After Craters of the Moon, the next big stop on our adventure is Glacier National Park. Instead of tackling the nearly 500 miles in one day, we opted to add a stop in between. Originally our plan was to stay at Bannack State Park, just outside of Dillon, MT for three nights before making a long drive into Glacier. But, after thinking there wouldn’t be much to see or do in Dillion, we called an audible and switched to one night in Dillion and two nights in Missoula. The stop in Missoula would cut our drive to Glacier in half and since Missoula is a “bigger” town we might have more options. In hindsight the decision to make the move ended up being fortuitous. 

One of the challenges of pulling a trailer is keeping a close eye on fuel consumption. My dashboard has a feature that estimates the number of miles to empty. In reality it doesn’t take into consideration when towing and my mpg is about 2/3 of when not pulling the trailer (on a good day, down hill.) You would think six weeks into this trip I’d have it all figured out. But when we left BLM land for Dillon and I saw we had over 3/4 of a tank left, I wasn’t too concerned and paid little attention as we headed down the road.

Shortly after we pulled off of I-15 and headed down a gravel road for Bannack is about when I looked down and realized our gas was low. Like an “estimated” 30 miles until empty low, with 20 miles to go until camp. To add further stress, we had no cell service, so we couldn’t search for the nearest gas station.

We decided our best bet was to get the trailer to the campsite and then use the spare gas I keep for our generator to hopefully make the trip to the nearest gas station. We pulled into the campsite with an estimated four miles left in the tank. It’s then I discovered I had less than a gallon in the spare tank and Dillon, the nearest town, was almost 30 miles away. Yikes.

As luck would have it, the campground host had a spare five gallon gas can for his motorcycle. In trade for filling it up when we got to town, he gave me his remaining gallon and a half. The drive into Dillon was mostly downhill, which had to have helped because when we finally made it, I needed 21 gallons to fill up. My tank is 21 gallons. 

When we got back to our campsite that evening we wondered if we should have stayed as originally  planned. It was a nice site. A deep creek ran behind us and the campground was full of nice, shady, mature trees. It was also off the beaten path so we were able to see great stars.

Earlier we had learned Bannack State Park earned its name from the town of Bannack, an old prospecting town, who in its heyday boasted a population of over 2000 people. When the gold dried up, so did the town and what now remains is a ghost town of 40+ original log houses and buildings. Down the road from the park there are hot springs and Crystal Park, where you can dig for crystals. So basically there was way more to do than we had expected.

The following morning we tried to cram in as much as possible. We took our lone folding camping shovel and a few kitchen spoons and drove to Crystal Park in search of treasures. We were far less prepared than the “locals” who were armed with pick axes, spades, sieves and all kinds of implements of extraction. But in our time there we did manage to unearth a few crystals of our own and considered the trip a success.

Before pulling out of Bannack we checked out the ghost town. Most of the remaining buildings were still in decent shape (all things considered) and we were able to walk into and explore many of them. The remains included several houses, a former hotel, saloon, church and even a school.

Walking through the half mile-ish of the Bannack ghost town Main Street was like stepping back in time. It gave us a real feel how those early settlers and prospectors lived. You could  picture them riding their horses down the wide, dusty street or walking along boardwalk-style sidewalks as they traded their gold for supplies. The buildings and their rooms were so much smaller compared to today’s world, but it was amazing how they have lived such a long life. It was such a great surprise.

Another less exciting surprise was after the “gas incident” we learned the furnace to the Airstream wasn’t igniting and our solar panels did not seem to be charging the new batteries we just had installed. So, after we got settled into Missoula we found an Airstream dealer who was able to squeeze us in the last morning we were in town. It put us on the road much later in the afternoon than we would have preferred but (fingers crossed) having the furnace and solar working are kind of important. On the plus side, we only had about a three hour drive to Glacier, so maybe that whole audible was a good call after all.