Fort Peck

 

Some back road near Fort Peck, Montana

We have a tradition that has been running for as long as Sam and I have been together, nearly five years now. One weekend a month, we load up the car with our camping gear, cooler, dogs, and all the usual roadtrip fare and set off to see some distant corner of Montana. For a state with three rectangular corners, there are far more distant corners than you would mathematically expect. 

This is my greatest joy of life in Montana. Anytime we want, all we have to do is wander down some random dirt road for thirty miles to find a lonely landscape masterpiece living quietly under this endless wealth of sky. While the crowds seem to find their way to Yellowstone and Glacier, seeking an audience with the profound world treasures, we glide down some empty highway in Chouteau County with complete autonomy and no clock on our shoulders. With the radio blasting, we flip quarters at intersections, some mornings seeing more planets than cars. As the sun fades, we find ourselves a blip on the map for a weekend’s worth of entertainment. Harlowton, Fort Benton, Fromberg, Melrose, Trout Creek, the list is quite long. 

We aren’t colonizers looking for undiscovered lands. At this point, every Montana mountain has been climbed and every river fished. We aren’t exuberant globetrotters, out to find some hinterland residents to ogle at. We aren’t journeying to the ends of the earth to prove our hardcore credentials or act cooler-than-thou. I have met plenty of travelers like that. Instead, we are just Montanans seeking out our neighbors, learning about the state that we inhabit and enjoying its daily magnificence. 

This is how we end up in places like Fort Peck on a muggy August Friday. Last night we camped outside of Lewistown after catching a Steeldrivers show at the Big Spring Brewery. Upon reaching the intersection with Highway 87, heads in the coinflip would take us to Roundup, tails to Malta. We drove all seven streets in Saco and Hinsdale before finding a dirt road that led us through Vandalia. Road construction in Glasgow turned us south and we found ourselves in Fort Peck in the early afternoon. Grasshoppers clung to the bumper by the hundreds and crunched underfoot. Dust from the oncoming storm front whipped down manicured streets. License plate numbers we did not recognize drifted by, sporadically lifting a few fingers in hello.

We eased up in front of the gloriously unexpected Fort Peck theater and snagged a couple tickets to the evening performance. Then we rolled slowly through the quiet town, reading historical plaques and commenting on the gardens. After passing a center of operation for the dam management, we found ourselves in the driveway of the ominous Fort Peck Hotel. We had been planning to camp, but whimsy struck us to go inside this early 1900’s gingerbread castle to see if it was accepting guests. The door creaked open like the start of a Scooby Doo movie and dim lights showed a dark paneled sitting room. Eventually, we found a staff member and secured a room and deposited backpacks in a squeaky room at the end of the hall. We wandered back outside with the dogs just as the storm front arrived. Ten minutes of hellacious wind and hail spattered down on the covered porch as we ran for the car. 

Then the storm departed as quickly as it arrived, revealing an auburn sky in the west. Torn edges of dark clouds outlined the distant hills to the north. It wasn’t the same as the Going-to-the-sun Road at sunrise, but it sure was pretty. We have seen a few thousand sunsets over distant corners of Montana, and this wasn’t the greatest one, but it was another day alive in Montana and that is what matters to us.

Another weekend roadtrip is right around the corner and we’ll see where the coin flip takes us. There are still some stretches of the High Line that we haven’t caught yet. If we do this long enough, mathematical probability says that we will see it all eventually. The only variable is time and we have the rest of our lives here in Montana.

Getting a couple tickets to the Fort Peck Theater!