Day 12 – Wednesday : Yellowstone to Choteau (516 km) Brian and LaDawn had given us some firewood they had bought but not used. The combination of buying firewood and bringing a tent to the Tetons instead of a proper truck camper had clearly been the cause of the rain; hence the lack of opportunity to burn the wood.
I look trip over the wood exiting the bathroom and stare at it deciding what its fate will be in retaliation. Most places we stay have nice fire pits or barbecues we could use it on, but I’m actually pretty useless at setting fire to things unless it involves gasoline, and always end up with all our clothes, equipment and accommodation smelling of smoke. We decide to find someone to gift the wood to.
A glance around the campground at our neighbours shows that one isn’t up, the other has two trucks a 5-er and an OHV (they are the ones with the expensive generator) – they clearly have everything needed in the event of imminent war, so are unlikely to require a couple of bundles of firewood.
Looking the other way I see a young father with his 2 kids, helping them set-up breakfast. They have a regular family car and a small tent. They look like people who need firewood, and to prove the point are just in the process of setting fire to some as I watch. I go over and ask. They are very happy to relieve us of the wood; they live in Alaska and are on a 6-week camping tour of the lower US states.
On pulling out of our campsite we notice a late arrival from the previous evening parked a few sites down. It attracts my attention because it is clearly not local. It is a late model Toyota Hilux (not Tacoma) with a small fibreglass camper on the back. As we crawl past at tickover, partly to avoid waking people with the 6.6, I noticed a Brazilian flag on the back – definitely not local.
For years Sally has bugged me about visiting Montana. Turns out she was right. The countryside is fantastic. We head north on US-191 and see Lone Mountain appear in front of us – it even looks like a proper mountain; the type kids would draw if you asked them. Still using every opportunity to convince me that skiing would be a good pastime to take up, Sally spots the sign for Big Sky resort and urges me to turn off and head up for a look.
After this detour, and a quick cup of tea from Sally’s vacuum flash (she insisted on buying one in the first Walmart we came to), we carry on northwards, with a short stint going west on I-90, before heading north again on US-287.
We are again following the Missouri, and the Lewis and Clark trail, enjoying the views from either side – golden prairie tinged with bright green fresh grass borders, with mountains on the horizon and small white clouds bobbing in the big blue sky.
The roads are narrower here, not always with a shoulder. Combined with quite high speed limits for 2-lane this means your closing speed with opposing vehicles is considerable, even though we religiously keep to 60 mph. As a side note at this point I’ll say that I keep to 60 for several reasons. Yes, fuel economy is one of them, as is reducing engine-load (I’m not relying on the turbo providing all the power at that speed). But more importantly I know at that speed I have a chance to handle the vehicle if something disastrous happens. I am not on its handling limits and should a tire blow out or I need to swerve to avoid something I have some leeway. It is a similar rule I have followed when towing – keeping to a speed where if something happens I can safely control the vehicle and not get into an oscillating, escalating disaster.
Now, there was a reason I was talking about driving speed. Oh yes, it was the oncoming big rigs. One doing over 70 veers close to us; maybe we are veering close to the centre line too. But the result is a huge shockwave that hit us like a tsunami. I feel the camper lift slightly and the steering go light, accompanied by a bang somewhere above our heads. Nothing physically hit us, just the wall of air. We seemed to have survived though, but it was worth investigating what the bang was.
We pull off the highway and across the single line railroad tracks to an empty campground and boat launch ramp at Yorks Islands, on the Missouri.
A quick inspection shows that the shock wave has taken out a section of Chet’s aerofoil. I am relieved this is all it was since this component will be discarded during the rebuild and Chet plans to construct a replacement.
While we are there we might as well have a sandwich and admire the very rapid flow of the river – I wouldn’t want to try to paddle against that. All the Lewis and Clark historical marker signs seem to feature them pointing into the distance, so this is clearly the posture to adopt when standing next to the Missouri.
At Helena we join I-15 north for a stretch. We notice that a local road follows the freeway and looks more interesting, so we come off at somewhere called Wolf Creek hoping to follow that instead, but it turns out that this is the point where the road diverges from the freeway and heads in the wrong direction. Wolf Creek itself looks like it had seen better days, undoubtedly before the interstate took all the passing traffic away.
We re-join I-15 for a mile before pulling off onto US-287. This is a great stretch of road. Quiet, through beautiful rolling countryside. We cruise at 55 mph – just fast enough for the torque converter to lock up and a nice speed for appreciating the scenery. You could get out and walk along the middle of the road it is that quiet.
The highway takes a dog-leg at Augusta, then carries on north, before joining the busier US-89 at Choteau where we find what I think is the only roundabout or traffic circle of our journey – I bet that confuses visitors. We fill with diesel in town and check the road atlas. There is the Lewis and Clark National Forrest to the west of Choteau and a tent symbol indicates we should be able to camp there, although it is quite a few miles of dead-end detour off of US-89.
We drive along a road heading towards the mountains. Eventually it turns to a dirt track and starts to snake up a canyon. We aren’t sure if this is public land yet, but find a turn-off onto a fairly flat barren area near to the creek. There are no signs and it just appears to be deserted land. We level the camper behind some trees shielding us from the dirt track. This is also on the higher side of the area since I am conscious we are close to the creek. I make a note of the water level and we go for a walk down the dirt track.
About a mile west we come across a sign marked “Indian nose rock”. Looking around we spot what it is referring to on the rock wall opposite:
Sally points out that there is a guest ranch down here too, so she feels happy that if anything happens there is somewhere to go for help. I assume by “anything” she is thinking about bears or rising water. I check the water level a couple of hours later and it has gone down, which is a reasonable sign, especially since this area looks like it might flood during the spring thaw.
While parked we decide to do some packing. Chet has left a range of things in the camper in case we might need them. By this stage in the trip we know what we need and what we dion’t, so we take the opportunity of packing some of the things we don’t need into boxes and securing them in the rear of the truck cab. This will save us some work later on.
The odd car comes past during the evening, and we wonder if we should be here or not. That question is answered when I hear a diesel pickup truck pull off the track and stop about 30 yards from us. I throw on some shoes and jump out to greet whoever it might be. I feel a bold and friendly approach is best in these situations so spotting the character approaching from his truck, with his dog still sat inside the cab I smile and thrust out my hand towards him. “Hi, I’m Steve” I say. He may not have been expecting this, but years of parental teaching kick in subconsciously and he grasps my hand and introduces himself as Jerry. Now we have broken the ice we can talk without fear of aggression. Jerry explains that this is his land. I apologise. He says there is a proper national forest campground just over one mile down the road; we had almost reached it during our walk. However, he isn’t going to run us out. I wonder, had he needed to knock on the camper door or shout for us to get our attention, or had we been less than smiley and welcoming, would this effective offer to let us stay the night have materialised? Possibly not. He says a neighbour had alerted him to our presence but his main concern was high school kids coming and messing around – starting fires, getting drunk, shooting stuff. I assure him we certainly won’t be starting any fires and had even donated our only firewood the night before. I feel for Jerry. Having to repeatedly drag yourself out to have encounters with strangers trespassing on your land can’t be a great pastime. But I guess he could have put a chain across the opening, or even a “Private” sign. Although whether that would have stopped the people he was really worried about is questionable.
We sleep better knowing that we are not going to be approached during the night, and if we are it would more than likely be Jerry warning us of a problem such as the creek rising.
It is however very windy, so our sleep is still a bit disturbed. The canyon must funnel the wind from the mountains.
