Sunday Drive...

Yesterday was a nice day to get out, so about 1:00 Leif suggested a Sunday drive. I thought that sounded nice, too, so he plotted out the course he'd like to take and by 2:00 we were on our way. I was thinking it would be nice to drive out to Churchill, and Leif said he'd like to go further than that. He wanted to go someplace he'd never been before, which sounded kind of fun. Here is the route we ended up taking...


View Larger Map

It was a little longer Sunday drive than I was expecting! But we got to see a lot of country and stop by some places we'd wanted to go, so it was good. Ellie only slept for about 30 minutes or so of the whole drive and spent the rest of the time playing and pointing at things and eating and watching Baby Einstein or Blue's Clues. While Ellie was sleeping, we came to Virginia City, which is one of the places I have wanted to visit. It looked like it was going to rain, so we drove around a bit and then stopped so Leif could find out more information. That's about when Ellie woke up, and just in time to see a little train!

She thought the train was really cool, so we'll have to come back sometime and go for a proper tour of Virginia City, train ride and all.

We walked around a bit in Virginia City, but it started to rain, so we didn't get to see too much. But I did manage to snag a photo of these two cuties!

And then off we drove, continuing our little adventure. We crossed the Beaver's Head River and stopped to learn why it was named so, discovering in the process the Beaver's Head Rock. Here it is:

And the information about it...

The further west we drove, the fewer people we saw and the more spectacular the views got! I think we passed a total of 8 people in 4 hours of driving on the west end of the trip. But it was so solitary and so peaceful! We could just drive and admire the beautiful views. Aside from the road we were driving on and a few old fences, it really looked like no one had ever touched the landscape!

We drove past Wisdom, MT and at some point decided to head to Anaconda. There was just one road that led to Anaconda, and this was the sign that greeted drivers as they turned onto it:

I was glad we were traveling in June instead of March or April! We didn't have any problems with drifting snow, but we did see a lot of beaver dams in the marshy areas around the road. It was a very pretty drive, even if the road was full of pot holes. After traveling down that road for about 25 miles, we finally arrived at Anaconda.



THIS is Anaconda. See that big smokestack? It's a smelter and it's basically the only thing in Anaconda, aside from the houses and shops that supply the people who work at the smelter. All over town there are side-turned smelter pots with flowers spilling out as decoration. Like this one. (Believe it or not, I actually found a picture of these Anaconda smelter pot flower decorations online, since we didn't get one ourselves. How's that for crazy?)

By the time we drove out of Anaconda, the clouds had started rolling in and this is all we could see of the smelter tower:

But with the clouds came a beautiful sunset, which we enjoyed on the drive home.

We finally made it back home around 11:00 pm after having driven about 400 miles. Ellie was so tired and she went to bed without a fuss. We were tired, too, so we pretty much rolled into bed ourselves as soon as Ellie was down for the night. And THAT was our Sunday drive.

So what did YOU do yesterday? =D