The Montucky Adventure

These past two weeks have really blown by. I returned from my sojourn north to Montana yesterday around 7:30pm. The road conditions were excellent, I managed to maintain a speed of about 80 mph the whole way. My only regret about the trip is that I could not stay longer. I just love it up there so much.

I started off my two weeks by visiting Sara and her parents in Sheridan. We all had a great time. For the most part the weather was wet, for some reason nature didn't know if it wanted it to rain or snow. One day it would rain, the next day it would snow, and some days it was a mix of both. The first full day I was there Sara's dad inspected a produce truck that ran off the road by Red Rocks Montana. Her father is the Madison County Sanitarian, so he was called out to condemn the load the truck was hauling. Needless to say we got some extra produce for the week. Throughout the course of my stay in Sheridan Sara and I did some projects around her folks' house and a house they watch. We deep cleaned this old rich dude's house they watch about ten months out of the year. For a house that is hardly used this place was a dump when it came to clean carpets and cabinets. Some how grease managed to be in just about every cabinet we cleaned. I think it took us longer to clean this guy's house than it took us to do the other jobs around Sara's house. At Sara's house we set up some stuff for her mother's garden, and cleaned a little nook in her garage for our stuff this summer. I also helped Sara's dad clean out their hay shed and wood yard to make room for the stuff we moved from the garage. Helping Sara's dad included moving four-wheelers around, dumping old hay in their backyard for deer to eat, moving hay bales to a shed for a pregnant cat to use as a den, and making a trip to the dump. It was all actually quite fun, I had a great time helping her folks out with some jobs they needed to get done.

I also managed to help Sara's mom out with a bird problem (or at least attempted to). In Sara's front yard there are a bunch of bird feeders, as a result all sorts of song-birds and woodpeckers show up to chow down. These birds are fine, in fact these are the exact types of birds Sara's mom wants in the front yard. But all this free food also attracts birds of less than savory character, namely Starlings and Red-Winged Black Birds. Starlings are these little white speckled, yellow beaked, black birds that are basically bullies to the other birds. I think Sara's mom mentioned they eat song birds' eggs too. The Red-Winged Black Birds also bully the other birds. To curb this bully problem in the Hamler's front yard Sara's dad uses a pellet gun to shoot the main offenders, so I took it upon myself to have a go at it as well, you know to pull my weight in protecting the helpless song birds. I think I managed to maim one Starling, and kill one Red-Winged Black Bird. I kept my eyes glued to the front window just waiting for something to show up. Sara thinks I have acquired some sort of blood lust, but I just take my duties seriously.

At the end of my first week visiting Montana we had to make a trip to Bozeman (or Bozo as I like to call it). I have never been to Bozeman so I was pretty excited about it. Other than picking Sara's sister and roommate up at the airport, our main goal was to visit the Museum of the Rockies, located on the Montana State University Campus. The museum itself was pretty cool. There were tons of fossil displays, and a few complete dinosaur skeletons. My cousin Mikal probably would have thought she had died and gone to heaven if she saw all those dinosaur fossils. There was also an interesting display on Montana's Native American populations and each tribe's take on creation. One tribe, I think it was the Crow, believed women were formed from blowing on a man's rib, just like another creation story most of you all know. I found this display quite interesting, it also gave me a little perspective on how similar all human cultures can be.

Another display that caught my interest centered around Edward S. Curtis an ethnographer, that is a person who studies different human societies, and his photographs of America's Native Americans. Curtis believed, like many white Americans at the time, that Native Americans were a "vanishing race," so he took it upon himself to document the different Native American cultures with photography. His photos range from portraits and Native American ceremonial dances to the inside of a tipi. I felt that his photos are very selective and really don't give the viewer a whole picture of a culture, just a romantic take on Native American culture. I found it interesting that Curtis had a clear idea of photos he needed to take, to insure he got the shots he needed for his work, Curtis brought a trunk of props which included Native American artifacts he either borrowed or bought to use in photos, and even wigs to cover the Americanized hairstyles of the Native Americans he was going to photograph. I thought this was a travesty upon further thought. By not documenting how American culture infiltrated Native American culture (i.e. hairstyles, clothing, tools, etc...) Curtis's photography project provides an incomplete and in some cases a totally inaccurate story. This is not to say that Curtis's photos are not beautiful, by all means his photos are among the best I have seen artistically. But the story behind them is suspect.

Overall I enjoyed the Museum of the Rockies. I did not enjoy Bozeman as a city though. Bozeman just seemed like a huge ghetto to me. MSU was too spread out for me personally, and quite frankly it didn't feel like part of the community of Bozeman, unlike the University of Montana in Missoula (where I went to school). This is not to say that UM is better than MSU, I just felt as if MSU were a hulking fortress set apart from Bozeman whereas UM is an intimate part of the community in Missoula. When you cross the street from the neighborhoods bordering the University of Montana you really don't feel much of a change. Sure you are on the University's campus, but it still feels like part of the neighborhood. Crossing the street from a neighborhood in Bozeman to the campus of MSU on the other hand almost felt, at the risk of being dramatic, like crossing the iron curtain into Eastern Europe. MSU's campus felt like a concrete jungle, the campus had no personality and did not feel like part of the neighborhood, the campus felt too cold, colorless, and uninviting. The words "Take heed all who enter here," should be pasted above MSU's school placards. No one should ever feel like this when visiting a college campus, ever.

After picking Sara's sister up from the airport in Bozeman, I accompanied Sara back to Missoula for a few days. Being back in Zoo Town (again another moniker I like to use) was very relaxing. I managed to see my best friend Tucker, and we went out to one of our favorite spots for some drinks and dessert. We caught up a bit and reminisced on old times, after which he showed me his new place, we then proceeded to rock out some Rock Band 2 and ran through a set of Pearl Jam's classic album "Ten" and ending with Jethro Tull's "Aqua Lung." It was awesome. I really enjoyed seeing Tucker and catching up with him a bit.

After a brief stay in Missoula, Sara and I went to Great Falls to meet up with my brother, and then picked a chair up for my sister from our parents' storage unit. G-Funk (I'm not even done with all the names I have for Montana cities and towns) has changed a lot since I have last been there, which is about two years I believe. I saw that a court house was being finished on Central Avenue and the mall was even undergoing some changes. I showed Sara where I used to live, and where I graduated from high school. It was fun seeing the ol' G-Funk, but I kind of miss it for the surrounding area, namely the Belt Mountains, Wolf Creek, and the rolling plains, but I am still glad I don't live there anymore.

After popping into Great Falls for a bit Sara and I headed down to Helena ( or Hell town, I promise that's the last one for now) to see my good friends and former roommates and Residence Life colleagues Ian and Bree. We stayed the night at their house and had dinner with them. We also met the new addition to their family, Freya, their new puppy. We had a great time catching up with Ian and Bree, learning all about their new jobs and what they have been up to since I last saw them. We also discussed the late Battlestar Galactica and how we felt about its ending. We were all satisfied with the ending, but mixed in our thoughts about the whole Starbuck, Caprica 6, and Gaius Baltar appearing in people's heads thing. Sara, Ian, and I also took a little walk around downtown Helena the next morning. We found a lot of cool shops, some of which Ian had never been in being a Helena native. It was great to see Ian, Bree, and Freya after not seeing them for more than six months. You really start to appreciate the friends you have after you haven't seen them for a long time. I realized how much I truly miss them all and the times we had when we were in college.

After visiting Helena we made a final stop back at Sheridan for Easter. We had an Easter dinner with some close friends of Sara's family. Dinner was excellent. We had roasted ham and a roast leg of lamb. Both were excellent. A good time was had by all that night. The next day Sara and I had breakfast with her folks and Sara's dad let me shoot a 17mm varmit gun. I totally murdered the pop can he set up for me to shoot. It took me a while to get my rythm down, being that I don't shoot guns on a daily basis, but I managed to hit the can with every shot I took. Montana definitely has its perks, that's for sure. Sometimes I wonder why I even left. I guess it sometimes takes not being somewhere for a while to really appreciate it.

Overall I had an roaring good time with Sara and everyone else. I can't wait until I get to go back up for the summer to work, hopefully as a Tour Guide in Virginia City (hopefully I hear something soon, keep your fingers crossed for me). Montana is truly one of those great places in the world unlike any other. Hopefully the next road trip I take up there will be my last when it comes to visiting my fiance. I know this blog post was pretty long, but thanks for sticking with it if you got this far. Tune in next time.