Wed 4 Aug
Went to sleep in Salmon to the steady subdued roar of the Salmon River
woke to it this morning still going
50 metres wide, looks 3'-4' deep, rushing by, 1000 miles from the sea.
Amazing where all the water comes from, there isnt any snow to speak of on the mountains we pass by, even more amazing the salmon come right up and past here on their heroic mission of breeding and survival.
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| Buffalo Jump |
Followed the Salmon for several miles, at one stage upstream passing a rock weir right across leaving a 6' channel, and guess it might have been a fish trap.
Equally heinous was a site of interest named Buffalo Jump, a place where the horse-backed Indians herded/stampeded bison over a cliff...
abattoire en plein air, saves on arrows too
and buffalo skin coats for everyone next winter.
Climbing out of the Salmon North Fork, quickly onto a rising plain, and Big Horn Battle site looms, second major skirmish of the Nez Perce with the troops.
Looking Glass was leader at that stage and he'd determined things were pretty safe, didnt have sentries posted, wasnt till someone went to check the horses at 3am and got shot by the sneaking up soldiers, that all hell broke lose, firing into the sleeping teepees, and 90 indians lost their lives, mostly women and children, as the braves regrouped for a counter offensive to allow the survivors pack up sticks and flee.
Got wet eyed as I did last year watching the video again, a people been here over 10,000 years forced to bugger off from home and land.
Have wondered at the placidity of the descendants speaking about their feelings, and their benign acceptance of events and situation and have come to another conclusion that they were probably a reasonably peaceful people, not the scalping terror-mongerers created by wild west movies.
Stands to reason with so much room and game there was no reason to scrap for tribal territory,
dissimilar to the elevation of scrapping to an art form with an indigenous people more familiar to us kiwis.
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| Beaver Head |
There's a nice little story along the roadside here in
Lewis and Clark were the hot shot explorers of the early days, trying to walk a route through to the Pacific, they'd acquired the services an Indian woman who'd been kidnapped from her tribe as a young girl of 12 years old, now married to a French trapper, to act as their interpreter and way-smoother.
She, Sacagawea, got increasingly excited at sight of Beaverhead and explained her old tribe used this place as a summer camp. They'd either be at one of two places adjacent, which they were...
and her brother was now chief of the band, and one of the other kidnapped girls had escaped and found her way home
some re-union......
Around here the plains of Montana
Stopped at a diner in Wisdom for my now favorite brunch, all-in mash, ham, peppers, onions, tomato, mushroom, cheese topping if you wish, plus an egg or two, easy over, or lookin' at yer.
Two couples came in sporting Sturgis t-shirts so easily started up a conversation
'Goin' t' Sturgis', I enquire
'Nah' they respond, 'We live thar, jest gittin' out of it fer a spell'
Interest wherever we go is high, particularly with the motorcycle cultured American, and in my not marketed here CB1300.
Another silly impression we have is that a non Harley rider would get scalped over here in HD land...
not so, theyre as interested, intrigued, and intellectually au fait as you'd never imagine.
Great conversation starter, 'that yer bike outside?'
These guys were farmers too, so another great hour on the road
How much to get a bike to NZ like you got yours here?
how long do we need to stay to see the place?
Had a similar question from an ex-Marine SAS equiv man couple of days back
and I said, 6 weeks definitely, on account of so far away
and he said how long you here for then?
6 weeks I chime back, to much dissolution in laughter...
great folks in outback USA.
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| They've even got sheep in Montana |
680, Holy cow, jees, I got 4000 acres for my 300 beef cows, (an Angus stud breeder too)
and you fella's got no cost of production neither.
Relative to them, no, we dont got no cost of perduction.
God I love yanks, but you gotta be careful,
these guys and gals broke out of the conversation for a full 20 seconds to say grace when their tucker arrived,
then they were right back into the questions.
Sweeping on across
The road from here back to Wisdom was once a highwayman's alley.
Back down the track the local sherriff and his deputies were the main crooks, he'd hang out at a wayside boarding house, scope out the likeliest passing-through prospects, and the deputies would complete the mission.
They got cleaned up by quite a bloody vigilante operation, but the sherriff survived all accusation.
Just getting here must have been some sort of mission in them days, getting all the minerals out to civilisation even more mind-boggling.
Our digs are converted ghost town cabins, quite a cute change from the 4 star stuff we've been staying in so far, the roofs have grass and cacti growing on them.
A lot of the buildings have been transported in from surrounding sites to recreate the town,
rabbits hop around the dirt streets, old relic mining machinery and rail wagons lie everywhere.
Apart from the day-trippers and passers-through, the tourist traffic is almost ghost town proportion here too.
The hosts have treated us extremely well, and gratefully.
Sam went on the attack over the expected 17% tip for a group tabling after dinner, 34 of us in various state of inebriation, and was politely informed they dont encourage it (tipping) in these parts, nice one america
a welcome sea-change, I suspect.
Well, off for my morning all-in mash, (writing this the morning after)
seeing they treated us so well, I'm going to give them my brunch money too!
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| Neil tries out the 2-storey longdrop |
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