Last Best Place

Our view to the northwest

 Now that we've been in Montana nearly a month I feel like we're finally getting our feet underneath us.  There are pictures on the walls, a new-to-us truck in the driveway with Montana plates, and plants scattered liberally around the house.  We have high speed internet and an old school rotary phone, retro cowboy wallpaper and a king-sized bed that fits all four of us.  On top of that, we've both started in on our new jobs.

Carl is working as a park ranger with the BLM, and gets to do things like ski to backcountry huts and raft the Bear Trap Canyon of the Madison, in addition to cleaning toilets and controlling the drunks floating down the river come summer.  I'm employed in the greenhouse of Madison Farm to Fork, a local foods non-profit that provides education, puts on classes, and sells veggies to the local school and at the farmers market.  That latter part is my responsibility, putting all those seeds in the ground and convincing them to grow.  Whatever I don't know about gardening (which is a whole lot), I am rapidly learning under the tutelage of my boss Kaye.

My office

Ennis has a year round population of about 960 people and 11,000,000 trout.  The number of bipeds doubles or triples in the summer with the arrival of fishing guides, second-home owners, and other seasonal transplants.  It's nice to be here in the tail end of winter to get to know all the faces that will still be here when the leaves start to fall.  We're enjoying small town living, where Carl's boss knew I got my job long before I did, and our elderly neighbor calls us up on our rotary phone to invite us to pinochle night at the historic school house down the road.  Everyone here has dogs so the furry kids have found lots of new friends, too.

Taking the dogs for a walk

If you want to find us, pinpoint the town of Ennis and then continue south for ten miles.  The Madison Range will be on your left, craggy peaks still covered in snow.  Big Sky resort and Moonlight Basin are over on the other side, fairly close as the crow flies but at least an hour or two away by car.  Soon you'll be able to see Sphinx Mountain with its distinctive profile.  When you get to Cameron, basically a sign and a bar, turn east and head up the bench towards the mountains.  Keep an eye out for pronghorn, golden eagles, and the 500 strong herd of elk that winter up there.  Make sure to slow down on the turns, and when the road turns to dirt you're almost there.  You'll be able to see the white farmhouse with the green roof about five minutes before you get to us.  The fearsome guard dogs are partial to peanut butter and hugs, and they'll be just as happy to see you as we will.  Welcome to Montana!

On The Road...Again

Road warriors extraordinaire

Driving across the country is something you should do at least once in a lifetime.  But after the 6th or so time, the epic journey loses a bit of its romance.  We've already kept track of license plates (North Dakotans are everywhere now), counted the Wall Drug signs both eastbound and westbound, and taken pictures of all the state lines.  The dogs have peed in all four time zones and Carl has downed more energy drinks than he'd care to admit.  We left Chile on January 29th, and by February 11th we had arrived at our new home in Ennis, Montana.  That's approximately 10,052 miles in 14 days.  We're ready to be off the road for a while.

From West Virginia we drove west to Bozeman to stay with our friends Amanda and John.  On the way we stopped for the night in Rapid City, SD, exhausted and ready to find some fried food.  You wouldn't think that the first weekend in February would be such a busy time but every hotel we drove by had a full parking lot and was charging premium prices for their rooms.  Turns out it was the last night of the stock show and Rapid City was bumping.  Who knew.

On to Bozeman, where our friends were kind enough to let us sleep on their futon while we searched for a place to live.  Much to our surprise, it took all of  one day.  Carl had the genius idea to stop in at the local paper to see if there were any classifieds that hadn't run yet, and lo and behold there was an old farmhouse for rent.  We drove out to see it, got the key from the neighbor who stands a full head taller than Carl, and decided that it would work perfectly.  I think it was the rotary phone and creepy root cellar that really sold us.  That, and the wilderness area two miles up the road.

That accomplished, it was off to Oregon via a visit to my aunt and uncle north of Spokane, WA, to retrieve our worldly belongings.  Everything fit in the 24' moving truck with room to spare and the roads were clear all the way back to Montana.  Unfortunately, we did have a casualty: our Portland Timbers gnome didn't survive the journey.  The dogs were super troopers through the whole ordeal, although by the end Bubba wouldn't leave the car in case we left without him and Luna refused to get back in.  But once the couch was out of the truck in and in the house, the dogs finally realized that we were home.

Home sweet home