Finne's Follies: What's in White Sulphur Springs, Montana?

Charlie Russell sketch in the Bair Family Museum

Finding reasonably priced campgrounds in the Midwest, near a freeway -- and by "reasonable," I mean as close to free as possible -- is a challenge. And we face this dilemma primarily due to our commitment not to race across the country, but to take our time: go slower, spend more days camping and less days driving. And we had to go a little out of our way to find one.

Our first stop out of Cody was Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, where we camped two nights. This campground was not too far off I-90 and a very short drive to a fascinating cavern that we toured the following day. It was about a half mile hike up to the cave opening, and a very hot day, but worth the trouble. These caves were not, in fact, discovered by Lewis or Clark, but got the name because of the proximity to the Lewis and Clark trail. The stalactites and stalagmites in the cave were amazing, especially when you realize it has taken thousands of years for them to form. We were shown several stalactites that had been inadvertently damaged when early explorers attempted to measure the cavern. The damage was done more than forty years ago, and the new growth shows up like a pimple on the end of the broken formation. The man who discovered the cave entrance was investigating a "cloud" coming from the side of the mountain...it was steam forming from the 48 degree cave air flowing into the cold winter outside air. It's also 48 degrees in the summer, making for a very nice cool diversion in our ninety degree day.

Hard to see, but these are damaged stalactites reforming

It was a pretty short drive to Conestoga Campground in White Sulphur Springs and we arrived a little after noon. The reason we decided on Conestoga was because it is part of the RPI system, of which we are a member, and we were able to get a reasonable site fee for the week. The town is situated on t US12/US89, about fifty miles east of Helena. Our route took us up US287 to 12 and over a narrow two lane road through some hill country. As we were driving, we passed a lead pickup truck for a "wide load," which made Mark a little nervous on that narrow road, and we kept expecting to see a wide-load truck coming down the road. After several miles and nothing, we relaxed and thought no more about it until we came down into the valley and saw this...

Poor Mark was beside himself. He stopped where he was in the road, with no idea at all how this little problem was going to resolve itself. The guy in the white pickup truck you see drove up and told Mark to keep coming. They would make way for him. So on we came.

As we neared the house in the road, we saw the solution. We were directed into a field where we waited for the house to go by.

I have to say, I've never seen anything like this before. When we arrived at Conestoga, Mark mentioned our experience to the lady behind the desk, and she said they'd been moving this thing for something like four weeks, but it was supposed to arrive at it's destination today. We were thanking God that we didn't end up stuck in an impasse. What an ordeal THAT would have been.

So...what's in White Sulphur Springs? The Red Ants Pants Music Festival, that's what! We learned about this event, which happens every summer in this little hole-in-the-wall town, shortly after we arrived-- and we arrived just in time to miss it. The three-day music festival starts tomorrow evening and runs through Sunday, and features a whole bunch of musical groups I've never heard of. But it seems to be pretty popular. People come from all over the state and other parts of the country too.

Sheep wagon

Besides the music festival, the area has a couple house museums that we toured. This area of Montana used to the home of the largest sheep ranch in the world, owned by the Bair family. At the height of its operation, there were somewhere around 300,000 head of sheep. Nobody eats mutton in America, and synthetic fabrics clobbered the wool industry, so sheep ranching eventually went by the wayside. But you can probably credit the sheep ranchers for coming up with the idea of an RV, even though it wasn't actually used for recreation, per se. It's called a "sheep wagon," and it was the rancher's home away from home when they were tending the sheep.

Cozy, don't you think?

The Bairs were very rich and had tons of very expensive furniture, clocks, silver, art work, and other collectibles that are now very expensive antiques. Their house was originally build in the late 1800s, and then modernized through the years. The family lived in it until the oldest daughter died in the 1960s and donated the home and everything in it to the state of Montana for a museum. It's worth $3 if you enjoy looking at antiques.

In all, it was a pleasant visit in White Sulpher Springs. Perhaps one year we might come back for the music festival and see what that's like.

Tomorrow we hit the road again. One more dry-camp, and we'll be pulling into Spokane on Sunday.

In the words of Charlie Russell,