| South from Helena the weather did not improve much. Not that we
are complaining, this is the first English sort of rain we have experienced
in the US. The mountains seem to be getting a little higher with the tops
peering out above the clouds. |  |
 | To be fair we are at
5,000ft and climbing but the cloud base was only a few hundred feet above us
as we cruised along the valley bottoms. |
| Climbing over the ridges now gave warning that winter is coming.
This was at about 6,500ft. To drive this road in a month's time will require
snow chains. It is also almost freezing at night although still just
comfortable by day. |  |
 | I just love the
trucks most of which would not be seen even as heavy haul in the UK. Trucks
like this travel most roads without escort. |
| Almost every road we travel is accompanied by a railway but we
don't see many trains. Those we do see have 50-100 trucks, not the 5 on this
one. I can model this! |  |
 | The thing about flat
land is that you can see the weather systems moving across them. The
diagonal lines are rain squalls. This looked nastier in real life than it
does in the photo. At these altitudes the rain often falls as ice. We were
wary because it was not so far from here that an ice storm smashed all our
skylights earlier in the year. |
| Northern Montana has grain country but then the land becomes more
barren as you reach and cross the Idaho border. But Idaho is very productive
farmland where it can be irrigated. This area was being well watered and
appeared to be producing just grass which I guess will be used for animal
fodder over the winter. |  |
 | We had travelled
down I15 but in Idaho we turned west towards Arco. At Howe we crossed the
Little Lost River which just had to have the Little Lost Store. The sign on
the far left says Safeways coming soon. Howe has a population which reaches
double figures! |
| This part of Idaho is desert and is home to the Idaho National
Engineering Laboratory (INEL). An immense area of nothing but no trespassing
signs and dry grass. You can just see some buildings which may be part of
the laboratory between the two old volcano domes peeping out of the
otherwise featureless desert. |  |
 | INEL is, amongst
other things, the primary US repository for nuclear waste. Just to the
northwest is Mt Borah, the highest peak in Idaho, and the epicenter of an
earthquake in 1983 which measured 7.3. Makes perfect sense to me. However
Arco (pop 1230) sits peacefully underneath
these bluffs. Each rock face has a number painted on it which was done by
the high school graduating year. |
| In conditions like these you need shelter. Trees need loving care
to grow here. Arco's main claim to fame is that it was the first 'city' to
be lit by nuclear power (1955, for two hours). In summer you can get a
self-guided tour round the laboratory and the original breeder reactor, but it was about 18 miles from the town, not in the
direction we were going. |  |
 | We stayed two nights
here because we liked the albeit quirky site called the Landing Zone. The
owner was an ex army colonel and everything had army terms. But it was a
good clean site and it was warmer than it had been of late. We now have a
few days in hand before we next have a date with people. |
| The campsite was not the only quirky thing in Arco. I know that
this was once an inland sea but ..... |  |
|