ghost hunting

so, we've been driving around montana for, like, two days or something and everything we want to see that is on the free visitors state map happens to not have clear directions, road signage, etc. in fact, it's all been one wild ghost chase.

our first attempt at finding a ghost town went array when as we were getting nearer the possible turn off, a ridiculous storm headed our direction. i have to say that Montana's storms are terrifying. there is so much wide open sky that when it starts to fill up with dark ominous clouds, some of which look like they might just be willing to go tornado on your ars, it's enough to make a person hope they won't get shot knocking on people's doors. seriously, i was almost ready to pull into some farmer's driveway and beg for shelter.

two awesome pictures of an edge of the storm...

since, we were unsuccessful finding the unmarked road of the ghost town and terrified by the storm, we decided to keep driving until we were well out of storm-range. we ended up driving pretty late looking for some of the camp sites also listed on this stupid map. after miles and miles of searching down dark dirt roads, we settled on sleeping in the car behind some random kiosk in a 50 person town. we had a pretty good set up - moved the various suitcases about, put some batik skirts in the windows for privacy, and wha-la!

the next morning we resumed our ghost-town hunt. the first place we checked out was hardly what i'd call a ghost town... there were people living there. there were a few boarded up buildings that were historical from the mining period 100 years ago. DB and i agree that the town folk might be better served if they put these beautiful buildings to some use instead of leaving them sit empty.

we thought we'd make one more attempt at finding a ghost town that could meet our Hollywood expectations. so, another 15 miles of moutainous dirt road in our tiny car in the middle of nowhere found us agitated and frustrated. there were some abandoned barns and oldish looking houses, but nothing that should qualify as a ghost town.

we now refer to every abandoned or oldish building as "ghost town!"