At six in the morning, we pulled out of our condo that had sheltered us for five nights. Dawn fulfilled its promise of vibrant colors through the drive out of Anaconda to Butte where we stopped for coffee and breakfast.
Dawn
We drove under floating hot air balloons, by the babbling Yellowstone River to our unscheduled bathroom stop at a Rest Area which turned out to be a humble dose of history on Bozeman Trail where local tribes killed a traveling father and son while they camped.
As we left Montana and ventured deeper into the Northern Cheyenne reservation, fast moving motorcycles appeared. They stayed with us to the suburb of Rapid City where we refueled, wondering where the motorcycles were headed. That night as we called it a night at Chamberlain, SD, overlooking the Missouri River from our hotel on a hill, the motorcyclists, more than 400, 000 of them, converged in Sturgis, SD, a city we had crossed on the way. Later, on September 2, 2020, first Covid-19 death was reported from that event. At least 260 cases (those who agreed to testing) countrywide contracted covid from here. It was surreal to realize how close we had gotten ourselves to them. Not that we are the types to ignore medical professionals. But we were on the road. To be free, you must be alive, a concept lost to some.
We had stopped in the evening at the Chapel in the Hills located in Rapid City, not too far from Sturgis.
Missouri River view from hotel
Chapel in the Hill
Dusk
Next morning, with breakfast to go, we set our eyes on our home and drove east. Our pit stop today was at the Sioux Falls, SD.
Whatever entertains
Dawn
We made it home in daylight. I wish I remembered what I felt, what we spoke about, but all I knew was we were home. We were lucky. We were blessed. Thank you, God, for giving me a perspective to see so much beauty and live this life.
This marks the final blog in the “Chasing Memories” series to Montana. If you like this, please subscribe (click on follow button in lower right corner) with your email here at www.bookofdreams.us. You will automatically enter a RAFFLE to win my upcoming book, Land of Dreams.
Today, we drove north via Helena to Canyon Ferry Lake where children played on its rocky shores. When I spotted a golden snake behind a boulder while trying to find a place to sit, the children unwilling to leave hopped back into the car. Unintended catalyst but intended outcome.
Canyon Ferry Lake
Our last Lewis and Clark spot involved the Gates of Mountains where boat tours left at the top of the hour, none carrying us, only fifty other brave souls. Since no private tours were offered, we snapped a photo and left. Gates of the Mountains marks the place where the Lewis and Clark journey, sailing west on Missouri River, ended when they hit the Rockies. They termed the range as Gates of Mountains to signify their impenetrable force.
Gates of Mountains
McDonald Pass
We returned to our rental well in time today via McDonald Pass where the thunderous new look of the Georgetown Lake graced us. We packed and loaded our car, and I buried myself reading two books: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Sin and Syntax.
Dinner
All journeys end. Last year we had ended our diverse vacation to UK (England, Wales, Scotland) and Iceland. Despite it being one of our best trips, we were ready to return from it. Montana felt short—too short. I wanted to linger in its valleys. It had slipped between my fingers like a movie that ended prematurely. And the future was as precarious as ever. But I’d to return to nipping and budding of my forthcoming book: Land of Dreams. And this writer had refilled her chest of imagination, inspiration, thanks to the big sky country of Montana.
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Day five began with another colorful and peaceful dawn.
Dawn
Today we drove on a dusty road to the shimmering, green Wade Lake where the children stood in its lapping waves; the pebbled shore massaged our feet; and people in kayaks floated on its waters. The lake was so still reflecting mountains in its depths that we, too, stole a few precious moments to reflect and ponder.
Wade Lake
The drive to Big Sky featured the Earthquake lake where burnt trees stumps jutted from its surface, and the Madison River that roared from the cliff below. When we reached the restaurant inside a golf course, where our order was ready for pickup, not one customer dined in their outside patio, and every worker and customer wore a face mask, even their mannequins. We gleefully grabbed an outside table and dined out for the first time since March in the quaint valley of Big Sky. I wish I had remembered the last restaurant we ate at before covid. But still, this experience was precious, precious, precious.
The restaurant experience
Our last stop involved hiking to the ousel falls. Along the babbling river, we walked with our face masks on, on the crowded trail, carrying an awareness inside our hearts: this was the last hike, the last activity of our trip. The future reeled in the throws of a pandemic during an election year. Nothing was certain. One truth defined our present moment: our existence, our thoughts, our love for one another, and our ability to place the happiness of each other over our own—the secret sauce of happiness is in breaking the self-involved outlook and gain empathy for others’ feelings. When I became a mother, I learned to truly give and that made me happy. Those unhappy often complain about how they are treated, how they should be treated, etc. And it’s easy for anyone to fall into that trap. So I hang on to this realization close to my heart. Our vacation would end soon but better not our love.
Ousel Falls – Big Sky, MT
The drive back along another gushing river delivered an ointment to old wounds, rejuvenated the spirit, and prepared us to face life again. Tomorrow would be our last day in Montana before we ventured back east to the place we call home: Chicago, IL
We were sailing the most peaceful segment of our week-long, socially-distant getaway. Two books overtook the reins of my mind every free second—when I wasn’t driving the car or before I fell asleep at night. Idleness had found an objective. No worry seeped into an absorbed mind.
Dawn
Morning coffee
Mystical Silver Lake
We drove south toward Idaho this morning, starting the most historic, the most scenic drive, also my favorite day of our vacation. Mountains enlarged beyond Wisdom, Montana when our cherished companion, the babbling, whispering, and calming Salmon river, joined our journey, leering at us through the window, forcing us to make unscheduled stops along the road.
Our first formal destination involved learning about Sacajawea while walking this picturesque museum’s “outside trail” at Salmon, Idaho: featuring tipis, outdoor schools, and above everything else, Sacajawea. At a time riddled with wars and bloodshed, massacres and deep mistrust, the young, free-spirited, native American woman, mother of an infant, formed deep friendship with Lewis and helped complete their voyage from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark sailed on Missouri river based on the conviction it would flow into the Pacific until they hit the Rockies. They termed the Rockies Gates of Mountain because they were impenetrable. Sacajawea helped serving as a messenger and a translator with the local Indian tribes. Two tales circulate on Wikipedia, only one the museum believed from the Lewis and Clark journals, which claims Sacajawea died at the tender age of twenty-five years from an infection she protracted during childbirth. The signed adoption papers for her infant to Lewis and the journal serve as proof. The museum shunned other stories that she escaped an unhappy, arranged marriage and lived a long life till the age of ninety-five because she wouldn’t abandon her children.
After appreciating the efforts to preserve this precious sliver of history, we set camp at the Salmon river and ate lunch. I even recorded its whispers forever in a video. I wish we could make it all the way to Stanley, Idaho, but restfulness (along with wandering) was our supreme goal. So, we turned around midway to Challis and headed to Lemhi Pass up a gravel mountain, another Lewis and Clark stop, a trading post where they had camped and written into their journal. Not a soul accompanied the five of us atop the Lemhi Pass allowing us a strangely peaceful, quietly breezy, and blatantly ginormous three-sixty-degree view of the region.
Salmon River picnic
Roadside stop
Lemhi Pass
A dust cloud flew behind our car, the mud coating our rearview window, as we drove on gravel toward Montana—the sights, the lakes, the mountains, I’ll not even attempt to describe. Let’s leave it at: we absorbed stories from years ago, idled in pristine nature, and refilled our hearts with purpose.
Back at Anaconda, we helped ourselves to pancakes and scrambled eggs for dinner. Hey, it’s our vacation; we’ll flip it as we wish.
Dusk
The next morning, I’d worry about a vacation shortening with each breathing second; I’d worry about my never-ending mistakes, but today was prebooked by worry-free, untainted memories in the making.
Trivia:
Thomas Jefferson had sent Lewis and Clark to explore the west in order to expand. He’d asked congress for $2500; records indicate about $50, 000 was the actual expenditure.
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Happiness, define it? It’s in the wetness my children’s kisses leave on my face, in their smiles, in a book, in a meadow . . . When I canvased Montana’s vast expanse, a question tugged on my heart. What would it be like to live in a solitary home on a hill or by a stream or on a prairie? Would that be happier than happiest my children make me? I don’t know because a lucky person like me mustn’t ask for more. I cherish what each day gives me.
Today, Montana gave us its rural beauty through a gravel-filled scenic byway.
What a view to wake up to
Dawn
Children had had just enough time for breakfast and “rock climbing,” which is a fancy word for maneuvering around the rental lined by boulders, small in reality but large in imagination. When children imagine, a three-dimensional play unfolds.
And they had had just enough time for one other important act. That day was Rakhi. During India’s Rakhi festival, a brother and sister celebrate their bond by exchanging bracelets and prayers. Our morning began with this wonderful, tender act. My boys are lucky to have a bubbling, happy sister like Dua, which also means a blessing.
Happy Rakhi!
Then my littlest said to me, “Mamma, I want a superhero adventure and climb a mountain.”
Now that’s not an average four-year-old request. I’d to deliver.
We left our rental’s embrace and wandered into the wild, losing ourselves. Literally speaking.
So we entered Fuse Lake into our phones moments before we lost signal on an unpaved byway. Preloaded GPS directed us deeper into a narrower gravel road. And although it stretched a meager two miles, we drove for almost a half hour. The tiny road took a solid commitment because turning around was impossible. At the end, no parking lot, no sign flashed us a welcome, a sure clue that we were lost. Coated with mosquito repellents, we embarked on foot, feeling robbed of a destination to not be able to consummate the fling after risking our car through the big boulders. Hundred feet in, the trail split three ways without a trail sign. I pointed my cell and picked one based on the lake’s location on the map and did so on every split from there on then until we hit a mountain.
Then, I widened my eyes at my youngest. “Look, superhero adventure!”
That was it. He swung his arms, bobbed around branches, and led us up until my husband put down his foot. Separated from us by miles, Fuse Lake could be two mountains away. So I wish I could edit my story and say, we did it. But no, we suspended our heads and considered ourselves lucky to find our car. When we hit the main gravel road, a car zipped past us and into a clearing with a big sign, “Fuse Lake Trailhead”! Truth be told, our superhero adventure had tired me a little. We shook our heads and skipped the hike.
Still holding signal-less phones, we reached the roadside Skalkaho Falls, also the scenic byway’s name. We spent moments here, children climbing and rolling on the muddy hillside, the water slamming against the rocks, the cool, fresh water droplets coating joy on my face.
Skalkaho Falls
Next, we visited Montana’s Lake Como. From the car when we canvased the mask-less crowd on the beach and in the water, we delivered disappointment to our children. Away from the beach, we walked to an edge to snap a picture. For the little hearts who wanted to swim and splash, the photo-op was like leering a coffee addict with hot, bubbling beverage but disallowing a sip. They got over it.
Lake Como
The drive back to our rental on the scenic loop was beyond words. With lunch packed from home and drive-through coffee from a town named Sula, we crossed the Big Hole National Battlefield. Acres and acres expanded until wrinkly mountains carved the horizon. Countless cows grazed in the open land, ranch after ranch. As if dropped from the sky, giant-size paintings forming an unreal amalgamation of images, an unbelievable three-dimensional dream, we gawked and clicked photos for proof. But pictures are deceptively two-dimensional. At one point, we stopped the car and sat outside on the grass. Nothing but a river meandered nearby. Cows ran in the pastures like Dolphins hooped in the ocean. Tall, brown grass whistled and rustled. While our clothes slapped against our bodies, an awareness of time and space gripped our conscious. Questions pounded on our soul: Who are we? What does it mean to exist in that moment?
Roadside Stop
Back home at the lake
The Beaverhead River
Near Big Hole Battlefield
The Solitary Conversation
We made it home in time for us to walk across the street to the Lake that shined at us, leered at us through our rental’s glass walls. Carefree vacations should last long and be frequent. That’s all my light and happy heart thought as we wrapped another day in a neat little ball of bliss and allowed dusk to soak us in peace (even if short-lived).
The last view
Dusk
Trivia:
Big Hole National Battlefield marks the location where the Nez Perce fought their largest battle with the US government over a period of five months in 1877.
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The clinking of the drapes. A sunrise. Five mesmerized eyes.
A socially distant vacation
Life’s a big fat experiment. Though no future plans would involve driving through the night, if we hadn’t ever done so, missing from our lives would be spectacular dusk and dawn, badlands, mountain goats, endless deserts, and cramped mountain passes. So I am fuller because of my folly.
After a full night’s sleep in a hotel, we rose in time for another spectacular sunrise through the parking lot. Hello, new day!
DAWN
Today, we planned to head further west, deeper into the Rockies to a quaint valley town named Anaconda, Montana, about eight hours away—a smidgen of what we’d already driven.
We skipped the hotel’s “buffet breakfast” despite it being included in our stay. In the tiny town, only McDonald’s drive-through beamed with cars, offering coffee and breakfast.
The Rockies had reckoned my oldest, and when Buffalo, Wyoming, ended and the Big Horns began, it not only silenced his questions: “Is this mound, this hill, the Rockies?”! but also gave him a sense of a destination. While the journey fascinates, also necessary is the fulfillment of a goal. The delightfully beautiful Big Horns rewarded us with solitude amongst photogenic vistas and the Meadowlark lake. I found myself steepling my hands in gratitude, thankful to be able to enjoy outdoors quietly and safely given the current times. We had stolen these precious moments from the bosom of a powerful pandemic. And when the flowing rivers comforted my spirit, I wondered why. Why did the gushing water’s gurgle that never ebbed, never slept, never tired, deliver tranquility? Is it the security it stays where you leave it, the way you leave it? Or is it because I don’t live next to its roar?
Whatever the case, I stopped editing Land of Dreams, my forthcoming book, that had troubled me plenty. I had brought two books, but I gawked out of my window today. Within an hour, the Big Horns came and passed. We entered a small town named Ten Sleep, Wyoming. One tale suggested it got its name because it took ten sleeps/moons to get here from Fort Laramie.
Had we stayed on US-16 W, we would have hit Lake Yellowstone. But we avoided the popular national park’s concentrated crowds today. Deep country surrounded us north before we stopped at Big Horn Lake by Shoshone river. There, you could hold a conversation with your echo amidst the remote, endless, and scorching landscape. The children succumbed to their iPads before we invested moments of nothingness, just plain old peaceful idleness—a commodity missing from modern life.
When we crossed Joliet, Montana, a small hub of 656 people, a distinct purpose hung in the air. Stalls of Trump souvenirs lined the highway. Home after home pledged their allegiance. Through Montana, South Dakota, and Wisconsin, Trump-labeled roadside trucks, shops appeared without fail. An early indication of momentum and energy?
Post Joliet, the heat climbed to one hundred degrees when I drove the last segment, accompanied by Yellowstone River and freight trains.
We loaded on quick-fix meals from Safeway inside the Historic town in Butte before hitting Hwy 1-N, beginning our final stretch.
Anaconda ranks tenth largest town in the state at 9K population with Butte at number five and Billings at number one. So relatively, we escaped living in a twenty-bodied village. Around the highway, old buildings jutted from the ground—coffee kiosks, gas stations, large grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. Then the newer residential zone began. Crossing Anaconda hurled us into the Lake country, reminding us of last August when we had cut through the Scottish Lochs. A hut perched in the shimmering Silver Lake. Further removed, the Georgetown Lake glittered, and our condo arrived, too. At the ripe hour of seven-thirty, we entered our tiny rental, studded with glass patio doors on all three sides, overlooking Dentons Point at the lake.
After disinfecting and showering, we popped frozen food into the microwave. And when I crashed on bed, fatigue drowned me in its embrace without permission.
DUSK
Exhausted, yes. But I was alive, I was here, and I was me on a mission called recuperation and rejuvenation.
Ah the blissful coat of deep, dark sleep.
Trivia:
Georgetown Lake is a manmade reservoir created in 1885 to power Phillipsburg and area mining. It got its name when it flooded an area named Georgetown flats. Shoreline: 17.36 miles. Average depth: 16 feet. Surface area: 2,818.1 acres.
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