Hello Everyone,
You’ll be very happy to hear that I am no longer in Missoula. I have left the mountains entirely for the moment and am writing to you this week from Great Falls, Montana on the edge of the Great Plains. It’s definitely different to see flat landscapes stretching out towards the horizon after so many months in the mountains. I do plan to loop back into the Rockies in a couple of weeks, but for now it’s just good to be on the road again and moving. It’s been a pleasant week even though I haven’t gotten too far from where I started. I spent much of the week split between Helena, Montana’s capital city, and Great Falls. Shadow Catcher is driving so much smoother than it was last week and I’m really glad I took it back in for another look. Great Falls is a great place to give it a good test, because the streets in town are absolutely terrible. I’m really hoping that the rest of the summer will be smooth sailing from here.
After I finished up this post last week, I heard from Kerry at Rocky Mountain Diesel who was taking care of my van. He told me that while they had rebuilt my drive shaft the week prior, there was still something wrong with it and it needed to go back to the shop that had rebuilt it. He told me that I could pick up my van for the night and that they would get on it first thing in the morning. It was pretty late at that point, so I picked it up and headed just down the road to Highlander Brewing Company. Highlander is a perfect example of something I’m surprised I don’t see more often in places. Highlander Beer is an historic Missoula brand first brewed in 1910 and named (with full permission) after the New York Highlanders baseball team (later renamed the Yankees). Highlander was brewed right there in Missoula until 1964 when the brewery was demolished during the construction of Interstate 90 and the beer went dormant. The branding was purchased in 2015 by a start-up Missoula Brewing Company. While they don’t brew the original Highlander beer, they sure capitalize on the name and the nostalgia with a brewery chock-full of old bottles, signs and memorabilia. The taproom is beautifully situated along Grant Creek, the beers they are brewing are pretty good and overall it’s a wonderful place to be. It’s also a quiet and easy place to park overnight which was an added bonus.
Hello Everyone!
Of all the places I was hoping to be writing this post from this week, Missoula was not one of them. I had a pleasant if rainy week out exploring some nice spots in southwest Montana and heading towards Yellowstone, but by the time I got to Bozeman I had come to the conclusion that the repairs done on my van weren’t quite right. My stupid air shock continues to leak – these really are the worst designed parts I’ve ever encountered. And while sometimes I felt like we were cruising along smoothly, other times the whole van would vibrate beyond anything which was “normal”. I really didn’t want to turn back to Missoula, but on the other hand I paid a small fortune to get this work done and I expect it to be done right. Three hours back versus the whole country between me and home became an easy decision. Kerry at the shop was perfectly calm when I called him and told me to go ahead and bring it back in and they would take care of it. So here we are, back in Missoula. I’m really hoping that whatever it is, it’s reasonably easy to fix and that we’ll be back on the road by this time tomorrow, almost exactly a month after I first pulled into town.
After I finished this post last week, I was in a similar position to where I am today. I headed over to the mechanic shop with the hopes that my van would be ready. They were still working on it, and would finally hand over the keys around 8pm. I felt bad that they had stayed so late to get it done, and told them that one more day wasn’t going to kill me at that point, but they were ready to get it done and out of the shop. It sure was nice to be back behind the wheel, to start to put my things back where they belong and to sleep in my own bed. I went out and had a few beers to celebrate at the Draught Works brewery which is brewing up some great beers including one called Shadow Caster which made me smile. I had one last burger at the Missoula Club and then crawled into my van and slept and slept and slept…
When I set off on this journey, one of my very first rules was ‘say yes’. Whenever I was going to spend time with someone, if they asked me to tag along with what they were doing, I would say yes. That rule has brought me to pee-wee soccer matches, the green rooms at music venues, into the kitchens of popular restaurants and opened the door to too many incredible experiences to list. This last week, it brought me to the airport in Stevensville, Montana - the home of Skydive Missoula. My friend, Renee, is obsessed with skydiving and spends all of her summer weekends in the “drop zone”. When she asked me to tag along, my answer came easily: yes. Because she knows everyone there, she introduced me around and over the next couple of weekends I got a serious look inside the world of skydiving. Unfortunately, because of the repair bill I’m looking at for my van this month, I didn’t jump myself, but I had an awesome time hanging around the shop, getting to know everyone and taking these photos.
The shop at Skydive Missoula wasn’t an unfamiliar environment for me. It reminded me in many ways of the scuba dive shops I’ve worked at over the years, just with a different set of equipment. It’s a vibrant place, with music pumping and a hundred different things happening at once. The longer I spent there, the more organized the chaos became until I finally saw the well-oiled machine it actually is. Everyone I met at Skydive Missoula over the last two weeks was excited for their jumps from first-time tandem jumpers to seasoned veterans with thousands of jumps in their logbooks. It really was a fun environment to experience, even though I wasn’t there to jump. I was incredibly impressed with the competence of the staff who lived, ate and breathed skydiving. Having hung out with them outside of the shop as well, I can tell you that they just keep on talking about skydiving late into the night. Even the pilot of their plane was a seasoned skydiver.
During my two weekends at Skydive Missoula, I got to be witness some really cool experiences, including my friend Renee’s 100th skydive - an epic milestone in her skydiving career. I also got to see one of the school’s students, Sereina, get her skydiving license which put a huge smile on her face. In addition, I got to see a couple of dozen people make their very first skydive ever. They looked nervous getting on the plane, but were all smiles by the time they landed.
I had an amazing couple of weekends hanging out at Skydive Missoula. If you’re ever in the area, stop on in and tell them I sent you. I’m sure they’d love to show you how to fly.
Hello Everyone,
I’ve got good news and bad news to start off this week. The bad news is that Shadow Catcher is still in the shop in Missoula, waiting on parts. My new axle housing has made its way all the way from Florida to Indiana where it is currently being rebuilt. They should be putting it on the road to Montana by Friday with it arriving early next week. Once it’s here, it should only take a day or so to get it on and to put everything back together again. I will likely be writing this post from Missoula again next week, making it three weeks since we pulled into town, but I will hopefully be on my way soon thereafter. The good news is that the shop has loaned me a truck in the interim, so I have packed up my camping gear and hit the road in it. I’m very grateful to them for the loaner as it has allowed me to get out and do some exploring this week. It’s not the easiest way to travel, but it sure beats sitting around on my hands in Missoula. I think if I had three weeks to sit there and stew, it would be hard to bounce back from. This week has taken me south through the Bitterroot Valley, across the Big Hole and the Bozeman Trail and is winding up here in Butte, where I am writing to you from today. The weather has been great and I’ve definitely been enjoying myself despite the difficulties of being out here without my van and the stresses involved with that.
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After finishing up this post last week, I went out and enjoyed a wonderful night of music with a songwriters’ round at the Zootown Arts Community Center there in Missoula. This event brought together four unique songwriters from around Montana who took turns sharing their songs and the stories behind them. It was the first event of the newly formed Montana Songwriters Collective and it was really enjoyable. After the show, I went down and had a burger at the Missoula Club and then headed back across the river for the night.
Hello Everyone!
Well it has definitely been a tough week out here in Montana. The bad news is that I’m stuck in Missoula waiting for parts for a major and expensive repair to Shadow Catcher’s rear end. The good news is that at least I’m in Missoula which is a lovely city with a lot to keep me occupied.
When I wrote last week I was on my way into Missoula with an appointment to have someone look at one of my air shocks which still wasn’t working properly. On the way into town, I started feeling some vibrations coming from the rear end. When they looked into that issue, what they found was that the bearing which had been replaced in Idaho a few weeks back had failed completely causing major damage to my axle which now needs to be replaced. Finding the parts has been challenging and time consuming and so even though they are ready to move ahead with the repairs there’s not much else to do but wait.
Hello Everyone,
Greetings from Big Sky Country. It is wonderful to be back in the Rocky Mountains. I have just gotten to Montana and am really looking forward to my pending exploration of this fascinating and beautiful part of the country. This last week brought me north through the Idaho panhandle, where I explore some beautiful lakes and cute little towns along the way. I got a couple of short hikes in and have had some time to relax and catch up with a friend as well. It’s been overcast and drizzly for most of the week, but it has cooled off significantly, so I’m not going to complain. I would have loved to have taken my photos of some of these towns under blue skies, but I’ve been enjoying them nonetheless. Before I tell you what’s to come here in Montana, let me tell you what I got into with my last few days in Idaho.
After finishing up this post last week, I went out and took a walk around downtown Pullman, Washington. There was a cool old train depot, some nice bridges and a fabulous used bookstore which is one of my weaknesses. I also went up to see an old pioneer cemetery in town which had graves from the 1890s and was hidden away in a residential neighborhood. I crossed back into Idaho and took a stroll around Moscow as well before hitting the road north.
I dropped into a little town called Potlatch to see their historic train depot and then continued north to Saint Maries, a cute little town sitting at the confluence of the Saint Joe River and the Saint Maries River. The town was named by the locally famous Jesuit missionary Father Pierre DeSmet during the 1840s.
