Items

• 2020-03-01

  Ghost Town Adventures

  During Covid, when everything was on lockdown, my wife and I found ourselves with quite a bit of free time. She was running a non-profit an I had recently started to go back to school. So, in order to get out of the house we decided to explore ghost towns. At the time, we lived in Montana and there are sometinh like sixty, give or take a few, within a days drive. So we would pile into our little chevy Aveo and drive out to a ghost town somewhere. What supriseed me the most was that even though Montana lists ghost towns on their state map not all of them are abandoned. More than once we would drive down a long dirt road into an old mining town that was supposed to be abandoned only to see people living in a trailer or in one of the refurbished buildings. Honestly, exploring old and forgotten parts of the state was alot of fun. Without covids restrictions we wouldn't have done it either. The only time we needed to interact with others was at the gas station for provisions and that was fairly standard. Just mask up keep your distance and go. One thing that suprised me about visiting ghost towns (aside from people living in them) was how long many of them managed to stay alive. For those of you who aren't familiar with the settlement of the American West, mining was fairly important in the mid to late nineteenth century. Regardless of whether it was silver, gold, copper, tin or any other metal, towns would form around successful mines. One these places ran dry though the townspeople would move on. But for quite a few, the mine would continue to be explored and excavated for years after it had quit producing. Seeing records of people living in an area in the 1920's and the mine not having produced anything significant in twenty years was fascinating. My wife and I spent quite a bit of time talking about these peoples lives, hopes, and dreams. Then of course if there were vampires hiding in the mines. I don't want the events of covid to ever repeat themselves but I miss the time toghether that it gave my wife and I. We have a child now so any adventure like this would be different but I might try to have us go get lost somewhere together one of these days.