Catching up-Ellensburg to Butte and Lewis and Clark Caverns
I have some catching up to do before it all fades right out of my brain and I forget what I've been doing.
This summer I embarked on a research trip which will take me on a great circle route throughout the interior of the American West, most of it on the left side of the Mississippi River (although I'm currently east of there, crossing from Iowa into Illinois across some brown water that was not nearly as impressive as I had expected).
To save money during the travel, I decided to camp along the way and, when practical, take in a few sites as I speed from here to there. I left about 10 days ago from Ellensburg and zipped across eastern Washington, the handle of Idaho, and into Montana where, first, my GPS software sent me out into the middle nowhere to find a nonexistent campground and then had the temerity to refuse to work because there was no cell signal.
The campground did exist, it just wasn't where AT&T's nav system (nor the AAA's trip planner) thought it was. I did find it, mostly because I figured I had already reached the point of no return on the road and it was shorter to return to civilization by going forward than to turn back. Consequently I saw parts of Montana that most people never dream of.
When I did get to the campground I found it infested with hordes of swarming mosquitos who promptly descended on me and ravenously sucked my blood. They also swarmed my dinner and my cooking gear. Two kinds of bug juice had no effect and I realize in retrospect that only DEET might have persuaded them to leave me alone. As it was, I did manage to keep them out of the tent and get some sleep. That was at the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park.
-Oops, two weeks of research have intervened and.... well.....-
Before becoming a meal for mosquitos, I stopped off in Butte, Montana. Butte is copper mining town that is home to Berkeley Mine, a several thousand foot deep pit that was dug to extract copper ore and has since filled up with a toxic watery waste. Cheery! But I didn't stop in Butte to see the pit, rather I was drawn to Butte because it was the setting for Dashiell Hammett's first novel, The Red Harvest (1929), where he introduced the unnamed Continental Op and helped redraw detective fiction into the gritty, violent world that would mesh nicely later with film noir. Hammett called the town Personville in the novel, but noted, perhaps presciently, that the characters who lived there called it "Poisonville."
In writing his novels, Hammett drew heavily on his experience as a Pinkerton detective who worked throughout the Pacific Northwest and, of course, spent some time in San Francisco. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Hammett based his first novel on his on work in Butte. That is probably more than a bit ironic as, given Pinkerton's reputation as a union-busting tool of capital, Hammett was on the wrong side of things-after military service in two World Wars, he ended up one of the few Americans imprisoned as an unAmerican Communist during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Unlike people like Ronald Reagan, he refused to name names.
You may have guessed, but I have a certain affection for Hammett and the The Red Harvest (actually all of his novels and most of his short stories) and the visit to Butte was worth it-if only because it still retains that rundown, seedy, gritty existences that Hammett capture so well 90 years ago.
But then came the getting lost and the mosquitos.....
This summer I embarked on a research trip which will take me on a great circle route throughout the interior of the American West, most of it on the left side of the Mississippi River (although I'm currently east of there, crossing from Iowa into Illinois across some brown water that was not nearly as impressive as I had expected).
To save money during the travel, I decided to camp along the way and, when practical, take in a few sites as I speed from here to there. I left about 10 days ago from Ellensburg and zipped across eastern Washington, the handle of Idaho, and into Montana where, first, my GPS software sent me out into the middle nowhere to find a nonexistent campground and then had the temerity to refuse to work because there was no cell signal.
The campground did exist, it just wasn't where AT&T's nav system (nor the AAA's trip planner) thought it was. I did find it, mostly because I figured I had already reached the point of no return on the road and it was shorter to return to civilization by going forward than to turn back. Consequently I saw parts of Montana that most people never dream of.
When I did get to the campground I found it infested with hordes of swarming mosquitos who promptly descended on me and ravenously sucked my blood. They also swarmed my dinner and my cooking gear. Two kinds of bug juice had no effect and I realize in retrospect that only DEET might have persuaded them to leave me alone. As it was, I did manage to keep them out of the tent and get some sleep. That was at the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park.
-Oops, two weeks of research have intervened and.... well.....-
Before becoming a meal for mosquitos, I stopped off in Butte, Montana. Butte is copper mining town that is home to Berkeley Mine, a several thousand foot deep pit that was dug to extract copper ore and has since filled up with a toxic watery waste. Cheery! But I didn't stop in Butte to see the pit, rather I was drawn to Butte because it was the setting for Dashiell Hammett's first novel, The Red Harvest (1929), where he introduced the unnamed Continental Op and helped redraw detective fiction into the gritty, violent world that would mesh nicely later with film noir. Hammett called the town Personville in the novel, but noted, perhaps presciently, that the characters who lived there called it "Poisonville."
In writing his novels, Hammett drew heavily on his experience as a Pinkerton detective who worked throughout the Pacific Northwest and, of course, spent some time in San Francisco. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Hammett based his first novel on his on work in Butte. That is probably more than a bit ironic as, given Pinkerton's reputation as a union-busting tool of capital, Hammett was on the wrong side of things-after military service in two World Wars, he ended up one of the few Americans imprisoned as an unAmerican Communist during the Red Scare of the 1950s. Unlike people like Ronald Reagan, he refused to name names.
You may have guessed, but I have a certain affection for Hammett and the The Red Harvest (actually all of his novels and most of his short stories) and the visit to Butte was worth it-if only because it still retains that rundown, seedy, gritty existences that Hammett capture so well 90 years ago.
But then came the getting lost and the mosquitos.....