Saturday, July 26, 2008

Bozeman, Montana

Bozeman, Montana today. As if you hadn't figured that out already. I'm sitting in the Rockford Coffee shop, taking advantage of some free wifi and electric outlets to charge up my camera battery. My camera started flashin' the ol' red-light-of-death at me this morning, so I decided it was time for some caffeinated chargin-time.

The next stop on my grand tour is the most famous national park of them all, Yellowstone. This morning is my stocking-up time for the park, collecting food and gas and batteries and such. I picked up some fancy new hiking pants the other day in Helena, so now I can hike about without fear of my naughty bits popping out, scaring women and children and the like. So that's good.

To be honest, I'm paranoid as hell about heading into Yellowstone -- I've heard about the crowds and I'm none too confident of getting a camping spot by showing up on a Saturday. But this trip is all about not planning things in advance, so I'll have to do what I've done for the rest of the trip: fly by the seat of my pants. This could explain why my pants always develop holes in the crotch.

Enough about pants. Time for adventures. I was making my way south from Helena yesterday when I noticed a sign for "Lewis and Clark Caverns." Intrigued, I followed the winding road up to the visitor center, where I discovered a limestone cave system that rivaled what I had seen in Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. The caves are over 300' deep, and a trail over a mile long winds through the caverns and tunnels until exiting out a tunnel excavated by the CCC in the 30's. I have to assume that whoever was in charge of the project at the time had a hard-on for blasting, because the exit tunnel is over 500 feet long and took 18 months of continuous dynamite blasting to excavate. It's long enough that the cave requires a 2-door simple airlock at the entrance, because otherwise the pressure difference of the cave and the outdoor air would create 40-mph winds blasting down the tunnel. All in all, the CCC used a massive amount of dynamite and concrete to build the trail through the caves, and they did a damn good job. it even includes the "Beaver Slide," a short little slide carved in the rock that you slip down on the tour, the brilliant limestone rock of the slide polished to a brilliant sheen from the collective ass-polishing by countless visitors. It leaves a beautiful finish, but I get the feeling that it would be difficult to sell limestone countertops advertised as being "ass-polished."

Ass.

Where was I? Oh yes, the caves. I'm not very good at describing caves, but as caves go, these were very subterranean. There were stalactites and stalagmites, columns and pools, and formations called "cave popcorn" and "cave bacon." I would recommend the tour. It's impressive enough that Teddy Roosevelt had originally protected the caves as the country's 12th National Monument, but years later it was transferred to Montana to be a state park, the reasoning being, well, we've already got one National Park cave, and two would just be silly.

Sweet -- my camera battery is charged. Let's wrap this up. Other adventures yesterday: walking around downtown Helena (an entirely pleasant little city, with a nice history museum across the street from the state Capitol building, and a place downtown that makes some damn good burritos*), and visiting Headwaters State Park.

*So I went to this taco place downtown, and it being 11am, I thought, "let's have a beer." My goal while traveling is to only drink beers brewed locally, if possible, and asked the server if she knew if the "Blackfoot Brewery" was local. She had to check. She checked. Turns out they're in Helena. Seemed local enough for me, so I gave it a go. A nice hoppy lager, nothing particularly special, but just the thing to wash down my late-morning burrito. I'm walking down the downtown pedestrian plaza after lunch, and what to I see? "Blackfoot Brewery." Three blocks away from the restaurant. Definitely qualifies as "local." My question is: how can you serve a beer that's brewed LESS THAN HALF A MILE FROM YOU and not know that it's a local beer?

Headwaters park is located at the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers -- the headwaters of the mighty Missouri River. It's a small park, mostly populated by mosquitoes, but it's a big place in the history and hydrology departments. I went for a short little hike this morning to see the source of the Missouri, the longest river in the continent, and after reading the various interpretive signs, realized that I have awesome timing.

July 25, 1805: William Clark, a few days ahead of Meriwether Lewis and the rest of the Corps of Discovery, arrives at Three Forks, the headwaters of the Missouri.

July 25, 2008: Dave, a few hundred years behind Clark, arrives at the exact same place.

I love coincidences. I couldn't have planned shit like this out if I tried. Two Hundred and Three years to the freaking day. Me and William Clark: history buddies.

So now I continue south to Yellowstone and more fun with the grizzly bears. It should be fun.

-Dave

1 comment:

Brian Moffett said...

So weird, I was looking at a report at work today, and it pointed out the two worst performing stores in the country on a new sales measure. The two stores: Bozeman and Helena.

Also, Clark would have made you his bitch.