunny (couldn't tell one from the other).  We spent a couple hours cleaning the trailer and then struck camp and headed to Wisdom, MT.  This was supposed to be an awesome scenic highway.  Well, we finally got what the rest of the northwestern states got - smoke - and the views were not so good in fact impossible. 

Pulled into the RV park that we had reserved and found out there were showers (Yay) but no laundry 😞 so I threw back to my camino experience and, after asking permission, washed my essentials in the sink and hung them on the line that I had brought.  Voila!  Another 5 days!!

We had the time so we headed up to the Big Hole Battlefield National Historic Park which was 10 miles from here.  At this place, the sleeping camp of the Nez Perce was attacked by the US 7th Infantry in 1877.  About 75 Indians were killed -- mostly women and children -- during this surprise attack that began at sunrise.  There were a couple of trails and I walked one that lead to the campsite of the Nez Perce.  The park service has re-constructed their tipi frames there and they made quite a solemn statement.

Turns out, in the end, there were 2 chiefs left to lead their people. They combined to lead the tribe to safety, heading to Canada.  At a spot 40 miles south of the border, they separated and 400 members lead by Chief Joseph surrendered at Bear Claw while Chief White Bird, who said he would never surrender made it to Canada with 250. 

This is the battlefield -- smoky today.  

Hard to believe that such a peaceful and bucolic place could wreak such heart break and pain.  Again, War, what is it good for?