Not Sure What I Expected But Camp Disappointment Lived Up to Its Name

I like Canadians but their country fouled up part of my family’s vacation last week. Much like with our California trip a couple of years ago, wildfires interfered. This time it wasn’t the actual flames but the wind-carried smoke from at least a dozen wildfires in Alberta, one of which consumed more than a half million acres.
After an extraordinary day enjoying the west side of Glacier National Park in Montana, our plan was to drive around to the east side and then back toward the interior of the park. The mind blowing scenery and blood-tingling precipices on which the upper reaches of the Going to the Sun Road are precariously perched are still closed (winter lasts extra long up there) but the first 13.5 miles to the Jackson Glacier overlook were open and I wanted to be sure my daughter got a look at a glacier while we still have them. Act quickly, folks, because these won’t last long! Glacier Park once had 150 glaciers but only 30 are left, seven of them reachable by trail. and those survivors are expected to disappear by 2030.
But, alas, the smoke was so thick and the air quality so bad at East Glacier and on the route to the Saint Mary park entrance that we knew we would not be able to even see to Jackson Glacier because it’s up at 10,000 feet and quite a distance from the what is misnamed as the “overlook.” One looks up at it, not over it. So, we stopped and reassessed our options, concluding that our better bet was to head back toward home on US Highway 2, known as the Highline since it’s the most northerly crossing in the nation, stretching from Everett, Washington to St. Ignace In Upper Michigan. This plan and route would allow us time and proximity to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. We were bummed but the change in plan paid an almost immediate dividend…if you consider a good giggle and laugh session spawned by a bitter pill and anger a dividend. Allow me to explain.
Not long after after our disappointing but necessary trip recalculation, daughter Emily (pictured above) saw a national historic landmark on the map just east of Browning, Montana called Camp Disappointment. Given the raw deal we got from the wildfire smoke, we felt it appropriate to make a stop there. Camp Disappointment is the location of the northernmost Lewis and Clark expedition campsite on their return trip from the Pacific Northwest. They sent a party up a tributary called the Marias River because they hoped to show that the Missouri River watershed extended to the 50th parallel north. That would allow a claim of more land for the US under terms of the Louisiana Purchase. But they found that it did not and named the their encampment Camp Disappointment because of it.
There is nothing there but a sign by the highway, a short but incredibly ill-maintained dirt track (too rough, rutted and bumpy to call an actual road) and a simple obelisk style monument marking the 1806 campsite.

Given the dingy condition of the place, I’d say it has become nothing more than a destination for bored meth heads or opioid addicts to hang out and maybe even overdose. Two small crosses with the faded plastic flowers of ultimate sadness on them are off to the side, signifying the modern day deaths of two people here. The monument itself is horribly defaced by graffiti and gunplay. A discarded tire and ratty old couch adorn the tiny litter-strewn knoll. And the coup de grace of this thoroughly dismal and depressing setting? The decaying carcass of a relatively recently deceased coyote. My daughter’s photo seems an artistic expression of forlorn sorrow over the cruel hand that life extends and sometimes is accepted.

Everything about the experience was aggravating and exasperating because it could be an unassuming but worthwhile and historically interesting stop off rather than a forsaken example of moral bankruptcy. People suck.
That said, The entire experience was hilarious. I mean, come on! It’s called Camp Disappointment and it could not have better lived up to its name. We laughed about that for miles.