Missoula/Helena/Butte
We woke this morning to a lovely day, we even had guests for breakfast. This little squirrel came up and tried to take some bread from Andy's hand, obviously we offered the wrong sort of food though as he turned tail and took off before I got the pic.
We took off heading for Helena, the capital of Montana, we decide to take the alternate route 12 rather than the interstate as we have heard this route is very pretty. We climb up the MacDonal Pass to a height of 6320 feet and stop at the Continental Divide. This is the spot where if you spill water on one side of the hill it will eventually drain to the Atlantic Ocean in the East
and the other side will drain to the Pacific Ocean in the West.
Unfortunately the clouds from yesterday's storm were still hanging around the view wasn't the best. We stopped off at Helena and took a quick peek at the Capitol Building.
We hummed and ahhed where we would go from here and then the boys started getting really fidgety and annoying so we figured we would head to Butte for the night. Butte calls itself the richest hill in America and is basically a copper mining town. We couldn't believe how the excavations of the hill overshadowed the whole town and took a ride to the top the mine to get an overview.
This was the scene from all over town, and although the colours were spectacular, I almost turned into a real greeny at this and wondered how the Company responsible could get away with leaving the landscape like this, especially when you think of the hoops the Americans had to go through to get the gold out of the Coromandel in New Zealand.
I rang home tonight and spoke to Mum a couple of times, the first time bursting into tears as this was the day they were all interring Dad's ashes. I know I didn't want to be there anyway but I guess after the boys really peeving me off today I was a bit homesick or something. Anyway my thoughts were with everyone and I just had to take this pic of the moon coming up over the hill.
