Post by Mark K on Dec 21, 2012 22:38:22 GMT -5
A Miles City Experience.
I drive down the road having left Glendive and Fallon behind. I am now heading to a place called Miles City. The actual name of the place is The Strawberry Hills Recreation Area, but the book calls it Miles City because it is outside of Miles City and it stands out on the map better.
I take the exit and go towards the area described. The area is located in the book by counting miles and tenths on the odometer from the exit. This is not the easiest way to find the place, but I do not have a GPS or any other tool to use to find it. Just past the mile marker that should show me a side road is the entrance. I pull in and advance down a rather primitive road towards an area I know nothing about. Up and down steep ravines and gullies with streams in them. The first few have concrete dams built on the crossings so the water will not wash them out all of the time. These dams are actually just a big chunk of concrete poured in the bottom of the creek with the top roughly flattened, offering a spot to shit can it up the steep hill in the hope that you make it out.
I pass a few of these ravines and come to an area that I am not sure that I really want to try to travel past. The whole thing screams broken vehicle. Or maybe supremely stuck vehicle. Either way, I decide to back out of this place and turn around. I got out of this area with a little bit of difficulty and turned around. I stop at this small mountain and decide to climb it and see what the colorful formation of rock at the top is.
It turns out that this mountain with all of the color on it is Strawberry Hill. The place I am supposed to be going to in the first place. It is covered with cool rock. The only problem is that the mountain is hundreds of feet high and very steep. It is difficult to climb it with nothing in your hands and impossible to carry anything down from the top where the cool stuff is. I searched around the bottom for the cool rock, but couldn’t find anything bigger than a golf ball. This perplexed me as it did not make any sense.
I climbed the hill any way and found that the rock on top was very colorful. There were stripes of red, brown, grey, yellow and orange. All mixed together. I broke a really nice piece off of the face of the formation and rolled it down the hill. Now the mystery of the lack of rock at the bottom ceased to be a mystery. Not even the Scooby gang could solve a mystery this fast. When the rock rolled down the hill, it broke up every time it hit anything that was hard. This was about the time that I noticed that the small pieces which were all over sounded like broken porcelain. The rock broke like it too. After rolling multiple chunks down the hill hoping to get lucky, I decided that I was not going to get any good chunks of this stuff down the hill intact.
I decided I should get down from the hill since it is about to start getting dark. I am wearing a coat because it is unseasonably cold and there had been some snow. This meant that I had big pockets to put stuff in. I put the nicest and biggest pieces in my pockets that would fit and with a nice piece in one hand and my pick in the other, I made my way down the hill. I get to the bottom and put the rocks away. It is getting dark now and I was planning to stay here for the night. However, something feels wrong. I don’t know what it is, but staying here feels like a really bad idea. Because of this instinctual feeling, I pack up and leave.
I got about 50 miles down the road when the weather hit. First it came as rain, this quickly turned to snow. It wasn’t long before the snow turned into a lot of snow. Pretty soon it was an actual blizzard. In May no less.
As it turns out, if I had stayed, I would not have gotten out of there for a couple weeks. Nothing short of a tracked vehicle could have made it out of the ravines and gullies. Try explaining that one to your boss.
I drive down the road having left Glendive and Fallon behind. I am now heading to a place called Miles City. The actual name of the place is The Strawberry Hills Recreation Area, but the book calls it Miles City because it is outside of Miles City and it stands out on the map better.
I take the exit and go towards the area described. The area is located in the book by counting miles and tenths on the odometer from the exit. This is not the easiest way to find the place, but I do not have a GPS or any other tool to use to find it. Just past the mile marker that should show me a side road is the entrance. I pull in and advance down a rather primitive road towards an area I know nothing about. Up and down steep ravines and gullies with streams in them. The first few have concrete dams built on the crossings so the water will not wash them out all of the time. These dams are actually just a big chunk of concrete poured in the bottom of the creek with the top roughly flattened, offering a spot to shit can it up the steep hill in the hope that you make it out.
I pass a few of these ravines and come to an area that I am not sure that I really want to try to travel past. The whole thing screams broken vehicle. Or maybe supremely stuck vehicle. Either way, I decide to back out of this place and turn around. I got out of this area with a little bit of difficulty and turned around. I stop at this small mountain and decide to climb it and see what the colorful formation of rock at the top is.
It turns out that this mountain with all of the color on it is Strawberry Hill. The place I am supposed to be going to in the first place. It is covered with cool rock. The only problem is that the mountain is hundreds of feet high and very steep. It is difficult to climb it with nothing in your hands and impossible to carry anything down from the top where the cool stuff is. I searched around the bottom for the cool rock, but couldn’t find anything bigger than a golf ball. This perplexed me as it did not make any sense.
I climbed the hill any way and found that the rock on top was very colorful. There were stripes of red, brown, grey, yellow and orange. All mixed together. I broke a really nice piece off of the face of the formation and rolled it down the hill. Now the mystery of the lack of rock at the bottom ceased to be a mystery. Not even the Scooby gang could solve a mystery this fast. When the rock rolled down the hill, it broke up every time it hit anything that was hard. This was about the time that I noticed that the small pieces which were all over sounded like broken porcelain. The rock broke like it too. After rolling multiple chunks down the hill hoping to get lucky, I decided that I was not going to get any good chunks of this stuff down the hill intact.
I decided I should get down from the hill since it is about to start getting dark. I am wearing a coat because it is unseasonably cold and there had been some snow. This meant that I had big pockets to put stuff in. I put the nicest and biggest pieces in my pockets that would fit and with a nice piece in one hand and my pick in the other, I made my way down the hill. I get to the bottom and put the rocks away. It is getting dark now and I was planning to stay here for the night. However, something feels wrong. I don’t know what it is, but staying here feels like a really bad idea. Because of this instinctual feeling, I pack up and leave.
I got about 50 miles down the road when the weather hit. First it came as rain, this quickly turned to snow. It wasn’t long before the snow turned into a lot of snow. Pretty soon it was an actual blizzard. In May no less.
As it turns out, if I had stayed, I would not have gotten out of there for a couple weeks. Nothing short of a tracked vehicle could have made it out of the ravines and gullies. Try explaining that one to your boss.