From Ghost Towns to the Big Sky to Yellowstone

Wednesday morning we departed Great Falls and began making our way towards Big Sky, MT. Over breakfast at JP's, we decided to take a scenic detour from Whitehall to Bozeman. This detour was to take us past a few "ghost towns". Our hope was to get to these towns before (or after) the forecasted afternoon storms. The drive down to Whitehall was uneventful. We stopped there and had lunch at BB's Cafe. Deciding to live on the "wild side" we ordered a pizza. Being from Chicago, of course, this really was living on the edge - Montana pizza??? To our surprise, however, the pizza was quite good. As we left BB's, the skies were darkening in the distance - of course in the direction we were to travel.
We checked the radar on our phones (what did we ever do without mobile Internet!?) and it looked as though we should be able to dodge most of the worst. We headed down County 55 to County 41. We saw the rain in the distance and knew it wouldn't be long before we would be driving through it. The rains began as turned onto County 287 towards Sheridan. As we approached our first "ghost town" in Alder, we drove right into a hail storm! The hail wasn't large, but it was pretty intense. We found shelter under a large willow tree - probably not the smartest thing, but we wanted to protect the Jeep from any possible damage. Once this storm passed, we drove through Alder a little more. We were both a bit disappointed as there really weren't too many interesting buildings or old artifacts to photograph.
Leaving Alder, we found our eyes once again scanning the ever growing thunderheads rolling in over the mountains. By this time the rain was quite persistent, but we pressed on to our next ghost town - Nevada City. It was obvious that we missed the worst of this particular storm. Further down the road, the hail was covering the hillsides like snow! Making our way further south on 287, we passed a a small house with a shed. By the roadside was a sign that read: "Pan for garnets here". Since we had the time (and wanted to avoid the next big storm cell), we decided to stop and check it out. Steve, the owner of this humble establishment,set us up with a bucket of mostly dirt, showed us how to rinse the dirt in sieves to reveal all sorts of stones - among them garnets. We spent about almost an hour working on our bucket and picking out the dark red gemstones. We may have been snookered, or not, but we had fun nonetheless. Once we get back home, we'll see just how "precious" our gemstone finds really are.
We continued on towards Nevada City & Virginia City, the rains seem to let up a bit but the skies remained threatening. Nevada City ended up being far from "ghostly" as well. It has a lot of old buildings, but the town itself is still quite vibrant. Onward to Virginia City! Once again we were somewhat disappointed. The buildings were old, but well kept. The town is being preserved as an historic landmark by the Virginia City Preservation Alliance. Even though Virginia City is far from being abandoned, it provided a lot of great photo-ops. It had everything from old trains to old cranes to old buildings and old mining equipment. Maybe on our next tour of Montana, we'll come across some real ghost towns.
Our next stop upon leaving Virginia City was Big Sky. We dodged a few more storms, drove through some more hard rain, ducked under another tree and a gas station to avoid being pelted again by hail. Our accommodations in Big Sky, MT are at The Lodge at Big Sky. What a beautiful place! The room is huge - it's got 10 foot ceilings! - and comfortable. The lounge area is very cozy with a huge fireplace. We spent some time last night at the bar. The barkeep/front desk clerk introduced us to a local vodka called "44 North". The vodka is distilled from huckleberries. It had a pleasant taste of huckleberry without being too sweet. We both agreed it was quite good.
We spent today (Thursday) in Yellowstone. We tried to explore some areas of the park we didn't quite get to last year. On our visit today, we saw a family of elk grazing along a riverbank and further down the road - a black bear! Unfortunately, the camera person (me) was too slow in snapping a picture of said bear. Maybe next time! We re-visited the geyser basins - with their mudpots and hot springs. The smell of sulfur was thick in the air. We drove through a rather long construction zone (what are the odds...LOL!) We had dinner in West Yellowstone at Bullwinkle's. All in all it was a good day.
Tomorrow we plan on taking a trip down through Yellowstone to visit the Grand Tetons.