08-29-2014, 01:18 PM
You all owe it to yourselves to see Montana. What a place. My kid works as prof in Bozeman and I can't recall a better week's vacation since waaaaaaaaaay back in time when I & friends headed to Greece from Stanford in Germany. Yes, Yellowstone is awash in late summer tourists. Maybe it's always awash in tourists. But here's the thing: it is one place in the U.S. that rises above all the people and crowds. Literally and figuratively. God bless the politicians of 1872 who had the ability to see the value and create what had never been created before: a national park.  And screw the radical free marketeers who think government ruins everything. Just look at West Yellowstone or Gardiner right outside the park entrances to see The Road Not Taken. The fun part: park rangers spend most of their time doing three things: 1) telling tourists not to be idiots and go exploring thermal pools & vents on their own. 2) Telling tourists not to be idiots and try to get selfies with elk and bison. 3) Telling campers not to be idiots and sleep in tents near campgrounds where the bears be.ars have no fear.
But the rest of Montana, at least around Bozeman is doing just fine as a free-market counter-argument. Ringed by mountain ranges, it has views you don't see anywhere else. Thriving wheat and livestock industry stretching up on the mountainsides as far as cattle can stand. It's a working landscape, not a decorated landscape. August (!) snow on the peaks. The beauty of green and gold fields in high summer. Bozeman a small town (yeah, but it's got a university) that actually has a functioning downtown and main street. Lots of art galleries and tourist shops, but also lots of functioning everyday businesses and government/ public offices that are convenient and successful. Can't recall seeing a city that old and that size that survived the coming of malls and shopping centers, but struck a balance and kept downtown alive and populated. Shady streets. VERY bike friendly/walking friendly. Downside: everyone is really honest about the winters. Each has his/her own favorite -20 deg. anecdote. They do not sugar-coat it in the name of promoting immigration or tourism.
And they have women's roller derby as a genuine amateur sport. I remember it as hokey TV faux sport, but it lives and thrives in small (and some big) towns in America as a genuine competitive local sport. But you have to look for it, and then you see it's all over. Laugh if you will, but there in the Agricultural Exhibit building of the county fairgrounds they drew more than a thousand people-- families, teens, students, hipsters, male groupies-- for a match with another Montana city. Just a hoot and the women who compete ( 20 and 30-somethings) take it very seriously. The Redrumette competes and contributes to the cachet in radio and print promotion as they note that even PhDs are on the team.  The practice we took in was eye opening. Like football practice for guys, but less standing around. 3-hours of technique training and repetition with hard hitting. And the fun part is every player adopts a nom-de-guerre, which is invariably bad-ass and from then on they refer to each other by that name around town. So we ran into Rogue at the Co-OP market and Lady Anvil at the campus brewery. Lady Anvil has the physique of a Russian javelin thrower, is a sweet as the day is long, and is a welding, grinding, brazing by-God sculptor in metal.
Oh. Montana State in Bozeman is in the Big Sky conference along w/ U.C. Da vis. Anyone will tell you they fully expect to MSU to grind UC Davis' sorry butts into peanut butter. We now have a metric of common foe. Nothing less than 56-0 tomorrow.
But the rest of Montana, at least around Bozeman is doing just fine as a free-market counter-argument. Ringed by mountain ranges, it has views you don't see anywhere else. Thriving wheat and livestock industry stretching up on the mountainsides as far as cattle can stand. It's a working landscape, not a decorated landscape. August (!) snow on the peaks. The beauty of green and gold fields in high summer. Bozeman a small town (yeah, but it's got a university) that actually has a functioning downtown and main street. Lots of art galleries and tourist shops, but also lots of functioning everyday businesses and government/ public offices that are convenient and successful. Can't recall seeing a city that old and that size that survived the coming of malls and shopping centers, but struck a balance and kept downtown alive and populated. Shady streets. VERY bike friendly/walking friendly. Downside: everyone is really honest about the winters. Each has his/her own favorite -20 deg. anecdote. They do not sugar-coat it in the name of promoting immigration or tourism.
And they have women's roller derby as a genuine amateur sport. I remember it as hokey TV faux sport, but it lives and thrives in small (and some big) towns in America as a genuine competitive local sport. But you have to look for it, and then you see it's all over. Laugh if you will, but there in the Agricultural Exhibit building of the county fairgrounds they drew more than a thousand people-- families, teens, students, hipsters, male groupies-- for a match with another Montana city. Just a hoot and the women who compete ( 20 and 30-somethings) take it very seriously. The Redrumette competes and contributes to the cachet in radio and print promotion as they note that even PhDs are on the team.  The practice we took in was eye opening. Like football practice for guys, but less standing around. 3-hours of technique training and repetition with hard hitting. And the fun part is every player adopts a nom-de-guerre, which is invariably bad-ass and from then on they refer to each other by that name around town. So we ran into Rogue at the Co-OP market and Lady Anvil at the campus brewery. Lady Anvil has the physique of a Russian javelin thrower, is a sweet as the day is long, and is a welding, grinding, brazing by-God sculptor in metal.
Oh. Montana State in Bozeman is in the Big Sky conference along w/ U.C. Da vis. Anyone will tell you they fully expect to MSU to grind UC Davis' sorry butts into peanut butter. We now have a metric of common foe. Nothing less than 56-0 tomorrow.
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