innerslytherin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
innerslytherin) wrote2011-05-26 09:55 pm
innerslytherin) wrote2011-05-26 09:55 pm
Entry tags:
"With Montana it is love..."
The only time John Steinbeck ever said anything I really cared for. I love Montana.
I know the winters are brutal, and I know I hate winter. But if I ever manage to become a full-time writer, I am picking up and moving to Montana. And it doesn't even have to be the resorty Flathead Lake area. I would be happy living around Missoula or Bozeman or Great Falls or Billings.
We spent two nights at the Lodge at Whitefish Lake, which is hands down the most expensive and ritzy place I've ever stayed in my life. We had a balcony and fireplace in our room. It was gorgeous and wonderful, but I'll tell you, Comfort Inn is WAAAAY more my speed. LOL
Yesterday we were up at Glacier National Park. Going-to-the-Sun Highway is still closed 14 miles in from Apgar Village, but we still managed to see grizzlies way up on the mountain (a mama and two cubs), a herd of bighorn sheep, half a dozen mountain goats, a moose, and a loon. Also several bald eagles in the past three days. I think I've seen more bald eagles in three days in Montana than I have seen in three years in Indiana. It's very exciting to me, though the best friend isn't impressed with anything except the moose. (She loves mooses and collects them, but had never seen one in person.)
Today we drove down 93 from Whitefish to Missoula, where we caught I-90 over to Bozeman. I was very impressed with the smokestack from the old copper smelting works at Anaconda. It's very difficult being a history & nature nut traveling with someone who is neither a history nor a nature nut. She always hates it when I chat with store clerks back home, so it's got to be killing her how we nature nuts at Glacier share binoculars and spotting scopes to watch grizzlies graze the hillside, or how everyone asks where we're from and where we're headed. Though I was proud of her, she did chat with the front desk clerk at our hotel here in Bozeman. I've never stayed in any brand of Hilton before either, so this is very nice, if again a bit rich for my pocketbook. Thank God we're here in the off season!
For a lot of reasons, actually. I love having Glacier just to ourselves and a few other nutty nature types. The first time I was there, Going-to-the-Sun was bumper to bumper with cars and RVs both, and while we didn't get all the way to Logan Pass, it was still beautiful and impressive, and it was a lot nicer without someone on my butt the whole time. We got to see Many Glacier too, though it was very cloudy, and only Grinnell Glacier was at all visible. Didn't matter much, because the best friend was totally unimpressed with glaciers. She didn't realize they are just huge chunks of compacted ice that hardly melt. Me, I was impressed with the snowdrifts as tall as our rental car in the Many Glacier parking lot, let alone glaciers! :D And Lake St. Mary was still mostly ice, which I found gorgeous.
Tomorrow we are booking it down to Yellowstone, where I am hoping (but not holding my breath) to see wolves (PLEASE GOD PLEASE) and some more grizzlies. I'd also like her to see bison, even though she doesn't seem to care about that either. I'm also hoping for golden eagles on this trip, but two previous trips to Montana haven't yielded goldens, so I'm not holding my breath there either. We're staying in Jackson, which I am afraid will kill me with its trendy resortiness, but she should love it, so there you go.
Someday I want to bring my dad out here. He has never been to Montana, and he would LOVE Glacier and the Little Bighorn. And I've never yet seen Wounded Knee out here either, and I know Dad would like the Anaconda and Butte history. Oh well. For now I'll soak up as much as I can.
I know the winters are brutal, and I know I hate winter. But if I ever manage to become a full-time writer, I am picking up and moving to Montana. And it doesn't even have to be the resorty Flathead Lake area. I would be happy living around Missoula or Bozeman or Great Falls or Billings.
We spent two nights at the Lodge at Whitefish Lake, which is hands down the most expensive and ritzy place I've ever stayed in my life. We had a balcony and fireplace in our room. It was gorgeous and wonderful, but I'll tell you, Comfort Inn is WAAAAY more my speed. LOL
Yesterday we were up at Glacier National Park. Going-to-the-Sun Highway is still closed 14 miles in from Apgar Village, but we still managed to see grizzlies way up on the mountain (a mama and two cubs), a herd of bighorn sheep, half a dozen mountain goats, a moose, and a loon. Also several bald eagles in the past three days. I think I've seen more bald eagles in three days in Montana than I have seen in three years in Indiana. It's very exciting to me, though the best friend isn't impressed with anything except the moose. (She loves mooses and collects them, but had never seen one in person.)
Today we drove down 93 from Whitefish to Missoula, where we caught I-90 over to Bozeman. I was very impressed with the smokestack from the old copper smelting works at Anaconda. It's very difficult being a history & nature nut traveling with someone who is neither a history nor a nature nut. She always hates it when I chat with store clerks back home, so it's got to be killing her how we nature nuts at Glacier share binoculars and spotting scopes to watch grizzlies graze the hillside, or how everyone asks where we're from and where we're headed. Though I was proud of her, she did chat with the front desk clerk at our hotel here in Bozeman. I've never stayed in any brand of Hilton before either, so this is very nice, if again a bit rich for my pocketbook. Thank God we're here in the off season!
For a lot of reasons, actually. I love having Glacier just to ourselves and a few other nutty nature types. The first time I was there, Going-to-the-Sun was bumper to bumper with cars and RVs both, and while we didn't get all the way to Logan Pass, it was still beautiful and impressive, and it was a lot nicer without someone on my butt the whole time. We got to see Many Glacier too, though it was very cloudy, and only Grinnell Glacier was at all visible. Didn't matter much, because the best friend was totally unimpressed with glaciers. She didn't realize they are just huge chunks of compacted ice that hardly melt. Me, I was impressed with the snowdrifts as tall as our rental car in the Many Glacier parking lot, let alone glaciers! :D And Lake St. Mary was still mostly ice, which I found gorgeous.
Tomorrow we are booking it down to Yellowstone, where I am hoping (but not holding my breath) to see wolves (PLEASE GOD PLEASE) and some more grizzlies. I'd also like her to see bison, even though she doesn't seem to care about that either. I'm also hoping for golden eagles on this trip, but two previous trips to Montana haven't yielded goldens, so I'm not holding my breath there either. We're staying in Jackson, which I am afraid will kill me with its trendy resortiness, but she should love it, so there you go.
Someday I want to bring my dad out here. He has never been to Montana, and he would LOVE Glacier and the Little Bighorn. And I've never yet seen Wounded Knee out here either, and I know Dad would like the Anaconda and Butte history. Oh well. For now I'll soak up as much as I can.
no subject
DragonLady
no subject
But yes, I've always thought it would have to wait until I was writing for a living, since I don't want to have to try to get out every day in the winter. (I don't even like doing that in Indiana where I grew up!)
no subject
The sharpest difference is actually Western Montana versus Eastern Montana: completely different culture, standard of etiquette, weather pattern, population density, and economic base.
You do get used to the weather (living here in CA I actually miss the snow), but you definitely do not want your bread and butter dependent on the local economy. The middle-class is virtually nonexistent -- there's either the very wealthy or the barely scraping by (or not).
Fortunately our police in MT are far kinder to vagrants than the CA cops. Our Fish and Game department doesn't fine homeless people for fishing without a permit, doesn't audit the meatpacking places for licensed kills (though they will prosecute trophy kill poaching to the maximum extent of the law), they don't enforce camping permit laws beneath bridges as long as the people there don't get into fights, and they don't enforce renter's laws for camp trailers unless you hook the person in question up to your septic system without a permit (because too many people on one line can contaminate the groundwater). We didn't have a lot of truly street people (most everyone can find someone's camp trailer/back shed to crash in), but those we did have, everyone in the neighborhood knew by name and face. I think part of it was because everyone was so hard up we had a stronger sense of community/"pay it forward," or just because it takes a hard person to let another human being freeze to death -- it's not like California where that homeless person you didn't help can at least survive. You can only live without some form of heat-able shelter for three to four months out of the year. And even then we'd have several a year who pared the choice between heat and food too close to the bone and froze.
So. Yeah. Have outside money, if you do decide to move there. It's beautiful country, but not without cost.
EDIT: Oh, and as far as wolves -- your best bet for wolves is the Bitterroot Valley, along the western and southwestern areas. They were reintroduced there a few years back and have gotten very bold. Sometimes they'll even come as far down as the residential areas between Darby and Hamilton.
DragonLady