June 10, 2017

Yesterday we came to Butte via the Beartooth highway. I drove up and Leighton drove down. It had a few scary moments but was beautiful. This morning we traveled on to Philipsburg for Montana Sapphires with Perry. We found 177 carats of variously colored sapphires. Leighton made Gem Mountain’s hall of fame for 2 of his finds. His picture should be up on their website in a few days. Later we drove up to the ghost town of Granite. It was a dirt road. When we reached the town it started to sleet and snow. The boys were having a blast but the weather made me nervous so we left. It would be fun to explore on a warm dry day. Good times had by all.

As we were leaving Yellowstone, we went through the Lamar Valley for the last time.  We stopped and took a picture of the clouds and hills with a nice cloud reflection.

We also ran across a golden eagle sitting on a rock searching for something to eat.

We watched for awhile an then he took to flight over the hill.

Once we got onto the Beartooth highway we started seeing some beautiful scenery.

There was also some frozen lakes and lots of snow still on the ground.

There were some pretty significant snow banks along the road and fortunately the signs were somewhat exposed.

The signs were important since the speed limit for this road was 70 mph, but as you can see from the screen shot of our navigation system the road is very curvy.  One must be insane to go at the speed limit.  Not sure what the state of Montana was thing when they established this limit.

Interestingly enough, when we got to the highest point the snow was much less and there were no trees.  We stopped at a pull out and parked behind a car with Tennessee tags.  It was a family from Knoxville – small world.

Once down the mountain and heading toward Philipsburg, we passed a lake.  Donna said “is that an eagle” which resulted in a rapid stop and a quick shot.

It quickly flew off and we proceeded on only to stop a few moments later because of these two eagles.

One flew off but the other stayed letting me approach to about 30 feet.  Quite exciting for me.

Here is a close-up of the head.

After we both had had plenty of time together, the eagle flew away.

Again we proceeded down the road and were thrilled to see several juvenile eagles.  One of them was just taking off and had something in it’s talon.

We finally got to the sapphire mine site.  We had a good day screening the ore concentrate and found some nice stones.

Tired from sapphire collecting we went into Philipsburg.  Here is a view of the main street (just about the only street).

The theater building.

There was an interesting sculpture there.  The story is a fellow named Jones along with three other miners were attacked by a band of Nez Perce Indians.  The other three miners were killed but Jones escaped.  Although wounded, he managed to struggle 25 miles cross country back to Philipsburg to alert the town of the Indian danger.  From that day on he was known as Nez Perce Jones.

After visiting a mining museum we went up a mountain (another dirt road) to see the ghost town of Granite WY.  Not much was there but below is view of the main street.

The building was in bad repair and I was surprised to find “stuff” still inside.  I guess the ghosts still like mattresses.

In it’s heyday Granite did have a bank, and it still stands.

While we were there it started snowing and was sticking to the trees and cars so we decided it would be best to head back to the hotel and call it a day.