The Windmill Posts

Missouri Headwaters

The only official stop today was at the headwaters of the Missouri river. I paid the fee online, which was handy since I didn’t have cash for an envelope. And now I am sure I’m going to receive emails about the joys of the Montana State Park system. The headwaters themselves were closed. Not the waters, obviously, but access to them. Not for the government shutdown, but due to “dangerous conditions” which seemed to have passed. Got to see the headwaters and it was.. two small rivers coming together. I’m sure there was a reason it was two rivers, but there was no documentation at the site. Disappointing. Score one more for the true source – the Mighty Mississippi!

Something I found odd about the park was the speed limit. In the park going from place to place it was 65 mph. If it were in Minnesota we’d have you putting along at 25. The frontage road leading to the park entrance was 70. Just didn’t feel right somehow.

There was one unofficial stop today, and that was Bozeman Montana. I have a friend who grew up there, so I took a picture from the car (including the car interior) of the high school entrance. And then I texted it to him with no explanation. I took a couple generic Bozeman pictures in case they had constructed a new school since he had graduated, but he texted back all sorts of confused. Worth it!

Mountains

I feel I’ve covered this topic enough, but had a few things to add based on today’s experience.

I expected it to be all mountains today but it was flat land with mountains sticking up here and there. Some had snow, some didn’t. It was fun thinking what it must be like up there, in the snow or in the dry areas, way up high. What a view, I’m sure. But so remote and peaceful. Clearly I need to watch Brokeback Mountain again. Not for the Brokeback, but for the Mountain.

While the flatland got smaller and the mountains closer, we turned a corner and it felt like I was seeing Scotland. The low rolling hills with a thousand hues of green and brown grass and the mountains large and cold looking in the distance. Beautiful.

Telling stories

The dark fir trees were interlaced with what looked like yellow fir trees. After a bit of research, they’re apparently Larch trees, and lose their needles. But not after turning a beautiful yellow. The way they’re scattered in the hills, sometimes they’re a few sparse individuals. Other times they’re large sections of the mountain, giving them a mottled appearance. There was one particular mountain that had streaks of the yellow in their dark green.

Back when the kids were little, I loved making up stories for them. One favorite was the “King of Wisconsin” – back when there were kings and governors and burgermeisters and committees ruling over different parts of the country. Well, the king of Wisconsin was a loathsome dictator, and he had a wall built around the state to keep his subjects in. (I swear to got this was told long before 2016). Well, eventually the President decided everyone needed to be running things the same way, so it was fair and far less confusing. In doing so, some of the leaders were ousted from office. The King of Wisconsin was one of them. But the new governor ordered the wall to be turn down — with the exception that wherever there had been a heavily guarded gate, that wood was to be used to build big welcoming signs saying “Welcome to Wisconsin.” Not just to put forth the message of welcoming, but also to remember the tyrant who built the wall. And that is why the Welcome signs are made of wood – even today!

Again, seriously I came up with this story in 2006 or so. No political agenda or commentary. It was just a fun story to tell the kids. And I could stretch it out, you gotta believe. I would make that story go on and on and on for so long – and the kids loved it!

There’s a point coming here. And that’s the fact that I miss telling those stories to the kids.

And if I had kids in my car today… I would tell them all about the great Flaxton Firehose.

The Great Flaxton Firehose

Way back a long time ago, there was a town called Flaxton. This was so long ago it was even before the 1980’s. Before Television! Before Cars! So, a long unspecified time ago. Flaxton was a small mining town on the Flixton river. Total coincidence with the names. Flaxton was named for Eugene Flaxton, the inventor of socks. And Flixton was named for the kitchen took that you used to turn apples inside out.

The town was doing well. Some folks were mining by tunneling into the mountains. Others were panning for gold. Both were quite successful and all manner of equipment was brought into the town, and the engineers who knew how to use it.

In the spring of one of those long ago years, I forget which, there was a horrible fire on the mountain to the north. The town was spared, but the fire came close and everyone was very worried about future fires.

One of the engineers came up with an idea. A hose. A really big hose. One that was so powerful it could shoot massive amounts of water to far away places – like the side of the mountain. It used so much water they couldn’t just fill a tank and use the water from there. They had to put a really big hose in the river, and suck up the water from there. It was a clever system, because the water they shot up onto the mountain would run back down the mountain and back into the stream, so they wouldn’t dry up the Flixton river.

Wouldn’t you know it,a few months after the project was complete, a lightning strike ignited some underbrush and a huge forest fire was started. Everyone in Flaxton came out to help. They set up the hose and aimed it at the mountain. The engineer aimed the hose at the mountain, and shot a stream of water up on the mountain and it put out some of the fire! He aimed it carefully five or six more times and managed to hit enough of the fire that the conflagration was ended!

A young child ran up to the engineer and said the river was completely dry! The engineer explained about the water coming back, and just as he finished, small waterfalls appeared at the mountain’s base, sending the water back into the river.

Now, everything we back to normal, it seemed. Except the miners panning the river for gold just weren’t finding gold anymore. It was all gone. It was a hard winter for the panners, who had to join the miners in the mine. But when fall came around and the trees on the mountain started getting ready for winter, some of them changed color! There were hundreds of these trees, right where the water had been sprayed! The engineer climbed the mountain to see what had happened, and it turned out that when the needles fall of those trees that had been hit with water, there was gold on all of the branches!

The hose had sucked up the river water, but also the gold dust in the water. It stuck to the trees when the water went back down the mountain, and it wasn’t until those trees lost their needles that the gold showed itself.

For every mountain except the one by Flaxton, those were Larch trees, which turned yellow and dropped their needles. But in Flaxton it was gold!

Something like that. I miss telling those.

Wallace Idaho, a magical place

One of my thoughts today was about wanting to scare goats into fainting. And a complaint a day or two ago was the fact that the Geographic Center of the Nation was bogus. I did wonder about where the geographic center of the world was, but clearly I wasn’t thinking big enough. Also, I’ve been going on and on about mountains, and all I wanted was to be nestled in them. Surrounded and kept safe from storm and harm.

So the end of the day comes and I check into my amazing Stardust Motel in Wallace Idaho. I didn’t know it at the time, but now I knew it is truly a magical town. The motel is perfect. Supremely styled in a retro fashion, but comfortable and modern enough not to suck. They were having a Halloween thing in the parking lot next door. It looked like fun. And this little town is surrounded by really tall hillmountains!

After some debate about the worthiness of half a Subway from lunch, I decided to go out and get dinner. My research brought be two surprises.

First – Wallace Idaho is the center of the universe. Mayor decreed it. Got a picture of the sign and everything. So that’s the true and proper center of something.

Second – the restaurant I found for dinner? The fainting goat! That’s it! This might be my new favorite town!

I feel quite nestled.

Deets

• License Plates: AL, AZ, CA, ID, KS, NC, SC, TN, WA, Quebec
• States: MT, ID
• Departed: 7:37 am MDT, 28 degrees
• Original ETA 2:26pm MDT, but in PDT so 1:26pm
• Arrival: 3:00 pm PDT
• Weather: Massive blue skies turned cloudy, rainy after retiring to my room
• Budget: Food below, Hotel below
• Food: Latte, Latte, Grapefruitade (more in another post), Subway, Buffalo wings
• Music: Bis – Return to Central, 07 – Simple Things, Massive attack – Heligoland, Thomas Dolby – The Flat Earth, Henryk Górecki – The Symphony No. 3, Op. 36, / the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

Observations

• The downside to not knowing what day it is – it makes “days of the week” pill boxes hard
• At rest stop an old guy gave Rocinante the stinkeye. Jealous, to be sure.
• That rest stop had individual restrooms – but they looked like a jail cell tho
• Individual restrooms are better than standing next to some trucker farting
• I keep seeing black billed magpies, very pretty – black and white sharply contrasting
• There was a sign warning about wind gusts that had a for real airport grade windsock attached
• A sign saying tire studs allowed through May 31 – doesn’t that jack up the road though?
• I missed crossing 1,000 miles.
• The longest distance between two navigational directions so far: 286 mi
• Wrinkle in the 80 mph speed limit – in MT trucks are limited to 70 mph, so easy to pass. Very few elephant races.
• Crossed the continental divide
• Butte cut down a whole mountain copper mining.
• Ate lunch at a lovely rest stop while looking at mountains
• How frustrating must it be to be a trucker and have cars constantly passing you?
• How many invisible cars have I accidentally run off the road?
• Early in the day I saw a bunch of trees with fall colors, but I cant remember seeing any until now
• When I see a crowd of goats I want to honk to see if they’ll faint.
• Windshields block reality. I opened my window for a while and the view became so much more 3D and vivid.
• MT has official roadside crosses.. They have a red metal post and a white cross. I saw one with a name, and another instance where there were three on the same post.
• Furkot (nav software) knew I wanted my drive to be 9am-3pm. But it figured in the time change. So instead of 6 hours I got 7. I didn’t want more! Although when I’m going west to east it’ll be the opposite.
• I feel like I’m with someone. “When we get to the hotel” or “Where are we going for dinner.” Sometimes my companion isn’t anyone in particular, other times it’s a friend or family member. It’s nice to feel that.
• Why do trees grow straight up, and not perpendicular to the surface?

Pictures