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Northern Rockies Life, Spring & Summer 2019

I’ve always been fascinated with the American West from watching John Wayne movies with my dad as a kid to borrowing a glossy book on America’s national parks from the school library in junior high school. I fell further in love on my first trip to the West in 1988 while I was in college, enough so that I had a strong inclination to apply to schools in the region when it was time for graduate school. For most of my adult life I considered Colorado home even though I lived elsewhere for long stretches for jobs or other reasons. I always anticipated I’d return, even during part of the last five years I was based in New Jersey to help out with parental end-of-life care. That changed somewhat, though, after two visits back in recent years. The Denver area isn’t what it used to be. It’s become ever more Californicated, the so-called Front Range a huge sprawling mass of suburbanization and a sea of traffic and the city coming to resemble other large metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, the nicer mountain towns I’d consider living in for their proximity to recreational amenities have become astronomically expensive. The recent trips convinced me it was time to try some place new to settle, some place more “Real West”. Montana is the other state that has always most appealed to me from both imagination and experience right down to its nickname as the “Big Sky Country”. I traveled extensively through Montana during the late summer of 2001 and then visited again in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2017. It has long been in the back of my mind as an ideal place I might eventually like to live, one that I started making serious plans to relocate for the last two to three years. And with American society’s accelerating gallop towards the abyss, Montana remains a relatively traditional place and a refuge from the increasing ugliness. Montana is an enormous state, but there are only a few places that seem realistic to relocate to – the more interesting college and resort towns like Bozeman, Missoula, and Flathead Valley. For me Bozeman won out for several reasons. First of all, it’s location near Yellowstone Country and Big Sky ski area makes it a top spot for recreation; second, as a university town of around 50,000 people in a micropolitan area of 100,000 it’s large enough to have a fair number of amenities lacking in smaller towns; third, it has the biggest airport in the state since I plan to continue traveling; and fourth, my cousin Deb and her husband John live in the area so I already know someone here. By March 20th, about two months after my mother’s death, things were such in terms of the house being ready for sale and on the market I was able to make the physical move west in a Budget rental truck far bigger than what I needed for the limited belongings I was transporting and my Buick pulled on a carrier. The four-day drive west on I-80 and I-90 was mostly uneventful (despite the serious Midwest flooding that left many of the fields in Minnesota and South Dakota as lakes) until I got to Gillette, Wyoming and saw the flashing signs saying the interstate was closed 100 miles ahead because of flash floods. The Little Bighorn River flooded the interstate between the state line and Hardin, Montana, necessitating a significant detour that added over 100 miles to my route. So if Montana is to become home, why a blog on my travel site dedicated to it? Well, there’s plenty to see and do in the region, neighboring states as well as Montana, and I intend to be actively exploring through the summer. I’m making tentative plans for foreign travel later in the year but anticipate settling in and being mostly in the region through about September.
Planned Dates
2019-04-13 to 2019-11-02
Countries
1
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