Day 11

Saturday, September 20

Fairly long drive today, went from Miles City in SE Montana over to Great Falls in NW Montana.  Another nice drive.

On smaller roads almost all day.   There was a stretch of about 100 miles during which we saw only about 4 ranches, a few cows, and nothing much else except prairie and buttes.    Empty country!

As Linda said in an earlier post, you don't drive by a gas station in Montana without filling up, especially if you are pulling a boxy trailer.    Several towns shown on the map were completely abandoned.  We encountered perhaps 8 vehicles in 100 miles on this US highway.

Empty country in Rosebud County.   

 We then drove along the Musselshell River Valley, a really nice area where ranches exist that are tucked down into a better watered channel of land on each side of the river.   Trees line the ridges along the river.

Musselshell area.

 

We traveled through Lewistown, which is near the Judith River, named by William Clark for the young girl back in Kentucky whom he later married.    From there we followed US Highway 87 to Great Falls.

We'd seen the Snowy and Little Snowy mountains about 25 miles west as we left the Musselshell River.    They are actually quite tall, one is over 8600 feet, and are well east of the Rockies.    As we traveled Highway 87, we could see the Little Belt Mountains.     Some of the Little Belt mountains are also above 8000 feet.    These isolated mountain ranges in Montana are known geographically as "island ranges" because they aren't connected to major ranges.    I had not known of them until this trip.   

The primary wildlife that we observed were 3 or 4 groups of pronghorn antelope along the road.   I could not get a good photo so have borrowed the one below from the National Park Service.

We are a little surprised that Great Falls is still basically in the plains of Montana.   We'll visit the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center and the falls tomorrow and have more to write about Lewis and Clark in this area.     Drove by Malmstrom Air Force Base, where my sister and her family lived about 30 years ago.

Linda adds:

It was a long day of driving.  Beautiful and remote.  Towns were very small...one or two houses and perhaps a school and if you were lucky, a gas station....forget Walmart or McDonalds!  Ranches were seldom seen from the road, only the signage and the dirt drive and a few cows and the occasional horse to say welcome.  Great Falls is a metropolis in comparison with a population of a little over 59,000.  The influence of the military is evident by the number of casino's, etc. on the road in.  The air base actually covers 23,000 square miles, about the size of West Virginia!