Pre-Shabbos Greetings,
We believe that Missoula is even prettier than Bozeman, a city we like very much. It is difficult to live in two cities but we must try and rise to meet the challenge. Large mountain ranges surround both towns with Missoula sitting in more of a valley; the mountains appear to be within its boundaries. From the mountaintop, we looked into the attractive campus and football stadium.
We asked Gavin and then Robbie about the Montana Grizzlies College team. We are not ‘with it’ when it comes to football, amongst other things. Apparently, their ‘bark’ is more impressive than their skills—must be too much snow.
The students also built an “M” into the mountainside just like in Bozeman. While we are on the subject of the good people of Montana, we wonder why they spend so time fishing for flies. Everywhere we go, we read about fly-fishing. ‘Please don’t roll your eyes like that, Jen.’ One of these days, her lenses are going to pop out and then we’ll see how smug our editor is.
Our hike today was superb. We selected to climb to the “M”, push through along Hellgate and make for the summit of Sentinel Mountain. It is an elevation gain of 1950 feet over a distance in excess of 6 miles, roundtrip.
The first and last parts were extremely steep. Our calf muscles cried out for relief but we were ‘playing deaf’. At all times, the city is visible from the mountains including the runway at the airport. One of us loves to watch the planes land in the distance from such height. Of course, at the top there is a 360% view; it is stunning. In case we could not see for ourselves, our weather spotter quickly observed the formation of dark storm clouds above the many mountains. However, she remained calm and for the first time in a week, the rain passed us by.
On awakening the following morning, we noticed that it rained overnight. You can’t beat the rain in these plains.
We came across a bumper sticker that really made us chuckle. We think it might be the majority view of the people of Montana. “We’ll keep our guns, our trucks and our money. You keep the ‘change’.” It seems the spirit of change is not in the air in these mountains. We would like to think bumper stickers are not the source of our philosophy; however, we thought it was amusing.
Best wishes,
The Lazarow’s
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