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Published: March 27th 2007
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Awww, BFF!
Thanks to some nice southern folk for taking this picture! Shortly After seeing my brothers off my friend Amanda came to pay me and Montana State University a visit! During her visit we got to see a very rare sight in Yellowstone, A Grizzly Bear and a Grey Wolf pack fighting over the carcass of a dead bison about three miles from us! We ran into a bunch of Wolf Watchers with their spotting scopes and hung out with them for a bit and watched the wolves and the bear duke it out for a couple of hours. Here is a little hint on seeing wildlife in Yellowstone: Don't watch the woods or the horizon for animals and movement, watch for the people. There are so many dang people, that when one person sees an animal, it really causes a traffic dilemma, so just pull over, ask them what they're looking at, look through their scopes and make a social occasion out of it. If you are looking to not be around people than you will definitely have to go backpacking off into the willy-wacks of Yellowstone (there is a post on that coming up here in a bit) as the park is an extremely congested place in the summer.
After watching the animals for awhile we went and soaked in the boiling river (which will also have a post to go along with it in the future). Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from Amanda's visit, how the hell that happened I have no clue (Amanda if you have any pictures from your rock climbing excursions or from Yellowstone, I would love to get copies to post)!
A day or two after Amanda flew back east I jumped in my friend Steve's car and started the long drive up to Shelby which is on Montana's famous
hi line. The hi line is a vast stretch of high plains that follows
BNSF Railroad into and through the Rocky Mountains of Glacier. The six hour drive is spectacular and if you decide to do it, I highly recommend grabbing I-15 North along the Helena pass and out into the wide open prairie. It has phenomenal views and the rock in the pass is so red it reminds me of my time back in Santa Fe. Now Shelby is truly a two street town, you've got a Main Street and you've got the street next to Main Street, US Rte. 2. One of
my favorite drives in Maine is along the western stretch of US rte. 2 and I'm always tickled pink when I find myself driving the same road 3,000 miles away from home. On the evening of March 27th, I picked up one of my best friends, Valerie on her birthday at the Shelby Amtrak station (the closest station to Bozeman unfortunately). Valerie was traveling out west on her spring break to Seattle and we decided we could both meet up in Shelby and visit for a short 24 hours before we put her back on the train to Seattle.
The evening was delightful. We rode the full half hour to Cutbank on the edge of the Blackfoot reservation to eat at a greasy spoon and watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and let me tell you, the only good thing about that movie is the line
"FOOLISH CREATURES, YOU CAN'T DEFEAT US WE ARE IMMORTALS MADE OF STONE!" Neither of us were tired after the movie and decided on the long dark drive back to Shelby that a nice evening of talk at the 24 hour truck stop would do nicely to top off the birthday festivities! Some of you
out there will understand exactly what I'm about to write and if you don't, than it is something you must experience to understand. There is something about 24 hour truck stops in the strange hours of the day where lateness and earliness blend together in a mind numbing concoction. It's a strange vestibule in space and time where weird half crazed diner employees and the somber, tired, worn-down-like-an-old-glove truckers come to congregate to pay homage to the act of enduring the tides of tiredness. It's in this place that the seeds of strange, adventurous, "just crazy enough it might work" ideas are planted. It was at this 24 hour truck stop that Valerie and I decided she shouldn't get back on the bus in Shelby, but to trek 150 miles west along our old friend US rte. 2 (we both lived in Western Maine and have both driven that road many many times) through the Blackfoot Nation, Glacier National Park and into Whitefish Montana, where she could catch the train later that evening. Our pact being made and sealed with the ingesting of Frybread and a Chocolate Milk Shake, we retired to a hotel for the evening got up the
Late Night Odometer
I was getting really sleepy when I took this picture and for some reason, I felt taking this picture of Steve's Dashboard would get me home safely. It seems to have worked! next morning and drove and drove and drove and drove, all day, through the gorgeous open hi line, through dilapidated and impoverished Browning, Montana (the largest town in the Blackfoot Nation) and straight into the Mountainous wall that is Glacier National Park. This park is amazing, it's breathtaking, and I am planning on making a much longer excursion up to Glacier this summer.
We drove into Whitefish around 7pm that evening just enough time to get her into the train station and say our goodbyes as the train was departing at 7:30pm. Unfortunately I couldn't accompany her all the way to Seattle, but with a sad good bye to both Valerie and US Rte 2 I jumped back into my friend Steve's car and drove the long hard six hour drive back to Bozeman so I could go to class the following day! The drive down US Rte 93 is spectacular and goes along the edge of Flathead Lake (the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi river) and through the Rocky Mountains into Missoula and back onto I-90. The rest of the drive was tiring in the dark and I stopped by the only 24 hour
McDonalds in Butte (the only one I know of in Montana) around 2 AM bought some road munchies and took a small nap, afterwards I continued to drive back to Bozeman to meet the sun and sink into my bed for a very deep slumber.
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Amanda
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Wow, those are some gorgeous photos, Luke, and I love the BFF shot of you and Valerie! ;) Re: Photos of the trip - Unfortunately, I took no people photos, and forgot my camera when I went rock climbing. However, there are tons of Yellowstone and wildlife photos up on facebook . . .