Butte, MT

8th-11th May: Days 30-33

Firstly, before you all start guffawing at the idea of a place named after your backside, it is pronounced ‘beaut’, as in ‘beautiful’. Still pretty funny though.

Secondly, it seems most people pass through rather than stay 3 nights. The lady at the RV park desk had to double check that she heard us right. (We are definitely on a ‘go-slow’ by now.)

Thirdly, it’s a pretty interesting spot, and another beautiful drive through the American Wilderness to get there from Yellowstone

Butte exists because they found copper ore on a hillside, and then proceeded to dig it out. They dug and dug and dug and created an enormous hole in the world. The Berkley Pit. Whilst they were mining they pumped the water out of the hole, but since the mine was abandoned it has filled with a rather beautiful, horrendously toxic, watery green soupy lake. Yum. So toxic that last year a flock of 10,000 Canada Geese landed on the lake and 4,000 died.  So it’s not a candidate for conversion into a recreation facility.

The town got rich on the proceeds of the mining and dubs itself ‘The Richest Hill On Earth’. There are lots of enormous fancy buildings in the old district of the town and it was obviously quite a dandy spot in the day.

We had a morning wandering around, and even managed to procure haircuts from a fancy salon.

The Continental divide also runs through this area. In 1985 a statue called ‘Our Lady Of The Rockies’ was completed. This is a 90 foot likeness of Mary, Mother of Jesus, built atop the mountainside on the divide overlooking the town. Impressive but a bit bizarre, given that it is quite catholic thing and they are at pains to emphasise it is not a catholic thing. No photo, sorry. Here is a fluttering flag instead. The photo doesn’t quite show how enormous it was.

About 30 miles from Butte are some caves called The Lewis and Clark Caverns. (These guys had nothing to do with their discovery but they are so important to the history of the Western USA that they have a whole heap of stuff named after them.) We drove over and did the guided tour, which was very, very good. It was a 2 hour tour through the cave system, with an amusing guide. Lots of impressive structures and rooms. Interesting enough that I didn’t freak out once. (I don’t particularly like being underground) Despite being underground, this cave system is at an altitude of 1 mile. Fact.

No photos of this either. Here is a cool old car instead.

 

Butte saw us achieve another item of The List, which was to eat in one of the Man vs Food establishments.  For those of you in the know about this TV show, this will need no explanation. For those who have never seen it, then this will mean nothing to you.

http://www.travelchannel.com/shows/man-v-food/episodes/butte

Butte’s speciality dish is the deep fried pork chop sandwich. “Delicious and nutritious!”, I hear you cry… The Freeway Tavern, a short walk from our campsite is home of The Wop Chop (named for its Italian owner). The Tavern looked like a fight pit from the outside, with no windows to look into the inside. A deep breath saw us push open the door and inside was a small, locals bar. No fighting at all. A pitcher of beer and 2 sandwiches was only $20, and it was delightful. The highlight of the evening was the barmaid insisting 2 of the locals put down their drinks and get behind the bar to fix the 2 sliding doors of the big chiller cabinet. This provided 20 minutes of entertainment to the entire place and their success was met with a rousing round of applause from all patrons.

The weather really warmed up when were in Butte. So much so that one evening we even broke out the BBQ and had dinner outside. Who’d have thought…A taste of life to come, we hope. It was a trifle windy, hence me using Big Dave as a windbreak.

 

The sunshine also made us realise that we are in need of hats, and after a bit of searching we are now the proud owners of slightly cowboy looking ones. When in Rome… (This should also guarantee a break in the weather).  Sunshine was also responsible for our minor low-point of the trip so far.  Up til now, we have not considered rolling out our awning, it being so darn cold n’all. But a sudden increase in temperature by 20 deg C and no wind made us curious as to how it worked. It easily deployed, then got inexplicably stuck out. No amount of jiggling and fiddling with it would change the situation. We searched the internet for hints, we enlisted the help of a few other more experienced RV’ers, but to no avail. The general opinion was that it was stuffed.  Luckily we managed to find a mobile RV mechanic who said he would come and look at it the following morning. He did (eventually), and happily all it took to fix it was some more aggressive jiggling. And a $40 call out fee. Cheap at half the price, methinks.

Butte’s final crowning glory was The Chicken Shack. A fried chicken takeaway known statewide. And it is located at the RV park. We pleasure-delayed this until the last night, partially earned the calories with a long walk, then had a dinner twice the size than we really needed.

Next stop, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.