Home Stretch

May 28 - 29, 2019

After dropping Nancy off at the airport in Bozeman, Black Bart, the Alaskan, Totoro, Asiago and I headed west on I-90.  We stopped in Deer Lodge for ice cream and then Potomac (near Missoula) to visit the land that my grandmother Sara Beaton was born in.  

Potomac is an opening along the Blackfoot River.  There are hay farms surrounded by mountains and a small school house.  I have a photo of my great grandmother Laura Pelletier on a mule outside the original 1895 school house in Potomac.  In the current 100 year old school house, they have the same photo on the basement wall.  I asked for connections with someone who knows of or is interested in the history of Laura and her cousin Matilda in that photo.  I hope they will contact me.  I then drove down the Hole in the Wall Road to take photo's of the land Little John Beaton owned when he married Laura Pelletier.

All the people I met had moved to Potomac in the last 10 years for the beauty of the area.  Many of the old forest and farmlands are subdivided into 5 acre lots for homes and horses.

Laura and Matilda are on mules on the left center of the photo.

I continued west after chili and a beer in the Potomac cafe.  I slept in a campsite along I-90 in a Ponderosa tree grove.

Photos are of Potomac Hole in the Wall Road, the Potomac school with Laura and my last campsite.

Thursday morning I got up early and drove and drove and drove.  I had lunch in CleElum and was in the driveway by 2pm.  The end to a wonderful spring voyage through the mountains of the West.

Signing Off - Paul and Asiago