First off, sorry for the lack of posts last week. A week ago Friday I got into a car accident. I was rear ended while driving on the highway and injured my back, and I was in too much pain to concentrate on writing. Today’s a little better, so I’m going to push on. So let’s pick up where I left off.
It was cold and still early in the afternoon when we got to the campground, so my mom and I decided to go on a drive and explore. We followed a sign for a wildlife viewing area. A viewing area we did not find, but we drove through open fields, by an old schoolhouse, and down a winding road by a creek. Eventually though, we saw wildlife. There was a large herd of big horn sheep, hopping down a mountain to graze in someone’s front yard. We’d been trying to catch a glimpse of these elusive creatures since the Gateway to the Mountains, and here they were, hundreds of miles later, two sightings within 24 hours of each other. That night it was so cold that we rushed out of the campground in the morning. We didn’t even shower that morning, even though we had the option because we couldn’t fathom getting undressed in that temperature.
The next morning we grabbed breakfast at a bakery in town. As I got out of the car I saw a bunny—not the normal kind of bunny though. This bunny was chocolate brown. It looked like someone’s pet. But there wasn’t just one. There were two! I started following them because I may have been in love with them…and alarmed a business owner when I was hovering around his parking lot. I asked him about the bunnies and he said someone had let bunnies loose in town and they were all over the place now. The ride from there was pretty uneventful. There was a paved bike path all the way to Missoula. While I glided along with no cares or worries, my mom was white knuckling the steering wheel. She went on ahead when it evidently hit her that the bikepath strayed away from the road occasionally, so if something happened to me while I was biking she wouldn’t be able to find me. I’m not sure how a bike path could possibly be more dangerous than biking in the road. I mean, it’s not an impossibility but I’m sure statistically I was significantly safer. At any rate, my mom saw an ambulance go by and panicked, assumed that it was for me and backtracked to try to find me. Fortunately I was by the road at the moment she passed me, so I gave her a pleasant wave and continued on.
We had some trouble meeting back up, and it was only one more stint before we got to Traveler’s Rest, another Lewis and Clark interpretive center and the road I’d be taking toward my last mountain pass. When we stopped at the interpretive center, I discovered the woman on duty was from Massachusetts. We chatted for ages. She was from the South Shore and I got her talking about Bridgewater Triangle experiences (a hub for ghosts and the supernatural in Massachusetts). We talked about plants and animals in relation to Lewis and Clark. I left with a few book recommendations and went on the short self-guided walk-through Traveler’s Rest where they set up a replica campsite. Archaeologists found trace evidence that the expedition had stayed in a grove there and signs pointed me to the exact spot. The main proof is mercury content in the soil at the sites of their latrines because they used a cure-all medicine that had an incredibly high mercury content.
From there we drove to Missoula on move-in weekend for the college/colleges in town. We stayed in a cabin at the biggest KOA I’ve ever seen. It had everything, a swimming pool, a hot tub, they even had food trucks regularly scheduled. That night it was gourmet hot dogs. I suggested we go to REI to pick up long underwear so we could handle the cool temperatures at night. The next day we visited the Fort Missoula Museum. The indoor portion of the museum had an exhibit on forestry and wildfire fighting and an exhibit on WWII Japanese internment camps that was very sensitive to how heartbreaking the subject is. The museum is primarily outdoors. It’s comprised of a number of historical structures, from parts of the fort to an old homestead, schoolhouse, a train car library (I had no idea that was even a thing) and a fire watchtower. For a while now I’d been half joking half completely seriously telling my mom I wanted to get a job as a firewatcher so I could sit in a tower in isolation, watching for fire and writing. My mom told me Jack Kerouac was a firewatcher. I’m doubling down now.
Afterwards went to a used bookstore the women working at Traveler’s Rest recommended. I bought many books. I have a problem.
Ice cream that night, an interview about my trip the next morning, and then back to Traveler’s Rest so I could bike my last mountain pass.
The Stars On the Horizon 