We've attained our goal of being in cooler weather! It was 44 degrees Tuesday morning and there has been plenty of rain with the precipitation being in the form of snow just above us on the mountains.
A chia moose! Or a mossy moose? |
There are also gardens, and I was so happy to see (and smell!) the peonies! It reminded me that we had driven by a hedge of lilacs in bloom in Park City and I told Tom I wanted to go back so I could smell them. We didn't get to smell those lilacs, but when I arrived at my brother's on Saturday afternoon, there was a
and lilac bushes in the yard, so I enjoyed lilacs to my heart's content.
Mountain meadow, just before the Divide |
indicates the ridge line from which if you look west, water flows to the Pacific Ocean, and if you look east, water flows to the Atlantic. The Snake River, on the western side of the Divide runs into the Columbia River which emerges into the Pacific between Oregon and Washington, while the Gallatin River meets the Madison and Jefferson Rivers at Three Forks, Montana to create the Missouri River, which later joins the Mississippi just outside St. Louis, and ultimately runs into the Gulf of Mexico (part of the Atlantic ocean). We crossed the Divide again on Tuesday between Patrick's house and Mary's, near Butte.
We drove into Montana and through West
Near the beginning of the Gallatin River |
A tenacious tree on the banks of the Gallatin River. See how the river has grown? |
Rafters on the Gallatin where we waited for road construction for about 15 minutes |
As we drove down the valley, I saw rock cliffs more like those I remember from growing up in Colorado. I recalled how as a child I was more curious about how the trees grew on them (like these in the Gallatin River valley) than in how the rocks themselves were formed, whereas the cliffs in southern Utah and northern Arizona made me curious about the geological history of the rock formations.
We drove through Bozeman and up Bridger Canyon Road to my brother's Flaming Arrow Lodge where we stayed with my brother and nineteen-year-old niece, Madison. The Flaming Arrow is an eighty-year-old log cabin (a BIG log cabin) that has a long history from being a Boy Scout camp to a party hall for rent so there is a bar and a cash register and a commercial kitchen. Patrick has lived in it for more than twenty years during which time there have been some pretty elegant remodels. Patrick is a collector of many things from books, to old animal skins to family silver. Many of the bigger pieces of furniture from our
The back porch of the Flaming Arrow |
New Jersey house, along with many of the family heirlooms, including an oil portrait from 1795 that belonged to our great-grandmother, have ended up in Patrick's house side-by-side with skiis, fishing rods and guns. I always enjoy seeing things that used to be mine in their new homes with people I love.
Patrick made a delicious dinner of local fillet mignon, and Sunday night my cousin-in-law, Stephanie, made a wonderful Father's Day dinner and we all had a lovely evening with her, my cousin Duane, and their twenty-year-old daughter Nell.
The view from Patrick's back porch |
One of Patrick's arrangements in a Stranahan's whiskey bottle cap |
The kitchen looking through to the living room on the left |
Tom and Chaco |
After that, since it was raining on and off, it was a good day to go to the Museum of the Rockies where there was a great exhibit of geckos along with many historic items from Native Americans and white settlers. We dashed through the dinosaur collection so we could go to a planetarium show about the balance of carbon dioxide in earth's atmosphere.
Did you know that more dinosaurs have been found in Montana than any other state? |
We also saw a number of long trains carrying either coal or oil. The oil carriers are carrying bitumen from Canadian tar sands. Today Mary pointed out the patchwork on the side of a mountain caused by clear-cutting sections of timber at different times. The tribe now leaves 'mother trees' standing, rather than clear-cutting and planting seedlings. This trip, and Montana in particular, brings the price of human exploitation of natural resources to awareness.
I'll share more about our time in the Missoula area in my next post, but for now, on the eve of the summer solstice, I'll close with a photo of the sky from almost 10 PM tonight.
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