Excitement in Deer Lodge

Deer Lodge is a quiet little town, mainstream America. Not much goes on around here. However, it used to be an exciting place to be. Deer Lodge was right in the middle of the Gold Rush and characters of all kinds lived here.

The Montana State Prison was built here because of some of the more unruly characters that would end up in town because of the Gold Rush.

These days Deer Lodge hosts campers and fishermen who come to the Clark Fork river for fishing and enjoying the surrounding mountains. But today there was some excitement in the town, in fact in the very KOA where Norm and I are camping.

The water main broke. The plumbers arrived on the scene this morning as I sat on the front porch of Cass' (the owner of the campground) Barn Appetite, where she cooks up food for campers on Sunday and Friday night. They went to work on the plumbing problem, I went to work on some things I needed to do. It was a productive morning... for me at least.

In the afternoon, Norm and I took a ride into town. Town is about 3 blocks long and 2 blocks over from the KOA, so it didn't take long to get to our destination - the Old Montana State Prison. We toured the facility and thought about what it be like to be in a prison. Not a pleasant thought. The stone wall around the facility is impressive, we took it all in and in silence left, sorrowful for choices that people make and suddenly find their lives in sadness, their freedom gone.

A $9.00 ticket to the Prison also gets you in to the Historical Car Museum which houses over 150 antique cars. We oohed and Aahed and took pictures and came back to the KOA for dinner and a nap for Norm.

The plumbers had a backhoe at the facility by that time, still no water to the RV section of the park. Norm and I putzed around and he's gone off for a few hours. I came back to my spot at the front porch to have two of Cass's wonderful cookies ( oh yeah, I was bad!) and play around on the computer.

The plumbers are still at it. They are standing around discussing the situation, trying to figure it out. Some are going home now at almost 8:30 in the evening. Many of the folks in the campground are standing around watching the backhoe and the workers. The men want to know what's going on, you can tell. I'm sitting on my porch seat, enjoying the show, Ahhhh excitement!

Peace and LoVe,

Tammy