Home Sweet Home

We got to St. Mary’s Montana and were looking forward to enjoying a couple of days in Glacier National Park.  The clouds and rain had been chasing us most of the trip and since the heat in Ft. McCloud we were back into the cloudy pattern. We decided to drive to Browning to see the Museum of the Plains Indians because Dad had remembered it as being nice from before.  Forty years had either dulled his memory or it had changed because it was very run down and the whole town seemed depressed and depressing. 

The only thing that was interesting to me was the amazing displays of the native beadwork and porcupine quill decorating of items.  The description of how they have to soften the quills by holding them in their mouth and then dye them all these various beautiful shades of colors with natural dyes and then sew the quills either by stitching or weaving or braiding them onto items of clothing or purses etc.  I had always been intrigued by Indian beading but I think this quill work is even more amazing.  Sorry no pictures of this as the museum requested no photography.

They were having the annual Pow Wow with dancing and a rodeo so we wondered over and had an Indian Taco for lunch but it was drizzling and had been raining hard.  The place was just dirty and junky not nice like the one we had been to in Fort Hall last year.  We walked over to the dancing place because Dad likes to take pictures of the elaborate costumes but there was a photographer’s fee of $20.  That was the last straw so we decided to head on back to the trailer.  When we stopped at the convenience store on the way out of town we did see a young Indian couple with the dad - who looked like a warrior brave who should have been riding a paint horse across the plains – was carrying a very small baby in a traditional papoose board with all the fancy beading on the part that holds the baby in. But in the perfect contrast between traditional and modern - the baby was sucking a binkie! I wish Dad could have taken a picture of that but we did not want to be rude and ask.

We did see a couple of very funny things in the parking lot of the pow-wow.  One a pickup truck completely covered with bottle caps.  Then they had started adding things to the top of it to cover with more bottle caps.  The other one was on another truck filled with so much junk in the cab only one person could sit in it – bumper stickers about Obama you will have to request a picture of if you are interested because we don’t want to be offensive to anyone!

 Later on along the Missouri River Dad found me a bottle cap with a K on it and gave it to me so I could start my own collection – but don’t expect to see me gluing them onto any of our vehicles any time soon!

Early evening the sun looked like it might start to shine so we jumped in the car and drove the Many Glaciers road in the north east side of Glacier Park. We finally saw a moose beside a lake down in the willows munching his dinner. There was even a Park Ranger there and he did not chase everyone away except the one dope with a big Cannon lens that was going to walk on down almost into the moose’s face.  I was happy to finally see a moose – even though there are too many trees for a really good picture - this was our first one on this trip.

 The next morning we got up all excited to drive the famous “Going to the Sun Highway” and get fabulous pictures of the mountains.  It was again overcast with the sun trying to peak out so I talked Steve into driving at least to the Pass and then we could still turn around and be back by check-out time if the weather had not improved.

We saw more and more of the Grizzly Bear Flowers which I guess officially is called Grizzly Bear Grass.  (I still want a picture of a Grizzly Bear eating some).  Steve got these two awesome pictures.

And the further we went this is what we saw.  The last one Steve captioned “Curtain of Clouds”.  Sadly we turned around and checked out of the campground and headed on down the road.  We live close enough to Glacier it was not worth waiting it out in the trailer in the rain. 

As we drove on that afternoon it rained so hard the wipers had to be on full blast non-stop.  We are glad we did not waste our time driving further into Glacier just to see more raindrops.

We stopped to visit another Buffalo Jump - a Montana State Park south of Great Falls.  It was much smaller than the previous one we had visited in Canada but well done and it had an intrepretive walk you could walk out around the area and up to the jump.  There was a huge prairie dog town up on the top which I was fascinated just watching them play around with through the binoculars. 

We stopped along the Missouri River south of Great Falls at a boat launch that evening and the Caddis flies were swarming thick in the air.  Steve was checking it out for future fishing trips.  We met a couple in their mid 70’s from California who were up there fishing.  He was there at the campsite when we got there and talked our ear off about how it was the best dry fly fishing river there was and on and on.  About half an hour later his wife come walking up the rather steep bank out of the river all decked out in her expensive fishing gear.  She had been down there wade fishing the whole time!  I told Steve not to count on me taking up fly fishing any time soon!

Now we were getting closer & closer to home we were like horses once they are heading back to the barn – just wanting to get on home so after an overnight stop in Idaho Falls to see the grandkids and their parents we got home to Providence 35 days after we left.

After getting all the stuff put away and re-organized at the end of a trip now comes the exciting part of figuring out how to be retired and what to do with the time every morning when you get up and realize you do not have to go to the office that day!  So far I think it is wonderful!

Thanks for sharing our journey with us & farewell until the next big adventure!