I can see why they call this place "big sky country" because you can see lots of clouds for miles and miles, with very blue sky behind them. There are tall, soft hills with grasses and trees on the, sort of like taller versions of the area around Fairfield, CA. We're staying on a hilltop with a nice view, a few miles from Bozeman, which is a college town.
Thursday, September 14
Today we drove to a wonderful museum, the Museum of the Rockies, which is affiliated with Montana State University here. It had so much going on--a Lewis & Clark exhibit inside and another out, an old farmstead outside (summer only), exhibits about how long geologic time is, and how big a million is. Here is Mark, in front of the "million machine."
If it were full of dimes, it would have a million dimes in it. (Currently, it has just under 500,000 dimes in it.) We changed a dollar and put in ten dimes to watch the gears go: when it gets ten dimes in one spot, they roll into another spot; when that fills with $10 worth of dimes, it dumps into another bin, and so on, to show various quantities. I think it's a great way to get donations too.
I discovered from one exhibit that the RV-type wagons I've been seeing around the West have been "sheep wagons." Here is one from the inside:
We saw and photographed an old one in the canyon in Dinosaur National Monument. Also, I saw one way back at the beginning of our trip, a homemade one outside Zion National Park.
They had examples of other Montana residences, such as an old settler's tar paper shack:
It was only about 10 x 10 feet, so they had a fold-down bed to conserve space.
They also had a 1930s house, showing how the wooden homes were constructed around here, and how tiny they were too. They had exhibits about the Native Americans, showing some sign language they used, and they had a great dinosaur exhibit too: below is a T-rex found near here, in the exact position it was in (these are the real bones). A display nearby showed how it got into that position:
Another dinosaur area showed a variety of tricerotops skulls, to show how the animal probably develops as it grows.
I loved how the exhibits didn't just show bones, but compared and contrasted them, to teach something as well.
There was also a planetarium, and we saw a movie about space exploration, but my favorite part was an area with three scientists, who were working on some bones. Two were medical doctors, and they were interesting to chat with. They were discussing dinosaur anatomy, and one said he had recently read an essay written by a high school girl, suggesting that maybe T-rex wasn't a scavenger, or a straight predator, but instead, an opportunist, like a lion, an animal who would scavenge if possible, but could also take down its prey if need be.
After the museum, we rode our bikes through the MSU campus to downtown. The old historic downtown is nice, with funky stores, restaurants, and a really great local bookstore, the Country Bookseller. Here is an old theater across from the bookstore. I counted three or four of these old theaters in the old downtown:
I wandered through an antique store and ended up back at the internet cafe, which has really good coffee and cookies. Mark rode back, got the car, and met me there, and we checked our email and uploaded.
Today, in-between doing stuff, we called and arranged for a U-Haul truck for hauling our stuff from Sacramento to Portland, I called an apartment complex near our friend Judy downtown (they have a few units we'll go see), we called our doctor back in Sacramento and made appointments with him and with Mark's dentist and our financial guy. Everything is starting to get set in stone, or at least plaster. Things are going to be hectic once we get to Portland, I think, and I'm a little worried we'll forget some key step. I've also been having nightmares about looking for a job. I guess I'm anxious because so much seems to be unknown. One thing we do know, though, is that Mark should be able to get some contract work from his old company or the new offshoot company, so he'll have some income eventually. Mark is not at all worried, and I'm glad it's just one of us.
Tonight, we got back to the RV to discover a new neighbor, a family with a three-year-old girl named Katherine, and a baby boy. They live near Portland, and seem very nice. Our Katie played with theirs awhile, and we exchanged addresses. They leave for Missoula tomorrow too, but they're going to the KOA, and we're heading to Jellystone Park.