Teepees and tumbleweed

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

MALTA, MONTANA — We’re in cowboy country now for sure. We’ve passed through little towns that look like Wild West movie sets with flat-fronted saloons and dirt roads and old pickup trucks cruisin’ through. Out in the country, a huge sky with billowing clouds arches over vast expanses of green fields or dry tracts, and in the wire fences at the side of the road you can see clumps of grey, brown and ivory-coloured tumbleweed, snagged like so many giant dust bunnies.
Every now and then the flat plain is grooved by an old river, resulting in dark shadowy folds, sometimes fringed with a few trees. Off in the distance we could see some hills and way off, the blue pointed shapes of real mountains. Our GPS locator told us we are already on fairly high ground – our altitude is over 2,000 feet. Those numbers are sure to get much bigger from here on in. It also warned us that we were entering a different time zone; we’re now in Mountain Time.
A good portion of our route today was through the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, and as we drove through one or two small settlements the Aboriginal people we passed by the road were very dark-skinned; the guide book tells us they are mostly Sioux and Assiniboine tribes here. Some of the truck stops and gift shops advertised Native art, and there were even a couple of teepees on display.
We stopped very soon after entering Montana this morning to see the Culbertson Visitor Information centre and museum. Inside a kind lady filled a whole bag full of maps and brochures about the state and invited us to mark our hometown with a pushpin in their map (ours was the only pin in Ottawa!). Then we toured the museum, looking at tiny school rooms with slates and inkwells, the chemist shop with jars of remedies lined up on the shelves, an old kitchen with wood stove, butter churn and preserving jars, another room with farming tools — where I was astonished to see a display of more than two dozen different kinds of barbed wire! We saw scratchy First World War uniforms, gas masks and guns, and even an area where children’s toys were on display. I actually recognized an old tin doll house like one I used to play with, and Lincoln logs we had as kids for building little log cabins. You really know you are getting on when stuff you’re quite familiar with is being displayed as museum pieces.
When we came to the end, the ladies offered us coffee, lemonade and home-made cookies in their little kitchen area, next to an ancient washing machine and handmade quilts. The museum was great fun to visit and the friendliness of the staff was an added delight.
Our site tonight is at the Edgewater Inn and RV camp, and we have a pretty spot next to some shady poplar trees, with a river flowing behind us. There’s a railway trestle spanning the river and already at least four or five trains have whistled by, causing the trailer to tremble a little. There are some huge grain elevators by the tracks, so freight as well as AmTrak trains pass through, our host warned us. At least they don’t blow their whistles as they pass, so it won’t be that bad, I’m sure.
We had time to visit another little museum where, in addition to artifacts of yesteryear, they display dinosaur bones that were discovered in this area. "Elvis" is a completely intact plant-eating dinosaur skeleton, and in a second museum we’re going to visit tomorrow, we’ll check out "Leonardo", a mummified meat-eater that’s the pride of the town — complete with flesh and skin.