I've rented a number of these cabins over the years, and they've all been idyllic places. Here's one of my very favorites: the old Diamond Butte Lookout, an hour or so south of Ashland in an almost-unvisited corner of the Custer National Forest. It's a thoroughly isolated spot, and I think the lookout only gets a handful of reservations a year, but staying there is a wonderful experience. I took this photo on a July evening last year as I arrived at the lookout, just after a summer thunderstorm had passed. It was a glorious evening, watching the sun set over the prairies and hours of nighttime lightning strikes off towards the Black Hills. I didn't see another soul, and it was if I had the world to myself.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC99zawyLrasFYgbf3WCbKykGfnaIrnzTCisAkuaKOwEUiMGEsFxz2-KL1YrRczejdeVOUI7MnH-QdSMOQtFV6ngCa3lA8qRSzGzWA0MjJ9Iz3e7HcERt8T-qreY8Jj2IXkOs8CAI01v8/s400/pitamakan2010-07-20b.jpg)
Oh, wow! You DID have the world to yourself...gloriously.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back! Missed you!
That country south of Ashland is one of my very favorite parts of the whole state ... I absolutely love it down there. It's a beautiful and evocative land, and almost entirely without people, and I like it for both of those reasons. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd thank you, my friend. It's very good to be back, and I hope I can keep it up for a while.
Lovely Photo--I also love the land from Custer Forest down into Powder River Country. I would love to spend time in the Diamond Butte Lookout!
ReplyDeleteI was the Wildland Fire Watchout at Diamond Butte the summer of 2013. I employed by BLM-Fire(www.blm.gov), for the Custer-Gallatin National Forest(https://www.fs.usda.gov/custergallatin). I had a fantastic summer!
ReplyDeleteJoseph, very cool! I could definitely spend a summer there.
DeleteDiamond Butte was the first fire lookout I stayed at, but I've became much more intrigued by then in the years since, to the point where I spent part of three summers volunteering as a lookout for the Flathead NF. I kept a blog of some of those days at this address:
Montana Journal
I'll be at Porphyry Lookout in the Lewis & Clark NF this summer.