Example Article for Montana Roadtrip
Montana Road Trip - Close To Home
 | Author:
Brenda Phillips
Brenda Phillips: MT43 News Office Administrator |
Close to Home
Brenda Phillips
There are so many things to do within a short drive from Townsend. We started our trip with a late afternoon dinner at the Peking China Restaurant in Three Forks. Did you know there was a Chinese place in Three Forks? The restaurant is in the old train station building across the street from the Sacagawea Hotel. It's a nice, quiet, clean, smaller restaurant. The food is very good and has generous portions. The Chinese family that runs the restaurant is very cordial and attentive to their customers. We’ve been to restaurants where they take your order and bring the food to you with no other interaction. This family takes care of you, and the food arrives quickly and hot. We saw several customers getting take-out orders, so that is also available. We will go eat with them again, and you should try it, too.
After dinner, we attended the Missouri Headwater State Park Speaker Series, which I wrote about last week. We drove through the campground. It has nice camping spots along the river, but you can’t see the river through the overgrowth of vegetation. We drove through the park toward the confluence of the Madison and Jefferson rivers that form the Missouri. There are a lot of trailheads in the park. This is great if you are a hiker. There are several nice day-use areas for picnics with signage to tell the history of this area. We like Montana history and there is something about this area that touches a person’s soul. The fact that three rivers from different areas in Montana converge to form one stronger river, the Missouri, then travel 2,300 miles to meet the Mississippi River, is a metaphor for how we touch, strengthen and influence those around us, and we can work together for a greater cause!
I am from Great Falls, so the dams are a big part of the local scenery. We decided to drive up to Toston Dam. It was a nice ride up the Missouri River Valley. When you drive the highway to Three Forks, you notice all the farm fields and forget that the Mighty Mo is over on the left somewhere. The Toston dam is a diversion dam to get irrigation water to the fields. I was surprised to see that some of the irrigation canal was cement – probably because the canal runs higher in elevation than the river. There isn’t a large lake behind the dam like at Canyon Ferry. There are several boat launch areas up that canyon, but they are for canoes, rafts and drift boats because the river is a lot shallower than what I was used to in Great Falls. I can only imagine what the Missouri is like 2300 miles downstream where it joins the Mississippi River.
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PhotoCredit: Brenda Phillips
Image 1 Caption: A yummy dinner at Peking China Restaurant in Three Forks
Photo Credit: Brenda Phillips
Image 2 Caption: Toston Dam
Photo Credit: Brenda Phillips
