June 16, 2022

Not Wiser
Missouri Breaks, Montana
2022

This is not what you’d think you would experience traveling in an area that has been in extreme or exceptional drought for some time. We were headed towards a campground that was about 50 miles down a progressively bad and muddy road. About 30 miles down the road, slipping sideways a few times even in four-wheel drive, and knowing the last 3.5 miles of the road were undeveloped, the better part of valor finally took hold and we gave up and turned around. I stopped and took this photo when we got back onto a decent road surface.

We probably should have turned around sooner or not attempted it at all in the rain. My 70th birthday was the next day which shows,  I guess, that I am in fact older but not wiser. Or maybe I am. In my younger years I probably would have kept going until I slid off into a ditch or something. It took $25 in quarters to get the van mostly cleaned up at a car wash. On the bright side of things I see that drought conditions in part of Montana have been reduced from extreme to moderate in just the last two months.

(Note: the historic floods in Yellowstone Park and the surrounding areas actually happened several days after I wrote the above. Our experience in the Missouri Breaks certainly pales by comparison to what many people experienced in Yellowstone.)