The American Northwest - MONTANA

The express route to Montana would be by air. But we (Aaron, Noah, Rob & Diane) decided to take the slowest possible means of transportation other than riding a bike: a Greyhound bus to Dearborn Michigan, taken entirely on country roads; a train from Dearborn to Chicago,

a Pilates break in Chicago, and then a 35 hour train-ride to Whitefish, Montana. But this ride was not without entertainment. A war vet. across the aisle from us, got quite inebriated on the overnighter to Montana, and told way too much personal information to Aaron and Noah, as we raced across the plains of North Dakota.

This included a grossly incorrect explanation of how identical twinning occurs (i.e. "usually the first sperm fends off all the others, but with identical twins a second one sneaks in!"), advice on how to find a woman (based on his own sketchy experiences) and how to pick a suitable water bottle to discretely hold Jack Daniels.

Aviva joined us in small town Montana, but not without her own adventures. Upon arriving at the airport, she was surprised to find there were no taxis available. With no phone coverage or taxi service in sight, Aviva resorted to splitting a shuttle with a nice old couple from Baltimore. When the shuttle pulled up, the couple asked if he was Randy, the shuttle driver they were promised. He responded: "There are two Randys...I'm the other Randy". We never found out who the original Randy was. This shuttle ride caught Randy mid-phone call with his buddies, whom he was instructing to arrange his arsenal of guns for him. Welcome to America! Randy then decided to give a tour of the area, which consisted of driving onto someone else's ranch (luckily only the gardener was home) while Randy pointed out the zebras the owner had imported to his ranch. On the heels of Randy's gun phone call, Aviva was just praying they'd get off this stranger's property ASAP, which they did.

Now with RANAD together in Montana (Big Sky Country), we stayed at Artemis Acres Horse Ranch,

located in a beautiful valley tucked far away from everything. The animals were all extremely friendly, including a moaning dog that woke us up in the morning and a drooling cat that was supremely affectionate but kinda disgusting at the same time. We went riding on 2 different days.Both Diane and Noah had the pleasure of riding a very special horse named, York, who was a real "trailblazer". He regularly went off the trail into thorny bushes to scratch his belly....and his rider. He also had TREMENDOUS gas issues when going up hill. Rob's horse, Jack, had a reputation of being "the lazy one", but we diagnosed him with social anxiety disorder as he just needed to keep a social distance from all the other horses. Here we are all geared up on our first day with some random extra kid:

We also did 3 hikes: Apgar, Mt. Brown and Hidden Lake. Apgar looked like it had forest fires a few years ago, and so there was a great view of the park....but absolutely no shade. Mt. Brown was one of the more intense hikes we've done. The switch backs were tight and steep, but the panoramic view at the top was well worth the 8 hours and 22 km it took there and back.

And here's from the hike to Hidden Lake:

Aaron's adventures with Wildlife: On two of the hikes Aaron had to go on a "nature call". This type of situation is already hard enough out in the woods...without further complications from a couple of unplanned rendez-vous with exceptionally curious mountain goats with exceptionally sharp horns.

Luckily the goats were mostly just voyeurs and Aaron sustained no injuries.











Here are some interesting t-shirts that tell you something about the values in this neck of the woods:







K. That's it for now. We're off to Seattle for the next adventures.

RANAD!!!