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Newsletter from Montana
June 2006
I finally ventured down to the big home or B&B near Gardiner in Jardine at the NW entrance of the Yellowstone Park. Before you cross the Yellowstone River in Gardiner make a sharp left. The 5 mile long gravel road will take you to an old gold mine. You cross a bridge across Bearcreek and you drive straight toward the original Mine Office. The tattered flags are still blowing in the wind in front of it. The mining claim is now owned by government, but this 5 acres piece with the B&B sits above it in the trees. The whole property is fenced with an elk fence and there are two old log cabins on the property along with a charmer built around the turn of the century. It would need a new foundation if you would want to save it, but it sure has a lot of character and the old moldings and floors. The B&B itself of course is modern and could easily be used as a residence as well. There are three bedrooms on the main floor with two bathrooms. The ceiling is open with a balcony of the 4bdr/1bath upstairs. There is a large screened in porch which overlooks the forest and where you can listen to Bearcreek, which makes quite a racket. To get to the 3bdr/1bath downstairs (caretaker), you would have to go back outside and enter again below. The downstairs also has a large screened in porch. What a nice place and so private!
Take a look, I took fresh photos. Your kids would love the tree house on the property. If nothing else, book yourself in for a week and explore the area!
Then I went to Whitefish and looked at the log home there, taking some fresh photos. I was impressed; I had never been in that area before, if you like tall pine trees, mountains, rivers and lakes - that's where they all hide out. Whitefish is beautiful, restored downtown and kind of on the fancy side. But as you drive north toward Olney (if you drive to Olney, you drove too far), all you see are lakes, rivers tall trees and mountains. It is like being in a cathedral. The road from the highway through the forest is paved, and there is just a short stretch of gravel road to the property.
There are neighbors, but you can't see them, they are all hiding behind trees. The owner of the home started the remodeling process; he took the carpet and one of the kitchens out. He will take out the walls next and make it into one big home instead of having these two separate living quarters. It is a very spacious home and if you hurry, the owner can set the new walls to suit your needs. With the National Forest on two sides, your privacy is assured and you do have a beautiful mountain view from the property as well. The shop is huge; you can pull a semi truck in there and pull it out on the other side. The shop would also make a perfect dog kennel with the big roof over the outdoors.
The modular home in Bridger lowered the price to $ 78,500. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, oversized double garage, screened in porch and sits on a double lot. You can sell the lot and get it even cheaper, or park your motorhome there. It is just a couple blocks from the clinic, half an hour from Billings and half an hour from Red Lodge, just half a mile from the Clark's Fork River.
If you need financing, Hercules Mortgage is ready to roll if you have 30% ($ 23,000) down.
Now Bridger even has a new deluxe public swimming pool. $103,000 restored the watery haven to its former glory, which includes a new gutter system, new life guard stands, ladders, and a handicap lift. To add to the joy, the pool is now heated. A celebration to mark the reopening took place June 3, with free swimming, music, food and lots of games for children.
Bridger Mayor Ken Gomer performed the ribbon cutting ceremony and praised the "grassroots efforts" in making the reopening possible.
The group who raised the funds for the pool, call themselves Sink or Swim (SOS). Within three months they had raised $30,000 from the towns' people. The group reached their goal after the Bank of Bridger and Stockman Bank came on board.
This nice addition to the community will probably open the door to many other good things in the Clark's Fork Valley. Plans are now afoot to work on a small pool to the side of the main swimming pool and improve it by installing a fountain.
If a pool is not enough water for you, the girls and I went river rafting on the Stillwater River as a birthday treat for both (Tanja turned 14 and Tuula 20). We went from Absarokee on a raft 14 miles down river almost to the Yellowstone River. That was a lot of fun! There are small rapids which will get you soaked from top to bottom. The first rapid was "Mr. Bubble" which is a little wave that stays in one place at all times and sometimes you see Kayaks lined up to surf Mr. Bubble. The other larger waves have names too, such as "Beartooth Drop", "Dew Drop In", "Pipeline" and "Last Chance to Heaven." A couple miles before the end of the trip we stopped at a small rock outcropping at a swimming hole and all the brave passengers got to jump off from it. Of course the girls had to do it twice. The boat was a self-baling rubber raft. Kind of interesting to have a hole in the bottom of the boat to let the water out, but the floor of the raft itself is inflated and floats, so the magic works. If you have never rafted before, this is an experience you do not want to miss. It is a soft bouncing motion which is easy on your joints and back.
There are rafting companies all along the Stillwater and the Yellowstone. We went with
Absarokee River Adventures 1-800-334-RAFT(7238)
info@absarokariver.com
But there is also
http://www.wildwestrafting.com 800/862 0557
http://www.adventurewhitewater.com/ 1-800-897-3061
We floated by Mel Gibson's old ranch, he has sold the ranch to Kent Williams, who is building a 12,000 sqft home right on the river. Kent is the founder of Montana Silversmith, who makes silver belt buckles and other adornments for Montana cowboys. Montana Silversmith is located in Columbus, Montana.
While we are on improvements, if you are familiar with Red Lodge, the new (antique) streetlights are up and the old Brewery - a nice old brick building at the north end of town was bought by a group of local businessmen under the name RCSF Holdings Group.
"It's a neat old building," said Mike Pilati, who along with Dan Kyro, Dave Stanhope and James Yelich bought the property. "We'd hate to see it deteriorate. That's why we pooled our resources and bought it." The group said it is unsure yet what they will do with the structure. Erasing years of neglect will be the group's first task. "We have a couple of ideas in the works," Pilati said. "But nothing is finalized yet. For now we're just going to clean it up and fix it up."He added that RCSF Holdings is interested in input from the community.
"If anybody has ideas of what there's a need for there we'd be interested in listening," Pilati said. If anyone would like to contact the group with ideas contact: Mike Pilati at 406/446-1478.
So far there are rumors out there about having commercial on the bottom and condos above. But that is just a rumor.
By the way, my house is still for sale, one of the nicest in the historic district of Old Town Red Lodge. Just a couple blocks from the park, grocery store, library, museum and downtown. The park by the way not only features the new gazebo they built last year for outdoor concerts and dances, a couple weekends ago, the whole community got together and built a terrific playground with all the whistles and bells a child could possibly enjoy. It looks like an old fort.
I went to a presentation by the Sonoran Institute who showed us the population growth of the area over the last 100 years and based on that they predicted the growth over the next 20 years. It looks like Red Lodge will become a fancy suburb of Billings. So anything you buy around here is probably a terrific investment since the Red Lodge area borders the tallest mountains in Montana and they are all in the National Forest.
If you are interested in urbanization, slide the slider underneath to the right on this webpage about worldwide urban growth. I think this pretty much explains the price increase of real estate.
Tuula headed back from Red Lodge to the University of Oregon, taking Tanja, her little sister with her. I went with them a little ways in my car and Tuula suggested stopping at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. My word, that was wildly interesting. They had just placed a new T-rex skull on display in the Hall of Horns and Teeth, this is the largest Tyrannosaurus skull in the world, measuring five feet in length. The Equator was once up here in Montana and we had strange coral reefs, that formed differently then the coral reefs of today. So they find a lot of dinosaur skeletons around here in the limestone cliffs and many of them are on display in this museum; definitely worth a trip. Get off on 19th Street from the I-90 and go south.
Some history of the native Americans were on display as well. Some of the most striking mural paintings in the American West were the big, bright and bold designs the Blackfeet Indians of Montana and Alberta painted upon the outer surfaces of their tipis. The tipi was essentially a home comprising a foundation of tall, thin poles tied together near their tops, over which was stretched a cover of buffalo cow skins pieced and sewn together. This cover was held in place by a vertical series of wooden pins at the front, and a circle of pegs at the ground. Tipis always were pitched so that their doorways faced the east and the rising sun. Their backs were made steeper to brace these structures against prevailing west winds, so they were not perfect cones: they were tilted ones. Each tipi was furnished with a pair of flaps or ears at either side of the open smokehole above the doorway. A long pole reached from the ground to the upper front corner of each ear; these poles were used to move the ear so as to control the emission of smoke from the fire inside the lodge.
Experienced Indian women could erect or dismantle a tipi in less than an hour. They could take it down in the morning, fold the cover and secure it on the back of a pack horse, tie the poles in groups to the sides of pack horses, transport the tipi and all their household possessions fifteen or more miles during the day, and re-erect their home in a new location before nightfall.
The first Spanish explorers in the 16th century reported those tipis to be rather small, and that both the poles and covers were transported by strong dogs. After the Plains Indians acquired horses, and they could move larger and heavier loads with considerable ease, the size of their homes increased. By the mid-19th century an average tipi required some 12 to 14 buffalo cow skins
The custom of painting tipi covers appears to have been known to all the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains before buffalo were exterminated in the 1870's and early 1880's. But only among the Blackfeet tribes did more than a few painted tipis survive the transition from buffalo hide to canvas tipi covers.
The Blackfeet treasured painted lodges as sacred objects. Even so, Blackfeet owners of painted tipis treasured them more as religious symbols than as aesthetic creations. They counted upon their painted tipis to bring them good fortune. If the owner of a painted tipi suffered misfortune, or death of a wife or husband, he or she would part with it. Thus Mrs. Louis Champagne sold her Bear Tipi to the Museum of the Plains Indian after the death of her husband and co-owner of that lodge. If a man and wife continued to enjoy good health and good luck as owners of a painted tipi, they were reluctant to part with it under any conditions.
My "agent to be" in Minnesota took some nice aerial pictures of Detroit Lakes and I posted them on the front page of http://minnesotahereicome.com/
Scroll down a little; I put them in a gallery. Click on the small photo to have it enlarged and if you run the mouse on the large picture, it will show you the caption. One photo shows the high school and if you look closely you can see the lake at the bottom of the photo; the kids are just a "walk through the park" away from the public beach, such a deal!
If you don't mind living in a setting like that, take a look at these links, they are good through the end of the month:
Homes on 10+ acres under $ 200,000 -
sorted by price - there are 48 listings starting at $ 90,000
Homes on 20+ acres $ 200,000 to $ 300,000
Homes/Farms with 20+ acres over $ 300,000
Let me know if you would like me to enter your email address into an automated search, then the computer will send you an email as soon as a new listing comes on the market. We can do searches by home sizes, acreage, lake front, etc., or maybe just land?
If your back or hips are giving you trouble, Elaine Petrone sells two small soft balls you can place under your buttocks when you lay down and the muscles in your back will relax just about instantly. It is so simple, it is just about silly.
I am using them, I found them at Costco and they work like a charm for me, but then everybody is different....
If life is raking you over the coals, take a look at this, maybe you feel better after that.
I wish you a cool July and lots of fun with friends and family until my next newsletter at the end of the month.
:-)
Best Regards,
Dorothea Lowe, Broker
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