Monday & Tuesday August 5 & 6, 2013 – Flathead Lake and Anaconda, MT
Here is a quick post to bring us up to date. On Monday, August 5th we were heading down to Big Arm, MT; a small town on Flathead Lake and home to our friends Ron and Trish. Before we headed down, we had a quick breakfast in the RV that consisted of toast, peanut butter and some of the thimble berries we picked the day before. The thimble berries are great on bread, because they are very delicate and spread like jam. It was delicious. Then we took a walk down to feed the calf, donkeys, ponies, llamas, and sheep at the petting zoo at the RV park. We purchased some bags of oats to feed them. While we were out there one of the cooks came out and handed us some rinds from the watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melons. The animals loved it. The sheep would only eat the oats – they didn’t care for the rinds. The other animals loved them. There was one spotted pony that was very aggressive and would try to chase the calf and other animals away.
After that we headed into Kalispell to check out some shops as we left our parking spot at one store I noticed that there was an odd thumping noise coming from one of our tires. I was concerned that one of my dual rear wheels was flat. I pulled over and could see that I had a large bolt poked into my tire. Fortunately, we were very near a Les Schwab tire store (a large chain in Montana). They had me pull up into a special bay that is designed for the large trucks. A technician came over removed our tire and yes the bold had punched a hole in our tire, right in the center of the tread. He took the wheel over to another shop pulled it off the rim, removed the bold that had only barely penetrated the tire and laid in a patch. The then came out remounted the wheel and also checked the tire pressure on all our other tires. When I asked how much, he told us it was no charge – they do these types of patches for free. What a deal, not to mention fast and friendly service to boot. It was our lucky day.
After that we decided to get some lunch. We stopped at North Bay Grille for lunch and it was fantastic. Check out their menu…
Elisa had the Corn Chowder and it was the best we’ve ever tried. It was creamy, had the right amount of bacon in it that gave it a little smoke flavor. It was very good. I had he French Onion soup and it was also very good. All too often the onion soup is too salty. This one wasn’t, It also had a little sherry in it that gave it nice sweetness to it. All their soups are made from scratch. For Elisa’s entree, she had a spinach salad with apples on it and interestingly, a fried egg. It was good. I had the fish and chips. The fish was Alaskan Cod that is flown in fresh. They make up their own beer batter that was light and fluffy. The fish came out nice and moist but not greasy. Also, the tartar sauce was very good. These were simple dishes that were very well prepared.
After lunch, we noticed that it was pouring down rain, so we decided to step into the adjoining casino. It was a very small room that only had slot machines in it. I sat down at a poker machine and put in $20. After about 15 minutes, we noticed that it had stopped raining, so I played another hand and cashed out. We walked out of there with $33. It really was our lucky day.
Then we drove down to Big Arm, MT to visit Ron and Trish. They are the parents / in-laws of friends that we know in San Diego. Trish was an avid doll collector, repairer and maker for many years. Elisa had met with Trish when she was down in San Diego visiting. She had told Trish then about the plans for the Toy and Doll museum and Trish was very interested. So, we thought we would update her while we were up in Montana. Ron and Trish have a lovely home directly on Flathead lake. The lake was beautiful, but the weather was unseasonably cool; so no boat ride on the lake. That didn’t stop us from sitting out on the deck and chatting for hours. Occasionally their 2 poodles (Norway and Pharrah) would interupt the conversation to seek out a little attention. They were great to see.
We left the following morning and headed to Anaconda, MT. Anaconda is home to the Old Works Golf Course that is managed by Troon Golf. The course is very interesting in that it was built on the grounds of an old smelting operation. There were numerous smelters up on the foothills above where the golf course now sits and they processed ore in the late 1890s. The “slag” is the residue left from the smelting process. It is a black sandy, gravelly mix that lies in huge mounds all over the place. The smelting operations is a very messy affair. It is clear that back then these operators “raped” the land and left it in a huge mess. In the late 1990s the EPA superfund made funds available to reclaim the land and make it safe. One of the projects that the superfund paid for was the construction of the Old Works Golf Course. The course was designed by Jack Nicklaus and Jack thought it would be novel to use the slag (perfectly safe and non-toxic) as materials for the green-side and fairway bunkers. The only problem is that it isn’t like sand. It is much denser and heavier than sand, and that makes it very difficult to play out of. The course plays very difficult and the main reason has to do with why they put these smelters here in the first place back in the 1890s. There is a very persistent wind that blows through this valley; often up to 40 mph. That may have been good for providing the draft that the smelters needed to stoke their furnaces and suck the smoke out of the many smoke stacks that were built up steep hillsides. Eventually, the smelters constructed a huge modern smokestack that had flues from 27 different smelters in the region. The course is beautiful and it was in very good but not outstanding condition. The greens were fast and very undulating. I played reasonbly well on the front 9 (8 over par) but the wind got the best of me on the back 9 and I finished with a 93.
That’s all for now.
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