After I left Cory’s ranch, I headed East toward Missoula, taking an amazingly scenic route through Idaho. I probably drove for over nine hours that day, but the scenery and the sound of Malcolm Gladwell’s voice narrating The Outliers was more than enough to keep me entertained. As I quickly learned in the western states, summer is THE time for road construction. As in, there is no other time. At a couple of points along the way, they had traffic stopped in both directions to let the road construction take it’s course. During one of these standstills, I got out to ask the crew member how long we would be waiting. He replied with a nonchalant, “About 25 minutes.” What?! So I got out of my car and headed down to the river I had been tracing the entire day. It was a nice, unplanned break to stretch my legs and check out the wildlife along the riverbank.
“Down by the creek bank by the old holler log.”
After a FULL day of driving, I was happy to finally arrive at my friend Josh’s house, but sad that we were missing each other entirely in the process. As timing goes, he and his girlfriend were driving to Seattle for a wedding at the exact same time I was driving to Missoula, effectively trading places. Josh, Cory and I were BFFs at PERC and he was another one I couldn’t strong-arm into coming with me to the reunion. I think I’m losing my edge!
Enviro-trouble
But he was so gracious to allow me to stay at his house while they were gone, helping me break up the long drive to Bozeman and providing me with yet another place to unload the contents of my car and two bikes while driving around Montana. What a relief!
It was a quick overnight stop in Missoula before heading 3 hours down the road to Bozeman.
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