Day 16 – Bannack State Park (Ghost town)

Date: 06/16/2016 Friday
Starting Location: Bozeman, MT
Ending Location: Bozeman, MT
Starting Odometer: 10261
Ending Odometer: 10261
Mileage Today:  00 Miles
Mileage Total:  3423 miles
Today’s MPG:  41 mpg
Total Average MPG:  43 mpg

No Riding Today

I took a day off from riding today as I spent the day with Leila, and we headed to Bannack State park.  The park was about 150 miles from Bozeman, and we took one route to the park ,and another route from the park back to home.  The idea was to see some more of Montana, closer to where Leila’s home is.

The town of Bannack was created in 1862, and was very briefly the territorial seat.  After a brief 4 months as the territorial seat, the seat was moved to Virginia City, MT.

Bannack was an operating mining town for many years, in fact, it was operating until World War II, when it became illegal to mine for gold.  As was the case with Bodie, CA, many of the buildings were built in the very early days, while others were built later, for different purposes.

For example, the Mead Hotel was built later, and it originally served as the courthouse.  The staircases in this building are quite majestic, and are certainly the boldest of all aspects of any of the buildings.

Unlike Bodie, CA, almost all of the buildings in this town were open to walk through.  So, we spent about 2 hours walking through all of the buildings, and even taking some fun pictures of us in the jail.

Tomorrow

Once again I’ll be on the bike, putting in about 350 miles, as I head east.  I think I’ve got about 100 miles of Interstate, which I won’t really enjoy, but it will help to put the miles behind me.

Now, it’s off to bed…