Friday, September 4, 2015 - continued
Ennis was a cute little town.
It turns out the activities in Ennis was the Madison Fly Fishing Festival. Even though fishing is not one of our interests, we walked all through main street.
We saw several large fish sculptures in town. This is the prettiest of them.
We liked this Elk. The mall was mostly gift/souvenir stores.
As we walked by the Summit cafe earlier, we noticed through the front window, tempting baked desserts on display, so we decided when we had finished our tour, we would go back there and pick out something to carry home with us. Whoa! They locked the doors at 3:00PM and we didn't return until 3:10PM. Oh well, neither of needs the extra calories.
Both the pictures above and below are of a few of the buildings in town.
This is part of the vendor displays at the fly fishing festival.
The 3 pictures below are some metal art at the front of this city park on Main Street.
As we were headed back to the Jeep, we saw the car below.
Someone is really in to dinosaurs. ☺
Below is at one end of Ennis' Main Street.
Great little town!
Because the rain clouds had mostly cleared and the sun was shining, we made several stops along the Madison River and the grassy fields on our way back to West Yellowstone.
Can you find the blue boat in the river?
We saw many boats floating down the river, with people fishing. We assume they were fly fishing.
The striations on this rock caught Tic's eye.
See the man fly fishing in the middle of the river?
That water is COLD. He must be a die-hard fisherman.
After we got back home, this is the view from our site. What a beautiful ending to the day!
Friday, September 4, 2015
Today we move to West Yellowstone, MT. It is raining in Deer Lodge, MT as we pull out.
The low lying clouds are cool looking.
As we drove through Butte we saw this Fly-Fisherman with a fish on his line.
As the day proceeded, the sky began to clear. It was wonderful to see the sun shine.
Our route followed the Madison River for over half the drive. It was really beautiful. Along the way we drove through this rustic little town named Ennis. We knew there was something special happening, because of the vendor tents we saw on the way through town. We decided that after we got parked in West Yellowstone, we would drive back and check it out.
Hebgen Lake is a very long & large lake. We traveled beside this lake. We started seeing signs about Earthquake Lake. We stopped to investigate.
We stopped and learned that on August 17, 1959, there was a large earthquake in the Rockies here. The earthquake caused a huge landslide resulting in the destruction of dams. This led to devastating flooding of campgrounds and riverside homes and loss of life. The landslides and flooding dramatically changed the shape of Hebgen Lake.
We saw this sign, so turned in. There was more description of the same earthquake, landslide and flood. We did not understand why they said the lake "tilted".
As we turned into the "Tilted Lake" area, we also saw this sign. The picture below shows the road we drove to get to the next information sign.
As you can see, the road runs along side the lake.
If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you can read a little about the "Lake that Titled".
As we proceeded away from Hebgen Lake, we could see more mountains and grassy fields below the mountains.
The fences are interesting!
Beautiful fields and mountains and clouds!
On the last 8 miles to West Yellowstone, we started seeing signs like this. ☺
Ennis, MT will be in the next post.
Thursday, September 3, 2015 - continued
Can't believe I forgot about the old town that was set up in town.
Cottonwood City is an example of buildings from towns during late 1800s to early 1900s.
The white building with the bell on top is the actual Snowshoe Creek School. It was originally located east of Avon on Snowshoe Creek. It was moved to Deer Lodge in 1989 and restored. This was a one room school house with living quarters for the school marm included under one roof.
Above is the school room and below is info about the school.
Here is a Blacksmith shop, bordello, jail and cemetery. Notice the casket just outside the jail.
This forlorn girl was caught in jail. She served her time and things are all better. ☺
Here is a chapel and the post office. Notice the barber pole. There was also a corner for the dentist.
Look at the old organ in the chapel.
The Blood Cabin
was renovated by three sisters – Mamie Swenson, Luella Tavenner, and
Anita Sparks – with some help from museum staff. The sisters then
outfitted the cabin with family artifacts from their grandparents who
homesteaded near Avon in the late 1800’s. While this is not the original
cabin, it is of the period and the sisters have done wonders furnishing
it. The flowers are real!
These logs were hand cut when recreating the Blood cabin.
This little town was a great representation of life in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Thursday, September 3, 2015 - continued
Today is our day to visit several of the museums here in town.
This carriage house sits on the edge of Main Street. There is even an old carriage inside.
Here is the carriage behind chicken wire.
Next we toured Yesterday's Playthings.
There was huge Raggedy Ann and Andy collection. This is only a small part of the collection.
There is a large room of porcelain dolls also.
I included this picture to show the elaborate doll carriages.
Wedding dolls filled this section. I'm not putting any more doll pictures because there are too many. There was even a section called Japanese Garden with dolls and lanterns.
This full-sized bassinet was on display with a tiny doll in it.
Then there was 2 rooms of model trains.
The above 2 pictures are most of the model train display.
We also saw this old crank telephone.
Next we went to the store filled with items made by Montana state inmates.
Apparently this store is known nation wide for its horsehair belts, headbands etc. We had no idea how tedious and therefore how expensive a horsehair belt would be. The person manning the store said they were about half the price we would find elsewhere for comparable workmanship. OK, ready? $500.00 to $1000.00 for a beautiful belt.
Here are some beautiful horsehair and leather quirts.
There was a room full of various crocheted and knitted items and then lots of beaded jewelry and various items.
The inmates receive 75% of the sale price. The inmates are required to buy all their own supplies, so most of the money they receive goes to buying more supplies.
Next we went into the Powell County Museum. It was filled with many various historic items.
This display was of some of the more unusual guns. There were display case after display case of antique hand guns including black power hand guns and rifles.
This is one of two display cases of spurs.
There were many displays of chaps, saddles, saddle bags, work gloves etc.
These are some of the badges worn by various types of lawmen.
This display said it represented a trapper. There were several complete outfits but the pictures did not turn out very well.
As we were leaving the museum, the curator told us that everything on display was the life-long collection of, Don Cappa. It was amazing! Glad we came to Deer Lodge!
