Day 4: Idaho & Montana

I didn't know what to expect from Idaho...potatoes, I guess. The northern part where we were was mainly green and lush with lakes and rivers and streams. After a quick fill up in the middle of nowhere - so we didn't get stranded in the middle of nowhere...

...and removal of road kill (seriously, what the hell IS that?)

...we continued driving under sunny skies, through the forests, on our way to Philipsburg, Montana to dig for Sapphires.

Although the wildlife has been conspicuously absent on this trip…be on the lookout in Montana…

Traveling the back roads...

We passed what apparently was a museum…a museum of what? I dunno.. A gallery...maybe. But museum...I don't think so...

Philipsburg was a nice little town, we drove through the old historic district which looked to me like a classic old Western town you'd see in a movie.

We tried our hand sifting through some gravel at the Sapphire Gallery in town before driving out to the mine.

We found a few good sapphires and Spunky had fun of course…he always does!

Then we drove out to the mine, or at least we tried to…we drove in circles for a little while as our GPS took us to the middle of nowhere, and then various people gave us directions – each telling us the same street - but telling us to go in different directions to get there.

It was very poorly marked but eventually we saw a sign and 20 miles later down another back road, we finally found it. It was a nice drive, so we didn’t really mind…but we didn’t want to arrive after the mine closed! By the time we got there, we had time to sift through a large bucket of gravel, and once again we were rewarded with some nice large sapphires. We were told 2 of them were almost flawless and perhaps worth having cut and 4 or 5 others had some flaws or cracks, but could still be fired to enhance their color.

When the mine closed, we had nothing else to do but drive to Butte, Montana where we were spending the night. As we were driving along the back roads towards the highway near the town of Anaconda, we saw a sign by the side of the road for “ART in the PARK” and heard music, saw tents and people walking around, and cars were parked everywhere…so we decided to check it out.

There were still some tents open with art and local crafts on display, but most of the art was shutting down or over for the day.

The art seemed to be pat of a larger festival, as there was a tent with a band,

and everyone was up dancing, and there were tons of food and beer tents and whole families were there with chairs and picnic baskets, etc.

We had fun walking around the park and people watching. We got something to eat (Buffalo burger and pulled pork sandwich, in case you’re curious,

and huckleberry ice cream and huckleberry lemonade…yum yum!) and then we decided we had had enough fun and it was time to go.

We drove the rest of the way to Butte as the sun set…

...making fun of the name the whole time. Yes, I know its pronounced “BYUTE” but its so much more fun calling it “BUTT”!