Grant Kohrs Ranch

Friday, August 16, 2013

We had a little friend that visited us several times, and this morning was up on our top step standing on tip toes looking in the screen door to see what food we had inside, so Fred gave him a left over biscuit, but out on his own turf. We didn’t want him to stow away with us.

Enjoying a leisurely morning, we left Lost Creek State Park near Anaconda Montana and headed up the road to Grant Kohrs Ranch in Deer Lodge, MT. We took the surface roads rather than getting on I15, and enjoyed a “stroll” through the countryside. We stopped to fuel up in Deer Lodge, and then got back on the road. But immediately we saw the ranch and quickly turned in. It was almost across from the service station, and we came real close to missing it. It was a stamp stop, and we really didn’t expect much.

The little VC offered just that – not much, but they had a tour of the ranch house that we decided to take. The rest of the time there we really enjoyed. Had a good tour hostess and an interesting tour of the house.

Then we went down to the blacksmith shop to see a demonstration, and the female blacksmith was really fun to watch and hear. She made a small rock hook while she talked, and then gave it away, but we didn’t get it. We were told it was about a half mile out to the house, but that might have been a round trip figure. It was real warm, but not too miserable to do the walk.

There was also a carriage barn we went through with lots of different styles of buggies, wagons and carriages. Then the guys went over to the chuck wagon where Barney tasted the thick cowboy coffee. The whole ranch is being very well preserved. When the park service bought 1500 acres, the grandson donated all the original furnishings and even the paperwork that had been preserved from the heyday of the ranch. The park service bought part of it just to preserve the history of the enormous ranches from the early 1900s. It is still a working ranch, but they only have about 200 head of cattle now. It was a much more interesting stop than we had expected.

Finished with that, we headed for Missoula and on toward Lolo Pass, back in Idaho. We didn’t quite make it back into Idaho before finding a small Forest Service campground where we stayed for two nights. There again we had no signal, so couldn’t let you know our whereabouts.