SUMMARY:  It didn’t take too long to finish our walk down Storm Lake Road to reach Hwy 1. Wow, are we glad we went that way—there was a trail alternate that some hikers took—the trail disappeared and they had to bushwhack.

It was a cool morning with very spectacular clouds, and as we walked along the highway, there were plenty of interesting things to look at. The best one to me was at a fancy “horse place” where a whole lot of riders looked like they were practicing for something.

We reached Anaconda a little after 1:00pm and headed for the post office, assuming their hours were the usual 10:00am-2:00pm. Nope. It was 9:00am to 1:00pm. So now we have to wait till Monday. We need the zero, so it’s for the best.

DETAILS:  Last night was pretty cold–that seems to be a trend now that we are in late August–but our ZPacks sleeping bags did a great job of keeping us warm.  We figured we would have no problem making it to Anaconda today.

So we continued the walk down Storm Lake Road (a pretty nice dirt road) out to Highway 1.  Wow, are we glad we went this way.  Later on, in Anaconda, the other hikers told us they went the “Ley way”, which soon disappeared and they had to bushwhack down a creek to reach the highway.  Yuck.

When we reached Highway 1, it was still pretty early, which meant that the traffic was minimal.  But practically every car or pickup that came along was towing some kind of “toy”.  Well, it’s Saturday, so that’s to be expected!  As we walked along, we kept looking at the mountains.  To the south were the Pintlers–big, pointy, rocky and impressive.  To the north were some other mountains with amazing banded color layers of different colors of rock and many cliffs.  Here and there were a few lone houses.

Eventually we passed a large, very fancy “horse place” where a bunch of riders appeared to be practicing for a competition, where 2 riders at a time would race in an arena, doing figure-8’s around poles.  I would love to have just hung out for awhile there to watch!

As the miles went by, the traffic increased, and the high, gray peaks of the Pintlers were replaced by high, very steep, but forested hills.  Just before noon we reached the outskirts of Anaconda and stopped at The Hofbrau for a great lunch (and to rest our very tired feet–walking by a highway is really tough on feet).  We thought we had plenty of time to get to the post office, since usual standard Saturday hours are 10-2.

Not in Anaconda.  We reached the PO at 1:15ish, and it was closed already.  Bummer!  We were really disappointed.  But I guess it’s for the best–we really are very tired.  The Pintlers really wore us out.  As soon as we got a motel room, Fixit took a shower and went to bed and just stayed there.  Since there was no laundry available anywhere, I first washed all our socks and hung them up to dry, then lay down with a phone book to find us a church for tomorrow.

At dinnertime, we wandered off down the street to a pizza place and discovered a whole crowd of CDT hikers were there.  They had arrived very late yesterday, took a zero today and plan to do another zero tomorrow.  Everybody is really tired.  Several were planning to go to the movies tonight in the historic Anaconda Art Deco movie theater.  We went back to the motel and just lay down (well, Fixit did, but I washed our hiking shirts first, and hung them up to dry).

If you like historic old buildings (and I DO!) Anaconda is a fascinating place.  Business-wise, though, it looks like it’s losing ground.  I was told that the “real” town around here is Butte.  If I were not so tired, I would love to just walk around and look at all the old buildings.  But for now, it is good to just lie down.  The motel is really nice–they provided us with fruit and yogurt, which we are very happy to get.  Tomorrow, hooray, we get to go to church!  From my searches in the phone book, we decided to go to the Assembly of God.  Looking forward to it!