Camas Creek Ranch

On our way out of Montana we visited long-time friends Jamie and Jock at their Camas Creek Ranch near White Sulphur Springs. Jamie was chair of the Humanities Montana board that hired me in 1995. She went on to far, far greater things: after serving on and chairing the board of the Federation of State Humanities Councils, she was appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to the National Council on the Humanities, on which she still serves. She also served a term or two as county commissioner and as co-chair of the state Republican party. Back in saner times...

Thus

And thus, their beautiful ranch home; the great writer Ivan Doig lived in the
house for a time in his youth

"Meagher County Convention Center" (they entertain and host meetings, a lot)
and fire pit (site, in 1998, of the largest bonfire I have seen, at least since Westcott
Hall burned down in, what? 1969?, in Tallahassee); also their RV, a nicely-
converted and modernized Montana shepherd's covered wagon

Jamie and me, 20 years later

Vicki was feeling adventurous, so we took the back way out of the  valley, across
the Big Belt Mountains, through Confederate Gulch, an 1860s gold rush site,
Montana's greatest placer strike, found by paroled Confederate soldiers; in the
later 1860s, a third of Montana's population was in the Gulch

Not going strong, but still going

Emerging, not unscathed, from the Gulch, with a view of Canyon Ferry Lake

Mountains, south of Butte, en route to I-15 and the way south;
we'll be back to Montana in January...