Monday May 15, 2023 - Bakers Hole National Forest Campground to Butte MT

Just as the campground host promised, the view this morning from site 65 was wonderful with the rising sun painting the steam coming off the river. What a find this little Forest Service campground was compared to the RV park options we were looking at last night. And all for $12. The one flaw in the Forest Service campground system is you can't tell which ones are open and which ones are closed. The website for Londesomehurst Campground just said first come first serve. Maybe there's another way to tell. We seem to be out of the snow now as we go north so it may be less of an issue, stay tuned.

We saw a McDonalds back in West Yellowstone Village and went there for breakfast and wifi. Today we are deviating a bit from RT 191 to visit a retired Mt Abe math teacher that Deb knows who lives right off RT 287. We also decided to go to Butte to see the mining museum there that Sarah told us about yesterday. Butte has a closed big copper mine so we needed to check it out and compare with our little Bisbee closed copper mine.

RT 287 did not disappoint with snow capped mountain ranges to the east and west as we drove through grazed green grass land (they have lots of water). The road was not heavily traveled and in 90 minutes or so we found the home of Joanne and Chris Casey. Joanne was a math teacher for many years and we soon were reminiscing about Bristol, VT where we all raised our kids. Chris is an avid BMW guy so Milo had plenty to talk about. Great stop and good catching up.

Next stop Butte, MT. We went north until we hit I-90, the interstate, and were shortly in Butte. Butte is built on a side hill and in its heyday had over 100,000 people living there. It is about a quarter of that size now since mining stopped back in the 70’s and 80’s after 100 years. Same history as Bisbee but bigger. 

We found the World Museum of Mining on the outskirts of Butte. They had no mine tours available but we were able to tour the grounds. Back in the 70’s they created a model village with every kind of show and service a mining town would have had 100 years ago and they also have a collection of all kinds of mining equipment lying around the yard. We were able to reserve a spot tomorrow so Milo can come back and do the full tour and go underground. Deb wants to wander around the historic downtown which is actually called Butte's "uptown".

So tonight is our now weekly routine of washing all our dirty clothes and getting a hot shower and going out to dinner in town.

Tomorrow we go to Bozeman and visit more old friends and decide what to do next.