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Car Camping Gem Mountain, Montana

Sunday 7/26 I left the Tri-Cities early for Yakima where I would be picking up Tim De Grie a fellow club member. We had planned this adventure for several months and now the time had come for us to embark on this journey of excitement. We were on a mission to attend and exhibit at this years AFMS/NFMS show being held in Billings, Mt. Tim was ready and waiting when I arrived and after a quick breakfast we loaded his gear and the rock exhibit into the truck and secured our load with numerous tie downs and straps as we did not want to take any chance of loosing any of our gear travelling at warp freeway speed. We bid farewell to those that would remain behind and hit the road at 9:30. It was a beautiful day with temperatures expected to reach into the high 90’s.and both of us were as excited as a hound off a leash after a coon. We had purposely left early so that we could do some rock hounding at Gym Mountain Monday before moving on to our next hunting location and had planned to camp overnight at a location outside of Missoula, Mt. We reached Moses Lake by 11:15 and were filling up the truck in Coeur de Lane, Idaho at 12:45pm.All was well and we were back on the road in no time and would soon be driving through the Silver Valley a very historic and productive mining district. But first we had to play tourist for a moment as we were approaching the Cataldo Mission

after descending Fourth of July pass. Tim had never been there and it had been a good 8 yrs since my last visit so we diverted for a short time to take some pictures and visually inhale the sights & sounds of the mission before returning to Interstate #90.We were now passing by Smelterville just minutes from Kellogg. I was sharing with Tim a little history of the area pointing out that this was the notorious Bunker Hill Superfund Site located within one of the largest historical mining districts in the world. Commercial mining for lead, zinc, silver, and other metals began in the Silver Valley in 1883. Heavy metals contaminated the soil, sediment, surface water, and groundwater for over a 100 years, from commercial mining, milling, smelting, and associated modes of transportation which had impacted both human health and environmental resources in many areas throughout the Site until being addressed and cleaned up. THEN IT HAPPEN, a pop! A sound we both heard. As I looked in my side mirror it was just in time to see this blue object fly off the back of the truck and barrel roll down the freeway behind us. Holy Crap I thought to myself as I backed off the gas braking evenly as I pulled off the freeway some 50-60 yards down the road. We had lost one of our larger totes when a major strap broke. I cautiously backed back to the point we had lost the tote pulling off the shoulder almost completely. For approx the next 20 min we scoured the area for loose belongings, gathering back up the broken tote and camping supplies that had spilled and re-securing the load. Fortunately we had put a bungee cord around this tote when packing so when it departed the truck and hit the ground the contents didn’t explode from the tote in all directions. One other blessing was the fact that at the time there were no other vehicles behind us. We were soon on the road again and stopped briefly in the town of Wallace, Id Walking Wallace

to sightsee and visit a rock and mineral museum which to my surprise had been closed due to a death. We took some pictures, stretched our legs and were once again on the road. It was around 3pm when we rolled into Missoula Montana to fill up the truck at which point we had decided that we had plenty of daylight left and we would continue our trek west looking for a camping site further down the road. We stopped several times along the Clark River to stretch our legs and snap some pictures before reaching our exit off the Interstate on Hwy #1 where we began traveling South towards the tiny hub of Philipsburg thinking that we would see what was available for lodging which we soon learned was not much, not that there isn’t but not for dry-land campers anywhere within a reasonable distance so given the time of day which by now was approaching 6:30. We opted to continue forward to Gem Mountain where we learned there was camping permitted. HOWEVER..what I have failed to mention is that when we left Washington we were dry and in hot & clear weather and by the time we passed through Idaho we were experiencing intermittent downpours of rain and when we had reached Gem Mountain we were in a monsoon which provided enough water to channel down the parking lot and make it a very damp and wet setting to pitch our tents, we knew there would be no campfire tonight.

To B Continued................................... Gem Mtn Central

washatonian	Latest page update: made by washatonian , Aug 14 2009, 4:23 PM EDT (about this update About This Update Edited by washatonian 2 words added 1 word deleted view changes - complete history)
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