Taking the Day Off, Sorta

Tuesday started with an early yoga class, nine fit ladies plus Susanne & me.  We struggled, didn't do everything, but ended the class tired by relaxed.

Then off to get Costco gas & some shopping.  The nice part of gas at Costco is you can clean your windshield.  The downside is the price isn't that much lower, 3 cents a gallon.  Prelim. calculations, we're getting 30mpg on the Chrysler.

The locals are really friendly, always happy to strike up a conversation.  I thanked the Costco gas lady for being able to clean the windshield & she stayed with me during the entire fillup, chatting about Bozeman & Montana.

Every couple of months or so, we lunch at Costco....a death dog & a drink, economical & in moderation, not terribly health detrimental.

We capped the evening with tango lessons & a practica.   Didn't get any really good shots.

We've been asked for pics of the apartment.  Problem is...when Susanne & I move in, we spread out so our lodgings rapidly become unphotographable.  If you visit the website for this place, you get pristine shots.

Here's the where to go: GARAJ MAHAL.

Click on the small photos below the large one for more views.

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I have come to love history.  Paris is loaded with it as my blog has shown.  Well, we have some here.

The east coast is filled with Revolutionary War & the period that followed.  I swear, almost any place you go in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, & New York, someone claims "George Washington slept here."

Well, in Montana, their version is: "Lewis & Clark paddled by here."  It turns out about 45 minutes from Bozeman there's a place where on July 25-27, 1805 (210 years ago, almost to the day), Lewis & Clark made it to the headwaters, the place where the Missouri River begins.  That was their mission, assigned by President Jefferson.  The Missouri was already named.  It was up to Lewis to name the three joining rivers.  He named them as follows:

Jefferson: The President, of course.
Madison: Jefferson's Secretary of State (who of course later became president)
Gallatin: Albert Gallatin was Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury.  Perhaps he paid for the trip.

It's the Gallatin that flows to Yellowstone.  Bozeman is the seat of Gallatin County.

OK, enough yakking, let's have some visuals.  I'll start with a video that pans along the Jefferson, across a small stream, then on to the mouth of the Madison, then down stream where the Gallatin joins the flow in a about a mile to officially become the Missouri.

We saw some wildlife.  A small deer was foraging across where the rivers joined.  Susanne's 22x telephoto makes the deer almost chummy.  In the bright sun at 1/400th of a second, all the hand tremors are gone.

We also saw some shore birds in the distance.  The park ranger was walking by & ID'd them as pelicans.  I always thought pelicans were seashore birds.

Which reminds me of the opening lines of a limerick by Ogden Nash:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican

Today, we did a swing to Butte (an old city, we didn't spend much time there) then on to Deer Lodge with a car museum and the Montana State Prison museum.  The prison operated from 1871 to 1979.  We took the tour, it's a grim place.  Photos later.

We also went to Helena, the state capitol.  But by then we'd had a long day so we headed back to Bozeman.

I'm tired.  Will continue in another post.

Settling In & Moving Around

Went to services & a pot luck at the Bozeman synagogue.  The service was called "Friday Night Live", a klezmer band on the bimah.  We sang through the entire service, what a joy!

Here's a shot of the band during practice before the service.  Natural light doesn't work the best. The band consisted of flute, violin, clarinet/saxophone, guitar, cello, piano, snare drum; not all members were there for this shot.  The rabbi is standing on the left.  As for guitarman/vocalist in shorts...it's Montana.

I know the pic interferes with stuff on the right, but a smaller version just doesn't work.

We had all intentions of heading out into the back country but lack of ambition and a Main St. sidewalk sale guided us to the easiest path.

It was a bit chilly, here's verification.


I was passing by this old timer when I remembered my enjoyment of the street musicians of Paris.  He appreciated the buck I dropped into the hat.

A sign of the times everywhere. Lots of re-purposed bank buildings.

The sale had its share of characters...this lady with the basset hound & a beehive on top of her head.

Some Montana observations.  The drivers keep to the speed limits although they're higher than you'd expect.  A two lane highway (one lane in each direction) will have a 60mph limit in the mountains & 70mph on the open road.  75mph on the Interstate.

Driving the Interstate Scottsdale to Prescott as we did last year & early this year, we set the cruise control on 75 (the speed limit) & still was often passed.  Not in Montana.

Looking at pick-ups, there are many more Tacomas & Tundras here than I'd expect.  Usually in the back country, everyone drives Amurrican.

At the BBQ joint last night, we found out where Santa spends the off-season.

Sunday morning we went out for b'fast.  Here's about as contemporary brunch menu as you'll ever see.

Susanne had to get a shot of their slogan & logo on the staff's T-shirts.  Our server gladly accommodated.

Bozeman tango has a milonga at a French cafe Sunday mornings, 10am to 1pm.  We didn't go to Paris, so Paris came to us.

The creme brulee & tarte des fraises in the case were yummy.

Because there were tango festivals this weekend in other cities nearby, the turnout was poor but we got a chance to chat with the few folks there.  Susanne is dancing with Chris, one of the local tango teachers.

It's Monday, we took the day to explore the area to the south & west of Bozeman.  We headed south, it was around 7:30am.  Some Big Sky pics.

The scenery changes rapidly.

Had b'fast in West Yellowstone, MT, the western gateway to the Park.  Near here, three states, Wyoming, Montana, & Idaho come together.  We headed west & a bit south towards Henry's lake.  It turns out the continental divide forms the boundary between MT & ID (we crossed it twice), the lake is in ID so for a time, we were in another state.

The lake wasn't so grand when we got there.

When we're in Paris I'm afraid I'll bore you with too many Bastille column pics.  Same this trip with Big Sky photos.  We probably took over a hundred today alone and we're not even 25% into our stay!

We stopped in the delightful little town of Ennis and shared an iced coffee in an all purpose grocery store, souvenir shop and coffee place.

As we looked around, we saw tchotchkas.  The big ones...

And a small one, on our table.  It has to be the UGLIEST Montana item on the trip so far.  I have to share it, sorry!!

OK...here comes a major Big Sky thing...a panoramic video, with the wind providing the sound track.  If you are seeing this in an email, click on the "Steve's Travel Blog" at the top to get to the web version.  Suggestion: View it full screen.

The video quality isn't that great cuz I shot it in VGA.  If I go Hi-Def, the file sizes become huge.

According to the guide book, there is this nothing town called Laurin (pronounced law-ray) with a Catholic church worth seeing.  It's a bit less than the the grand churches of Paris, but for being in the middle of nowhere & built in 1901 of native stone, it was worth a shot, two actually.

Inside was quite lovely.

We went to an historically important site but the weather turned rainy & my camera went temporarily bad, so we're going to return on Wednesday & try again.

Our plan for Tuesday is a 6:30am (killer) yoga class, some routine shopping, gas up, lunch at the French (tango) place, dinner @ the apt. (leftover Mexican) then a tango class & practica in the evening.  For Wed., return to that historical place, then on to Butte & Red Lodge to check them out.

'Slate. Early day tomorrow.  Bye!

Getting into the Swing of Things

I'm going to do this post over several days.  There'll be lots more photos.

We did our first yoga class in over a year.  It was great to be back, hard work because I'm so out of yoga-shape, but worth it.  We'll go back again at least twice next week.

Our location is perfect, only a block and a half from one end of Main St.  Lots & lots of restaurants of all kinds within walking distance.  One difference in Bozeman since 2008...it's alot more crowded.  Parking is difficult.  Main St. is only wide enough for two lanes in each direction.  That means no room for a middle lane for left turns.  The inside lanes both ways move very slowly.  Lesson: Stay off Main St.  Remedy...one block north & south of Main St. are one-way streets that move faster.  That's the way to go thru Main St.  (Our GPS hasn't learned this so we adjust.)

Our still relaxed agenda for the rest of today is for me visit a PC museum.  (Susanne not interested)  Back in 2008 it was small but it traced the history of the microprocessor & the various computing devices that used them...Apple I (I met Steve Jobs at a computer fair in Atlantic City in 1976, he was pushing it.  He was alot more accessible then.) to the TRS-80, Kaypro and on up.

Judging from their website, they've expanded their scope greatly.  Click HERE to go there.

Just got back from the museum.  An amazing history of computing along with robotics & artificial intelligence, both added since my last visit.

Lots of what is now really primitive gear is on display.  Here's a Univac system delivered to the Apollo 11 program in 1964 at cost then of $85,000.  It had 32 kilobytes (yes, kilobytes) of memory.  The system weighed 1,000 lbs.

Now fast forward 20 years to 1984 and my first computer, the Kaypro 4.   It had 64 kilobytes of memory, cost $2,100 & weighed 22 lbs.  Oh yes, it had a built-in modem with the whopping speed of 300 baud.  You could read the text as it came across the screen.

On the way to the museum I went down Willson Ave. which must've been the very high rent district 100 or more years ago.  It is loaded with Victorian mansions a la Prescott.

Susanne really loves sunsets and mountains.  Since we haven't left town yet, what she's shot so far isn't that great.  She hopes to improve, starting with this evening.

Both are from within the city limits of Bozeman.

A local beer:

We drove into the mountains for our walleye dinner.  Even the GPS says we're between ridges.

The road runs along the Gallatin River, a big, rushing stream.  Kayakers & rafters abound, but not when I stop to take a shot.

No sun just sucks the zing out of a landscape photo.

But it came out for a moment during dinner, so I rushed to the parking lot & took these.  I'm not that happy with them cuz there's too much civilization that I can't crop out.

The walleye, BTW, was not that great.  It has a distinctive but very, very subtle flavor.  Done right (lightly breaded, pan fried...just like Mom used to make) it's fabulous.  Our creative chef covered it with a lobster(!) sauce.  Should've asked for it on the side.  Even the photo didn't come out right.

But I digress.

The drive back was cloudy, but what the heck, let's show the shots anyway.  These taken by Susanne thru the windshield.

How about the last one in monochrome.

A photography note:  Susanne has the better camera with photo-enhancement features built in and she's more of a shutter bug than me.  So many of the pics are hers.

Friday morning, we left for Livingston, a town about 30 miles by the Interstate.  But alot more interesting by another route thru the mountains.

The last bit of winter snow.

Big sky country.  It just is.  You see it, you feel it.

From meadows to mountains.

The road not taken...into the woods.

Livingston, at last.  This is a railway station from back in the days when they knew how to build them.  It has sort of a European feel to it.

Although we're in Montana & Yellowstone NP is in Wyoming, this part of Montana is the northern gateway to Yellowstone.  And in these part, vintage tourist buses have been pressed back into service.  The color code is yellow for Yellowstone (of course!) & red for Glacier.

A hotel lobby reminiscent of the Hassayampa Inn in Prescott.  BTW, if you don't have an animal projecting from your wall or fireplace, you ain't Montana!

We stopped for lunch at this great little place, counter service but table delivery.  We were fortunate to have a celebrity among us...Superboy along with mom & little brother.

At these places, you usually get a number on a tall holder so the runner can find you.  Not here.  Everyone gets a green bottle, ours with a duck.

OK, enough for this post.  Tonight we're going to the local synagogue for Friday night services with live music & a pot luck afterwards.

Tomorrow?  Haven't figured that out yet.  There's a festival on Main St.  The Museum of the West at Montana State University/Bozeman beckons.  We'll work it out in the morn.

Oh yes, we swapped out our rental car for a Chrysler 300, much bigger/better.  We're from California now.

Early Days

Hi!!

We're still in the settling in stage of our trip, haven't done much, haven't gotten into the REAL Montana.  Susanne has a bunch of shots (incl a very nice sunset) that I haven't downloaded yet.

But here are some early photos.  The main entrance to Bozeman airport.

New, modern, very Montana-ish, yes.  Busy, bustling...not so much.

Our rental car.  Take a gander at the plate.  Crazy coincidence, no?

Unfortunately, it sits very low...very hard to get into & out of.  So I will call the rental agency to see if we can get a more comfortable car.

There's a co-op in town, with a downtown restaurant...strictly organic, non-GMO.  You select from the steam table for hot food and the salad bar & soup bar, then pay $8.99 a pound.  We ate there last night.  It's OK, nothing special.  Chicken was dry.  German potato salad was mushy.  But it looks very nice!!

The hot food is behind the red pillar.

Being Montana, there's a crowd that happily forgoes GMO.  For that bunch, there's this place.

Tonight we're driving an hour into the mountains to a restaurant at a ski resort.  On the menu is walleye, our favorite but rarely found fish dinner.  It'll be late in the day so with long shadows we hope to get some nice shots.

OK, gots to run.  We have a yoga class this morning; first time in a year so it will not be easy.

We're Here!

It's early morning in Bozeman.  The view out our over-a-garage apartment is mostly trees.  But I can see a not far off mountain.  For a moment, there was the distant sound of a train.  Nearby, the crows are having a debate. The sun is peeking through the clouds.  Absolutely lovely.

But I get ahead of myself.

The trip up was terrific...two one hour flights sandwiched by a 37 minute mad rush to a distant gate. With a one hour later time change, leaving PHX at 10:40am & arriving Bozeman before 3pm is a luxury we don't have going overseas.

The Salt Lake City airport is wonderful...new, modern.  Think of it as Denver, only smaller, more airy & crisper.  The Bozeman airport is pure Montana.  Also new, with liberal use of wood & stone, wildlife bronzes everywhere. A big damn grizzly glowers over the baggage claim area.

The apartment is fabulous, truly a Garaj Mahal.  It's spacious, modern with a landlady who's a real dear.  Pics later.

We're a block and a half from Main Street.  So last night after unpacking a bit we strolled there, tired, not very hungry, window shopping for a light dinner.  We settled on a place called Fin, the fish body part, not French for "end".  Susanne chose clams & mussels in a wonderful broth...I had cheviche, also great.  No photos, too tired to lug the camera.

We then stopped by a locally owned grocery store to get some things, headed home & hit the sack before 9pm.

Today we'll take it easy, unpack, hang out, maybe drive around the area.

Exciting...not.  Will catch up on photos in another post.

Getting Close

I'm in email contact with our two landladies, Marjorie in Bozeman and Jen/Missoula, paying the final rental amounts.

Both women have their rental places out back.  In Bozeman it's a garage and we stay upstairs.  In Missoula, it's a cottage way in the back.


It seems they have rather interesting names for their accommodations.  So I thought I'd share them with you.  The photos are taken from the web, so the quality isn't the greatest.   

Both of these pics are shot in the summer and cropped to best advantage.  So when I see the Google streetview, taken in the early spring, it's alot less glamorous, bare trees & all.  Reality strikes!!

Here is the Garaj Mahal (love the name), built in 2009:

We enter on the left (it faces the street) then go up the stairs.   The garage doors face an alley.  It's on-street parking...don't really care since our car will be a rental.


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And here we have Rattlesnake Cottage.  I'm hoping that's not describing the neighbors.  Doesn't look like it was built anywhere near 2009.

I think our lodgings will be very long on quaintness.  What else will be an adventure.  And you'll know all about it!

Gots to do more packing...

Impending Travel Heads Up

Hi everyone!!

I'm back.

Well, it's summer and time to think about our travels.  Actually, we've been thinking/planning for months.  Even before we left Paris last year, we knew we weren't coming back in 2015.  After all, four summers in a row is quite enough Paris for a bit.

We decided to stay in the U.S. and return to a state we discovered in 2008...Montana, our 4th largest state by area with less than a million people.  IOW, Big Sky country.
 
So we're going back in mid-July.  We'll rent a car while we're there. Our plan is to fly into Bozeman, a town we really resonated with even though were only stayed there two nights.  After Bozeman, we're going to wing it, heading towards Glacier National Park, no advance hotel reservations, just take it as it comes.  We'll do that for about 10 days until we reach Missoula were we will stay for four nights before flying home.

In Bozeman we rented an apartment for two weeks above a garage within walking distance of Main Street.  For a town of 39,000 there seems to be a heckuva lot going on.  To check out their downtown website, click here.
Here's a shot of Bozeman's downtown in 2008.

Bozeman has a tango community, mostly run by Montana State U. students back then.  Also, there's yoga which we've missed and have paid the price by becoming really out of shape.

We have all these great plans!!!

After Bozeman, the "wing it" phase.  No advance hotel reservations, we'll call ahead.  We'll head towards Glacier Nat'l Park.  Butte, Helena (state capital) & Great Falls are along the way.

Once at Glacier, we may go into Canada to see Waterton Nat'l Park. 

Here are some shots in Glacier NP from 2008, back in the day of low Mp & 3x telephoto cameras.  This year's shots will be better.

The above is at Logan Pass along Going-to-the-Sun Road, elevation 10,000 ft.  Snow in the middle of summer.

Melting snow.

At the end of the trip in Missoula, we've got another apartment above a garage (the landlady calls it the Garaj Mahal).  We'll kinda chill out for a couple of days until we leave for home.

That's it for now.  Next post in a couple of weeks!!!