Memorial Day - Montana

Lately we have been watching Mysteries of the Abandoned on the Science Channel and it is giving us many travel ideas. Many of the places are located outside of our six hour radius from Denver. On one episode the camera panned back from and old building in a mountainous landscape and I thought to myself, that is definitely in the US and probably not too far from Colorado. Well, I was right it was a ghost town in Montana. I love ghost towns and love shooting them too. There is that feeling of mystery you get when visiting the abandon as you wander around and try to imagine why things become abandon in the first place. On our photo trips we tend to seek out and shoot a lot of urban decay, ghost towns and cemeteries and the more dilapidated the better.

Camera: Fuji XT3

Bannack, Montana was established in 1863, as a gold rush town that is now a state park - the goal and highlight of our Memorial Day Weekend.

We decided we needed at least four days on this trip. Naturally, we can’t just go to Bannack, we have to plan for some cool stops along the way. We have had snow in Denver and we're watching the storms carefully. Looked like we may have some sunshine breaking through the clouds though out the weekend. When you see the Sun with a cloud on the weather app, you can take it two ways; partly cloudy or partly sunny. We went with optimism of partly sunny. Our last few photo trips have been quite weather-challenged and we were going to make the best of it. The skies turned out to be quite dramatic against the emerald green landscapes of Montana and Idaho.

We drove through Wyoming on I-80 toward Rock Springs taking a detour on a dirt road to Pilot Butte Wild Horse Loop that ends in Green River. This is an area where wild horses live free. We caught a few glimpses of the horses on the ridge and were able to try out our new telephoto lenses.

I just purchased a 55-200 mm zoom for my happy little Fuji XT3 for our upcoming trip to Costa Rica. We will be rain forest exploring and I want to be able to capture the wildlife. I was wanting a bit more range, but the lineup for Fuji X series is somewhat limited and I didn't want to spend a lot for a telephoto - I don't shoot with them all that often. I am a wide angle girl. Erich picked up a 28-300 mm FX mount for his Nikon Z6. That lens weighs a ton!

We spent the night in Idaho Falls the first night and arrived with the rain. The next morning we asked the hotel desk clerk where the Idaho falls were, she said ‘across the street’. We grabbed the tripods and spent a few hours playing around with long exposures, The light was pretty bad and I really wish I had a neutral density filter. Since I switched over to Fuji, my filters are a mess. I have adapter rings for my step down neutral densities but none of them fit my new lenses. The polarizer worked pretty good as a substitute.

Idaho and Montana have beautiful landscapes, farms, rolling green hills and was absolutely fantastic with the storm clouds rolling in. Not a a lot of places to stop in I-15 and not a lot of off ramps either, just vast landscapes.

Following the GPS to Bannack we took the back way on a dirt road through several farms and arrived at the state park just as the clouds were breaking and the sun began to peek through, Cost us $6.00 to get in and if the doors were unlocked on the buildings you can go in. The building have been restored so they were safe to enter. We spent several hours shooting away, had a picnic lunch and shot some more.

The plan for today was to hit Bannack and then head up to Arlee to see the Garden of 1000 Buddhas. We spent so much time in Bannack we didn't get to the Garden until the next day, staying over night in Missoula. Great day!

The Garden of 1000 Buddhas is about 30 minutes outside of Missoula and it was totally worth the trip. Loved it!

We walked around the garden counter clockwise.  The outer ring consisted of little pagodas.  The interior contained the Buddhas in a spoke pattern with a shrine in the center.  Each Buddha has been blessed by the Dali Lama.

On the way home we stopped at the Old Montana Prison. It is also a state park, but they could have done a better job with it, just felt run down, not like urban decay but more like just not kept up like it probably should be. It was cool at any rate.

The prison guards never had contact with the prisoners while they were in common areas.  A series of tunnels surrounded the perimeter and has slots so the guards could keep an eye on the prisoners and it was just large enough for them to insert a gun barrel.

After this fantastic trip we had the weather curse that has been plaguing us all year on our photo trips. We entered Wyoming to be greeted by a snow storm with white out conditions.  Luckily we were on the home stretch.  Where is summer?