WalkingCarrot

This is our “going to town” day. We are headed to Augusta, MT, with gusto! So we’re tripping down the trail with cheeseburger dreams and we’re thinking milkshake madness…. mmmmm ….breakfast with bacon, and endless cups of coffee…..The Carrot’s trail appetite is kicking in, so town should be interesting.

But we are’t so distracted, or driven, by thoughts of food that we fail to notice the trail’s delights. Purple Lupine shimmering in the morning light appear fringed in silver. The Ahorn Fire from a year ago has left large swaths of Lupine and other wildlfowers, along with a strong understory of vibrant green grasses.

The trail, as we get closer to Benchmark, is more and more heavily used. A Forest Service Trails Crew is on their way out, after a 10-day work stint, as is a string of pack animals with their supplies. Outfitters are on their way in with a string of horses carrying hay for a remote base camp. Families come and go on horse and on foot. Fly fishermen are on course for their favorite hole. The trail gets so much use it’s wide enough to drive a car on, but you aren’t allowed, and fortunately no one has.

We make it to the road end at noon, but there’s not much right there, just a few cars at the trailhead parking. We walk a couple miles or so down the road, so we are beyond the 2 car campgrounds, various outfitter parking areas, forest service admin site, landing strip and Benchmark Wildernes Ranch. It sounds like there would be a lot of traffic, but there isn’t.

A couple in a Suburu with a canoe on top pass by and give the universal shrug for “no space”. Three forest service rigs go by. Two of them stop and apologetically explain that they’d like to give us a ride but would risk losing their jobs if they did. A half-dozen cars go by, but in the wrong direction – they are heading in. A Large SUV, loaded down with 6 adults stops and says they have no room (they don’t) but will deliver a message somewhere if we want. We thank them and say that we hope it doesn’t take us THAT long to get a ride. A couple in a Jeep Cherokee stop and say they are only going another mile to a small lake – we think they just feel bad about passing us up. Then just as they pull out, a pick up truck loaded with a dad, a young daughter and a couple of yapping dogs stops. No room in the cab, he says, but we can ride in the back. Great – we’ll take it – we’ve been waiting and hour and a half and this is the first vehicle which actually presents a possible ride, who knows how long before we would get another opportunity! (Note: in that 1.5 hours, no traffic came in or out of Benchmark Ranch.)

The bed of the pick up is in total dissarray and a tight squeeze, filled with two bags of cans, a cooler, several camp chairs, fishing gear, carpentry tools, including a large level and wood saw, various bars, poles and paint gear. Not one part of the truck bed’s floor is showing, so it’s uncomfortable to sit as we drive along bouncing up and down along the 30 mile gravel road to Augusta. In a mile we pass the Jeep Cheroke at a small lake, in 3 more miles we pass the Suburu at another lake. The sun is shining, the scenery is supurb, the dust swirls around the bed of the truck and in it’s “wake”, but they are mainly in the distance behind us, and, we are headed for cheeseburgers and beer – all is good!