The BIG Fair--Things to See and Eat

Idaho Russet Potatoes

Hot homemade bread and honeybutter

Scones a.k.a. Tiger Ears--your choice of topping Fudge!

Things to do at The BIG Fair---next time

SIDE TRIPS--The Final Chapter

About an hour out of the way, between Missoula and Butte, is Anaconda, Montana. The town was founded when the Anaconda Copper Mining Company in Butte built a smelter in Anaconda for refining its copper ore. The smelting operation was shut down in 1980, but the smokestack still stands. It is 585 feet high and is the tallest freestanding masonry structure in the world. I only drove through the city. My impression was of a tidy place with plenty of historic architecture and that smokestack jutting up like a Titan Missile.

Montana Highway One was a pleasant break from Interstate 90. Farms and pastures filled the valley.

The switchbacks up into Deerlodge National Forest gave some remarkable views of the geology.

But what made me do a cartoon double-take and a u-turn in the middle of the rural road was the sight of a life-sized metal rhinoceros.

Along with that copper–colored rhino were

an elk,

a donkey,

a steel bear,

and a wooly mammoth. These and other metallic creatures adorned the yard of the Ohrmann Museum. The figures outside were produced by a retired rancher with his welding torch. Inside were his oil paintings and bronze sculptures. My week away was over. I was left to marvel about the human passion for creativity from the arts to architecture, agriculture, engineering and just making use of whatever was at hand. At home I found all was well. The paintings and photographs I had left with instructions to be entered in our county fair netted --

a third place over all and two peoples’ choice awards. Pardon me while I have a little Sally Fields moment. “You like me! You really like me!”

(total miles--1,850 (2977km)--mpg 31.5 --love that Subaru)

SIDE TRIPS part fifteen—Amber Grain

Washington State’s Highway 2 just out of Spokane goes almost straight in an east-west direction. But it goes Up and Down and Up and Down over random humps and hollows of dirt deposited like snow drifts over the last bazillion years.
This region north of the Snake River along the Washington-Idaho border is known as “The Palouse,” or “land of short thick grass.”

Native peoples fished the rivers and cultivated the soil for millennia. The Nez Perce people of the area developed a breed of horses with spotted coats that became known as Palouse horses. Gradually the name evolved into “Appaloosa.”


The Lewis and Clark Expedition explored the area nearly two centuries ago. They were followed by pioneers along the Oregon Trail. Before long the fertile hills and prairies became the wheat belt.

It was harvest time when I drove through. On one side of the highway big grain combines were at rest;

the crop gathered and hauled away leaving a buzz cut stubble field. On the other side of the road was a lady (using the term loosely here) with a camera trying to take pictures of the wheat.

Waiting for the sun to come out from behind this one little cloud.

Wait for it….wait for it…

Finally…

Amber waves of grain.