We left Mandan Monday, September 21 at 6:00 am with the intention of driving to Red Lodge and spending the evening. Montana hasn’t shrunk any since the last time we drove across it. The buttes and hills still seem so lonesome that they talk to each other sending messages airmail by hawkback. Fences still crawl up crazy little hills and knolls as if placed there by gymnasts. We stopped for coffee at a Conoco in Glendive; the gal there was talkative, she said a lot of people moved away since they built the prison. Why? Afraid of escaped convicts? No taxes went up and the older folks couldn’t afford to stay.
We kept driving along the interstate, past where the Yellowstone River crawls along like a snake, where the horizon looked like teeth on a rough-cut saw, where black Angus cows looked like pencil marks against dry parchment hills, where a sign advertising red Angus read “Better Bred Red,” (say that a fast a few times) where herds of antelope seemed to say “We’ve live here and we’re used to it,” where an old sheepherder’s wagon stood with big holes in its canopy top.
Our Ford Fusion ran like a hound through that countryside, past Billings, past Red Lodge, up and over the Bear Tooth Pass, and still we kept driving. Above the tree line there was a light dusting of snow. We stopped at the main overlook and looked down at the big trough we had just driven and climbed through, at the slides of scree, scrub brush, stunted plant life, an Alpine meadow. Mary thought I was looking around too much as we rolled along and got too close to the cliff edges. She’d holler at me as we passed through the switchbacks and curly loops.
We peaked and then dropped down again past a sign reading “This Is Grizzly Bear Country,” where we didn’t see any, past a sign reading “Open Range, Expect Cows On Road,” which we did see and had to slow down for. We stopped in Cooke City and bought ice cream at a funky little shop filled with old books and classical music albums lining the walls. The manager said he has chess tournaments in the winter; I told him I could enjoy a place like that.
There were some buffalo on the hillsides; Mary stated there were buffalo all over the place. Huh? I looked again. I should have realized her eyes were getting road weary - what she saw where rocks that in the shadowed light did look something like those critters lying down. I laughed at her but admitted she was right. We thought we would stay in Gardiner for the night, but when we arrived we couldn’t find a single available room. The place was crawling with older folks like us thinking we would travel in the fall when there weren’t so many people around. We drove north to Livingston to stay the night. The trip meter registered 650 miles.
