We have left the familiar country of the Northwest and driven through fertile farmlands and rolling hills of wheat. We then climbed up into the Rocky Mountains and are now beginning to plow our way East through the Great Plains.
Leaving Washington, our destination was Yellowstone National Park, but in the end it was all the little unplanned side trips that we enjoyed more then Yellowstone itself.
We went to the old Montana State prison in Deer Lodge, which had housed everything from from gold rush bandits to cattle rustlers in the 1800s right up to the 1960s . We were able to walk through the prison cells and look at the contraband the prisoners made, the whole place had a very heavy feeling.
In Butte we happened upon The Copper Mansion which was built by one of the 'mining kings' who's massive wealth of over $17 million a month afforded him and his wife the Great Gatsby type lifestyle. The gaudy mansion was stuffed with Italian marble, diamond dust mirrors and exotic French fashion that only 'new money' could appreciate. We found the local history of the area to be rich like their mines, but as the money left the small town so did the apperiation for its now delapated past; the Copper mansion functions as a B&B, part time while the new owners repair the leaking roof and search for the lost original furniture.
Yellowstone was disappointing for Julian and I, we had thought of it as a wild, natural place where we might be lucky enough to see a herd of buffalo and perhaps a grizzly in their native seettings. Instead we found the park overrun with tourists clogging the roads with their hefty cars and the walkways with their burgeoning waistlines. It was where the unimaginative went to see 'nature' in a park built as a drive through.
Like many popular tourist spots we found the best parts hidden just off the main drag.
At the end of a winding, dusty road, we went for a long walk and were able to escape the madness long enough to find our piece of Yellowstone beauty- a hidden valley complete with four juvenile Buffalo bulls resting near a quite, twisting river.
As the trees shrink, and the hills are weathered away, we leave the green West and enter the flat dry lands of the Midwest.