Working in the rurals, Monarch and Neihart, MT



We just had an amazing experience that I want to share so this might wordy and long.. hope you enjoy reading about it!

About an hour away, just south of us, you can get into some breathtaking mountains called The Little Belt.  There are several old, quiet little towns tucked in there that belong in our territory.  My friend, Claire, has a friend who had keys to cabin that was in her (the friends') family for many generations.  She left the keys with Claire and since she has some territory right there, she invited several of us up to get some of it worked over Labor Day weekend.  The kids and I said we'd love to go!  Charles had some work he HAD to do in his garage so he was glad to have us go... me too.  I don't particularly love garage work :)

It was going to be the three of us, Claire, another sister named Wanda and a sister named Pearl who just moved here two weeks ago from Chicago.  The day before we left, I called to make sure I was packing the right stuff and she tells me there is NO RUNNING WATER!  She keps saying, "very rustic"...mentioned an out-house and a wood stove for heat at night.  Talk about changing up my strategy LOL  The kids and I just shrugged and figured it sounded a lot like camping...in a cabin :)   It certainly knocked it up a little on the adventure scale ...yay!

We left Sunday after the meeting, got to the cabin, unpacked enough to fit everyone in my truck and headed straight to the territory. 

Here is the cabin.  It was totally whimsical, multicolored and fun. One side:



Inside, looking at the living room/kitchen and far wall, the kitchen. 

 You come in through the red door up on the left.  At this view, I am standing in the door of the only bedroom.  The bedroom was TINY with a double bed on one side, twin on the other.

This stream that ran down the mountain, right beside the cabin, is where we got our water.  We filled basins to bath in, cook with, make hot chocolate, all that.  The kids splashed and played in it and in the picture, if you click on it to enlarge it, you can even see bottles of water and beer chilling in it LOL

Charlie wastes no time checking it out and what torture it was to have to stay in your meeting clothes and not play in the stream!  We hadn't yet gone in service at this point.  If you cross that bridge and keep going, you will pick up a trail (you can see it above her head) and it goes up and over that part of the mountain to an old mine.  We were too busy to hike, but we'll do it next time!

Everybody knows where this cabin is because of all the painted rocks that surround the cabin.  It's right beside the road ..can't miss it.  Through the years the family has come and gone and painted a few rocks at the time.  This wall of rocks is behind the cabin but in front of the cabin along side the highway are loads more of the painted rocks. 

We ran out of time to paint a few rocks of our own!

Unpainted little bench.  Claire's friend JUST cut out the dirt and put the rocks here for the bench on her last visit a few weeks ago.  The stream babbles RIGHT behind the bench.



Love this tree!

And....the outhouse.  I'd never been in a REAL outhouse!! 'Cause...why would I?? lol

Hmmm...looks WAY more comfy than our 'camp' potty ;)  It was VERY clean!

LOL She's not sure.

Inside the outhouse were all these funny sayings (and some not-so-appropriate ones..sorry!) stuck over nearly the entire surface of the walls. 



The kids LOVED this one on the door:

Ok, so we head out for service after opening up the cabin.  Zak and Wanda coming back from catching about 4 doors.  Such a nice, shady mountain road.  I was hoping they'd get someone at the door so I could sit and enjoy the view and the smell of the fir trees a little longer lol

We took a break near Memorial Falls (the place we hiked our first week here).  I blogged about it HERE.  The kids love this place and even though they were in their meeting clothes, I just couldn't bring myself to keep them from climbing and playing. 

The falls are about a mile from the pass and JUST over the pass is the ski resort we keep hearing about.  It's very small, only 3 lifts, I forget how many runs, but we are so excited that it is only and hour away!!  This is going to be our winter play ground and I can't wait!  The sisters were very patient with me as I drove in, with all my excitement and took all my pictures and asked all my questions.  This is such old news to them LOL

One of the runs...just waiting for snow!

We called it a day around 5 pm, went back to the cabin and started the fire for dinner.  The cabin has a large, iron, wood burning stove to cook on but for some reason we all just wanted to build a fire.  

Our beer is cold by now :)  It's tucked way under the water bottles.

Zak just loved this fire, as he does all fires.  Should I be worried????

Having a blast!

The view around one side of the cabin.  It's so unfair how you can never capture how it really looked....

You enter the cabin from the back and right outside of the cabin door the mountain went straight up.  Charlie and Claire are scouting for marshmallow sticks.

Claire and Wanda

Ohhh yeah, this is what we've been waiting for!  By the way, when the sun went down, it was in the 30's.  Day time temps were 85-90!

I don't know WHAT business we had breaking out Scrabble at this point because we were SO so so tired.  But it was so fun!  I made the biggest word I'd ever made in scrabble!  Forgot what it was...

Right after I took this picture of us playing scrabble, we heard all these scratching sounds and 'roaring' and 'growling' right outside the window.  Silly old Claire was trying to scare us.. I joked that we needed our...."Claire Spray" (instead of bear spray ..get it? haha)

Zak slept on his air mattress in the living room.  So did Wanda and Claire slept on the futon.  I have to give Claire huge credit for getting up all hours of the night to keep the wood on the fire ..it kept us all nice and toasty!

Kicky Kickerson and I shared the double bed.

We were up at six!  (voluntarily!?), we got ready, had a warm breakfast and headed out for service.  These towns originated as mining towns and here is a broken down old mine right next to the road.  

Down one of the roads we came across what appears to be a cemetary?  Weird...

This is Belt Creek and it follows this highway all the way. SO beautiful.  The kids even said, "Thank you Jehovah!" here lol

Taking a break and here to the left you see the culprit...Claire...  going into the woods to find berries to eat lol.  She CRACKS me up.  She found several types of berries to have us try and told us all about them and how MUCH the bears love them...  this was a good hour-long break.  I teased Claire that we weren't going to let her out of the car again b/c she just HAS to be in the woods and might take off on us! :)

Zak and Claire founds some Rosehip berries.  She told me how to make tea from them when they ripen a little more.

Still looking for cool stuff along the ground...  I don't even want to think about the condition these clothes came home in..  but it was worth it!

These are June Berrys..  they are sort of yummy

Claire was searching for some Choke Cherries.  And she found them, and they are very appropriately named...as you can see on these faces...  Here Zak is saying, "I'm trying to get the taste out of my throat!!" lol..  They are supposed to make great jam and wine.

Choke Cherries:

Next, headed up a mountain road that needed to be worked and OH MY GOODNESS was this the treat of the whole trip.  It went up ..up ..up forEVER and was a bit of a scary drive at times, but once it opened up on top, there was the MOST amazing view I'd seen in my life!  There must have been 30-40 cabins up here in all directions.  Here, Charlie is giving her presentation...I was distracted by the view though :0  We are very near the top of this mountain.

The next 3 pics are of Zak giving his presntation.  I could hear him from the car and he did SO well it brought tears to my eyes.  He looked up scriptures and explained them to the lady.  He was using page 16 in the Aug Watchtower and when he got to the end of the the first paragraph the lady asked him to keep going.  He is so excited to have a return visit up there.  These people only come in the summer (winters are too harsh up there) so he might see her one or two more times this year then not again till the next.  Such different territory than I'm used to!

These pics aren't good..sorry!  Here he is showing the magazine..

Explaining the scripture:

Reading it to her..

Pretty soon we were at the very tippy top..  This road got really rough but went even higher than this.  We could see power lines and and a roof over the trees way far ahead but we decided to stop here and leave it for next time because it was 1:30 and the kids were really hungry for lunch and tired.....and getting cranky.    In this picture we are mostly above the tree line and the road is much steeper then the pic shows.  I kept thinking that to live this far away from anything else, you do NOT want to be bothered...or found!

We went back to the cabin, had lunch, packed up and left.  On the way back we stopped at a swim sport on Belt Creek.  There goes Claire!  The kids messed around a little bit, but then they were so extremely tired that we just went home.  We had an hour long drive to get back so we saved the swim for next time.  Besides, it was COOOOOOOLD!

One last pic...here we are right before we left the cabin for good.  In front is Claire, Pearl, me and Wanda.  You can see that Pearl still doesn't know what to think of all this.  She was definitely out of her element.  But she survived!  We just can't WAIT to do this again.  We might have one more chance before it snows.   WHAT an experience!  Our total magazine count was 75 (many of those were left at not at homes). 

If you are still reading this.........  I'm surprised! LOLOL

c, m, c & z!