Great Road Trip of 2017....Part Sixteen/Day Thirteen

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Five of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Six of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Seven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eight of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Nine of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Ten of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Eleven of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Twelve of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Thirteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  

Part Fourteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE  

Part Fifteen of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

The next morning we bid our hosts, Cindy and Ty adieu and headed out toward Montana.

Some large silos in Ashton as we drove out.

Driving North toward Missoula Montana by Henry's Lake.....

And then we were in Montana.

                                           

Who are these Bozos?? lol

Then we hit the Continental Divide at Raynolds Pass.  You would think that the Atlantic Ocean Watershed would be on the right and the Pacific one on the left of this sign.  Nope.

So as we drove toward Missoula we made a little detour at Ennis MT....

Quake Lake?  Not named after a religious sect but probably the site of a caldera(extinct volcano)that filled with water and formed a lake.

Ennis Montana is the Home of World Class Trout Fishing evidently....

In 1863, gold was discovered nearby here in Alder Gulch.  Ennis is named for a prospector named William Ennis, who set up shop on this site along the Madison River back during "the Montana Gold Rush" there.

We drove past "Willie's Distillery" in Ennis.

This awesome statue of a stag Elk sat in front of a shopping mall in town, but it was for sale and closed.  Pity.

We spotted one of the "Fish Out of Water" art installations in town.

Another kitschy spot in Ennis, though we didn't stop as we were heading elsewhere for a stop....

After awhile we were rolling into Virginia City Montana.  This town was established during the Montana Gold Rush and it became the 2nd Territorial Capital in 1865.

A sign on one of the original buildings from it's founding that has been preserved.

Info on Virginia City HERE

From the Montana Government website......

"Today, Virginia City is considered the best preserved example of the many placer mining camps that flourished during the 1860's throughout the Rocky Mountain West.

It provides an exceptional sample of commercial architecture of the mid-nineteenth century.

The greatest concentration of historic buildings dates to the 1870's, but some of the buildings' later modifications also have historical significance."

A sign in one of the gift shops telling about the discovery of gold in Alder Gulch.  The assay value of gold in the 1860's $16 an ounce.  Imagine if you had just a portion of all the gold today that they took out of the creeks there back then......

Today Virginia City is a slightly tacky but historic semi-ghost town.  About 150 people actually live here fulltime.

Here's a video about the history of Virginia City.....

And just why did we stop here on our trip out West?

My paternal 4 x Great Grandfather and two of his sons, my 3 x Great Uncles, ended up near Virginia City.  They didn't travel together, I believe the son William John struck out from the family's homestead in Iowa at 32 years old in 1863 and John followed in 1864 along with son Francis, who was barely 16 at the time.

Remember me standing in the Oregon Trail wagons ruts earlier in this trip?  John Redfern was the one who made the trip out West along that trail at the age of 59.

Here is the only known photograph of John Redfern the Montana Pioneer.

So we bopped around Virginia City.

Most of the old buildings there house gift shops, selling treats, t-shirts and assorted Western themed tchotchkes.

We hit some shops in town and just soaked up the old western feel.

                                        

Here I am in a dirt parking lot off of Main St.  They were running rides in that red trolley thing through town.

We then drove North of VA City to Laurin, MT where the Catholic church was built in 1901.  

There had been a wooden church there before where my Montana Redfern family members had attended.

We stopped in a hole-in-the-wall store on the main highway there to ask if they knew where the Laurin Cemetery was.  The clerk didn't know but he called someone who was familiar with it(got to love a small town!lol)and we got directions.  It was a couple of miles up and off the main road and not well marked.

One of the more interesting headstones......

I am a fan of old cemeteries and could spent hours in them but I didn't want to subject Kim and Joel to it so we didn't stay long.  Just long enough to check if there was a grave marker for John Redfern(there was not)and any other Redfern relations.

There was no marker for William John "John", but there was quite a large stone for Francis and his wife.......

There were stones for 12 Redfern relations in all.  William John and his wife are known to be buried here too but no markers were found.  There was also a grave where a stone had been but it was gone next to numerous Redferns.  It's possible that was were John Redfern was laid to rest.

This was Francis' grandson's grave.  Arthur's father was also Arthur Joseph and was nearby.

There was also a huge monument in the center of the cemetery which marked the grave of Jean-Baptiste Laurin(pronounced La-ray).  He was the the founder of Laurin, a Frenchman who set up a trading post in this area in 1863(likewise the cemetery is also named for him).

Gold was found in the Alder Gulch area so his business boomed with people moving in the prospect and trap.

He was the wealthiest man in Madison County at one time, owning quite the empire of businesses and land.

More on Laurin HERE.

As we left the cemetery I noticed a road sign that said California Creek.  I had read that John Redfern had a placer mine at one time on California Creek.  There was really nothing there anymore 100+ years later so we didn't drive along it but I think I took a photo of that road sign.

So we drove onward out of the Alder Gulch area toward Missoula, passing lots of interesting sights.

Old railroad train cars.

A hotel that replicated an old Western building.

A huge house and compound.

Another old looking store.

A ranch with an antler covered post over the entrance(I only got a small piece of it in this shot.

A giant Rooster on the roof of a building that must have been a restaurant at one time.

And then we were in Sheridan, Montana.

An old brick building from the early 20th century.

A livestock business in a picturesque barn.

Sheridan proper....sidewalks and fenced yards.

This house had some interesting creations in the yard.

Then we hit the highway and made tracks.

Old cabooses.

Some old industrial wheels.

Those things were enormous!

Oh look!  A gas station with a "casino".  Seems to be a "thing" in a lot of places.

On the interstate we passed this semi hauling a professional racers vehicles......

Vaughan Gittin Jr., the, the Formula Drift Driver who spearheads the RTR brand.

More HERE

More lovely scenery....

Exit for Anaconda, home of the famous Anaconda Copper Mine and seat of Deer Lodge County.

Oh goody, only 104 miles to Missoula and our stop for the night.

Sign for the Old Montana Prison and Auto Museums.  Not this time.....

About dinner time and we made it to Missoula.  Kim wanted us to eat at one of her favorite places in Missoula, the Paradise Falls Restaurant.

A slightly out of focus Kim and Joel showing off their GINORMOUS Chicken Fried Steak slathered with gravy.  They shared it since it was so big and they got an extra serving of mashed taters with even MORE gravy! lol

I opted for an Elk Burger.  While in Rome after all.....

I think this was one of the best burgers I ever had!  I loves me some elk on a bun. ;-)

After being stuffed Joel drove us around town a bit.  We went to see the house where Kim lived as a child in Missoula.

Then we headed to the hotel to check-in.  I believe it was a Days Inn.  I do remember there was some issue with getting 2 rooms there.  I waited out in the car, sweating to death and choking due to the fires in the area that Summer.  

I noticed a woman in a burqa across the parking lot standing next to a car.  She evidently thought that no one was nearby to see her because I watched as she hiked up her skirt and took her hand to her nether regions and then put that hand to her nose and appeared to be smelling herself.  ?!?!  I bet she was roasting in that burqa and that hand didn't smell too good. ;-)

We finally got the rooms and checked in.  Once in our room I noticed the bed was quite tall........

The mattress came up to my hip!  There was no way I was getting in that bed to sleep.  Hubs ended up standing on the opposite side of the bed, while I took a jump and got my torso onto the bed, then he grabbed my hands and pulled the rest of me onto the mattress.

Oh, the perils of being short in a tall world.....

The "art work" in our room. lol

We went down to the very small indoor pool for a bit as it was so hot and we had been in the car for quite awhile.  Burqa women was down at the pool, still covered head to toe.  She seemed to be traveling with a handsome man and a cute girl in her 20's wearing a skimpy bathing suit.  She sat by the pool and kept folding and unfolding a piece of paper, rocking back and forth and chanting something.  It was a bizarre scene down at the pool.

We headed back to the room after a quick dip and hit the hay before setting out on more adventure on Day Fourteen.

Sluggy