BUTTE, AMERICA

Ted planned a little summer vacation for us -- to the National Folk Festival which has been in Butte, Montana for the past three years, including this year. We saw a broad range of folk music, including classical music from southern India, gospel (with a James Brown flair), African-American tap dance with jazz piano, tango, Moroccan, Appalachian and even Quebecois. It was a fantastic festival.

Butte is, historically, an important and interesting place. It's a mining town that, at one time, had a population around 100,000. It even had a "china-town" at one time -- I think maybe one of America's first. It was booming -- but the copper kings took their riches back to the east coast leaving Butte with its giant superfund site. It is now a hardscrabble blue-collar town known for its significant Irish-American population. It's great that Butte is gaining popularity as a festival location (there is a Gaelic festival there already) and an outdoorsy place. I think Outside or some magazine ranked it as a great place to live for those things not too long ago.

Rather than stay in or near Butte, Ted booked us accomodations in a firetower at Medicine Point in the Bitterroot Mountains, near Sula, Montana. This was incredible. The hike up, which was only 3.6 miles, was arduous in the sun and heat, but well worth it.

It was the perfect place to sit, watch the sunset and drink a few beers (which we hiked up, which probably made the hike even more fatiguing).

We stayed there two nights, the second night hiking up as it was growing dark. I was reminded of why I most like 100 mile races -- the transition to darkness on the trail. Ted pointed out that we can do that without running 100 miles. . . like we did this weekend. Huh who knew :p We made much better time hiking up the second time when the sun wasn't beating on us.

Saturday night we stayed at Elkhorn Hot Springs, which is an old school lodge (with indoor plumbing though) in the Pioneer Mountains. To get back to Butte for Sunday's festival lineup, we went south to Bannack, which is Montana's first territorial capital and now a ghost town, before heading north to Butte (with a stop at the Patagonia Outlet store in Dillon of course).

Bannack was a neat visit, and learning about the gold rush mining days (1862-63 (if memory serves) was when people flocked to Bannack) made me greatful to NOT have been part of that. It sounded downright lawless and tough. Justice was of the vigilante variety it seems, although there was a miners court that dealt with miners' "claims" (as in area they were entitled to mine).

There is an old Masonic Temple (this is not it) in Bannack, and a couple of Masons were hanging around to give history lessons and be generally folksy. Ted was recruited for the Masons, but unfortunately didn't seem too interested. I think Ted would make a great Mason.