Bannack, Montana - June 29, 2015

Monday - June 29th

We woke up early and headed to Montana.

We decided to do things a little different this year.  There is a ghost town that I really wanted to see.  I've seen pictures and a few YouTube videos.  It looks awesome!  And the Ghost Adventure team went and did an episode where they stayed the night and tried to get proof of the haunting going on there.  I've been so excited to go and see this place.  It didn't really add very much time on to our drive and it was very worth it.  It was halfway between here and Grandma's house and the perfect thing to make our drive more enjoyable.

Yesterday, the kids and I watched all the haunted videos that we could find about Bannack.  I thought it would make walking around and seeing everything a little more exciting for them.  I might have over done it.  Brinley was a little bit too scared.  but it was still fun.

When we got there, we stopped at a campground and had a picnic.

Then we stopped at the visitor center for some info and started our walk down the road and through all the buildings.

Bannack was sold to the state with the promise that they will not restore anything, they will just keep all the structures as is and add things when necessary to keep them from falling down.  It is so fun!  It's like going back in time.  Bannack became a ghost town sometime in the 1940s.  It became a state park on August 15, 1954.

We took a lot of pictures and videos in the hope of capturing a ghostly something.

 At the start of the walk, the sky was clear and sunny.  Clouds started rolling in and by the time we reached the end of the road, it started to rain.  The storm came in quickly and it was a strong one.  The rain was coming down hard.  We had to hurry across the street and into another building to get out of the rain.  We thought we'd wait in there until it calmed down, but it didn't seem like it was going to slow down anytime soon and we didn't want to keep waiting in that small house we were in, so we made a run for the next house.

 The next house was super stinky and we knew we couldn't handle that for very long, so we raced to the next house.  It ended up being the house from one one the YouTube videos we saw. In the video, 2 guys are going through a house.  One has a video camera and the other has some piece of equipment that is supposed to pick up the sound of spirits trying to communicate with them.  Basically, they are upstairs, they hear a noise and get scared.  They reassure themselves that it is just other tourists outside, so they calm down.  Then they look downstairs and see a girl staring up at them and they freak out.  They panic and race downstairs and out of the house.  It's a funny video to watch.  It made Brinley nervous knowing that was the house we were in.

Poor little Brinley was pretty scared through all of this.  She was scared to be in the building because of ghosts and she is always scared during storms.  So, she had 2 scary things to deal with.  she was shaking and not happy about being here.

 We decided to get out of that house and take shelter on a porch at another building.  That way, we can watch the storm and we aren't stuck in the musty smelling homes.  We figured we'd wait out the storm there, then finish our exploring when it calmed down.  We were having a lot of fun.  It was so fun to see all the old buildings and the thrill of the big storm made it all even more exciting.

 While we were waiting for the storm to stop, a sheriff or forest service guy (I can't remember which) drove up.  He warned us that these were the exact conditions they had here 2 years ago when they had a flash flood.  They were asking everybody to leave, just to be safe.

I hadn't heard about the flash flood 2 years ago, so when I got a chance, I did some reading about it.  I read one ladies terrifying story of what happened and I felt thankful that nothing like that happened to us.  Had I heard that story before, I think I would have been a lot more scared.

Her story started just like ours.  It was a nice day, they had a picnic, then walked through the buildings.  A storm rolled in quickly and it was raining hard.  They didn't let the rain stop them from exploring.  They thought it was fun racing through the rain from building to building.  As they came out of one of the buildings, they noticed mud slowly creeping through the street.  The lady realized right away what that meant.  She yelled to everybody they were with to run fast and get to safety.  They all turned to run and the waters came rushing at them so fast.  Some of them got to safety fast enough.  Others in the group found things to cling to for safety.  They each had terrifying stories of how they got to safety.  It sounded like a horribly scary and terrifying ordeal.  Nobody died.  They had lots of cuts scrapes and bruises and they are emotionally scarred, but besides that they were fine.

We made it back to the truck pretty quickly after the warning.  Brinley raced back to the truck, she was so scared.
These are some pictures I found online of the 2013 flash flood.

It was a fun and interesting stop for us.  Then we got back in the truck and finished our long journey to Grandma Mathison's house.