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Montana is a great place to visit. Glacier is a sleeper for folks from the East.
That’s better. Michigan is full, too. And too cold. Or too hot, depending on what you don’t like.
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Yeah. It’s spelled “creek”, it’s pronounced “crick”.
Pfft! Northerners!
So are Montana creeks really big, or are Arkansas rivers that small?
Thanks for this.
It may be a bit contrary to your pastoral message, but I have two rather pragmatic questions. This seems as good a place as any:
How does one earn a decent-good (say 70K+ a year) there?
Will the state remain essentially conservative, or will it go the way of Vermont as lefties from the coast relocate there?
What a great and gorgeous post! The author ain’t bad either! Thanks, Julie, and thanks, Terry for dragging her up there so we can read this story!
Question 1: Work in the private sector doing skilled labor or being a member of management.
Question 2: Lord, I hope not. The vast majority of the state is very much red, but we do have liberal Californians coming in and trying to take over stuff. If it ever does get that bad, we’ll likely move elsewhere.
I was strongly tempted one time a few (more than a few) years ago by a house in Montana that had a hot spring behind it that heated the house, provided hot water and a warm swimming pool before it went on down a creek below the house. The price seemed high at the time but California has since gone nuts.
My son went to the University of Montana in Missoula. For a photographer, it couldn’t have been a better place. :) And my daughter and son-in-law lived out there at the same time for about three or four years. They loved it except for the smokey air in late summer.
When I went to visit, I was so surprised at the dry air too. It is so different from the humid air on Cape Cod.
Wonderful post. Thank you.
I thought it was dry here until I went to Arizona. Then I thought it was dry in Arizona until I went to New Mexico. I don’t think I could live in NM without keeping the stores bought out on lotion. :/
Well… Bozeman, Missoula, Butte, Helena, Kalispel.
But at least there are still wide open spaces where you can get some peace and quiet! I wish more liberals would wizen up and realize that cities are so much better, and they get to hang out with all their awesome neck-beard friends and spend their weekends holding protests and shouting at everyone and drinking soda-water while feeling oh, so European!
There was a grad student (political science) working as an intern in a county in … Indiana, maybe?… who had the job of putting up signs on the back roads to identify local features. Yes, it was likely make-work. Anyway, he (or she? can’t recall) wanted to properly label some flowing water passing under a bridge (if you can call a culvert a bridge). So, he was delighted to see an obvious local walking down the road toward him. “Hey, elderly local,” he called, “What do you call this water, here?” “Why,” the man (definitely a man, this time) answered, “That’s the crick.” Pleased, the young man (I’ve decided he must be male, because the rest of this makes him look foolish) went back to his support agency to have a sign made and installed. ‘Crick Creek’, it read. When he returned to inspect the result, he was was positively delighted to see the same old local standing there reading the sign. “What do you think?” he asked, proudly. The old man looked at him, squirted some tobacco juice in the water, and replied, “You got it backwards.”
Some Montana summers you have to be careful, if you blink twice summer will vanish. I moved here in 2002 and brought all my CA summer clothes. Most of them still haven’t been taken out of the boxes I packed them in. Chiffon dresses still hanging in my closet, never worn in Montana. I started packing in August, arrived October 25th and darn near froze to death.
I hate hot weather.
Montana is beautiful and Bozeman is a really interesting city. Great bookstore on main street; good restaurants; brass marker on the sidewalk dedicated to Gary Cooper. I flew in last September to spend a few days with a college friend at his vacation/retirement home in Big Sky (he lives/works in Billings). The big wildfires had been devastating most of the northwest during August and early September, but the week before I flew out a storm moved through, doused the wildfires, and dusted the mountains with snow. We stepped off the airplane in Bozeman and looked north out the window at a chain of mountains (not tall hills – mountains) that were capped with snow – beautiful! You and your husband are lucky people to live in such a beautiful place. Hope you don’t mind if I pop into the state from time-to-time! [Still haven’t made it up to Glacier!]
Glacier is, by far, the most beautiful place I have ever been to! If you’re ever back in Bozeman for a visit, let us know and we can meet up. :)
You can count on it. I’ll be going back to see my friend again, and I’ve got to get up to Glacier, so I’ll definitely be coming back to Bozeman! I’ll shoot you a PM well before I arrive!