Big Sky Country

It was June and Keith was planning the annual fall bird hunting trip again. This year’s destination is northeast Montana. What better way to scope it out? Road trip! I’ve never been beyond Missoula and this sounded like fun. Because we needed to explore places more easily, we left the trailer behind and took the car, staying in inexpensive, but fun, AirBnb’s.

First stop was Bozeman to visit friends Tara, Kelly, Tim, and Lisa. We had a wonderful dinner at Stacey’s Old Faithful Bar and Steakhouse. It is over 120 years old and was truly a picture of what the old west used to be. I regret not capturing a picture of the huge wood carved bar but the place was packed. We had a great evening catching up, reminiscing, and laughing… lots of laughing.

Fun with friends - they can’t get away from us!

Next stop was Plentyville, way up in the northeast corner, literally a few miles south of the Canadian border. Oh what fun we had, chattering, listening to our books, singing along to our favorite tunes, and occassionally napping. The speed limit is 80 mph in the slow lane, even in the back roads. At first it was a little unnerving to be going so fast, but it soon became comfortable. I was shocked when I looked at my speedometer while passing a semi, on a 2 lane highway, 105 mph. WOW!

Wild life was plentiful, while looking for birds, we found other 4 legged creatures.

It is spring - the fields were all planted, everything is green, and the rivers and streams were high. We had to cross over the Yellowstone River several times. It was very high, as you may have seen in the news, and moving fast. On one bridge, the car in front of us stopped before crossing and we couldn’t tell if they were nervous crossing it or just watching the water. It was less than 10 feet from the bottom of the bridge. Impressive but also a bit scary, especially since we knew it had already taken out other bridges. There was flooding everywhere but we didn’t see any damaged areas. The livestock was definitely moving to higher ground.

After several days of exploring and finding good hunting areas, we headed back to Washington, but had one last stop at Fairmont Hot Springs. The weather was bright and sunny and the water was hot. What a beautiful place and we were sorry we hadn’t brought our golf clubs… but that just means we have to make another trip back.

Ahhhhhh, the luxury of life.

Time to get back to work so we head home.