Montana

last modified 5/6/2018

Monika and I decided to visit Montana to see if our lives might be improved by settling there. Or perhaps we will learn that no matter where we go, there we will be, with all of our problems and virtues.

We've done our homework. On paper, Montana has much to offer weary Californians: stunning natural beauty, live-and-let-live people and a lower cost of living. Set against that are long winters, square conservatives and a weak labor market.

When I inquired, I was informed that Montana was full, not very nice in the first place and to perhaps try Idaho. But would you believe it? They just referred us right back to Montana.

Actually, I have family in Bonners Ferry, ID that seem delighted at the prospect of us moving into the region. They've only met us once.

Thursday, 4/26/2018

Today's goal was to get from Ventura, CA to Missoula, MT. The 405 was conventionally miserable so we lucked out there. We parked in a space striped smaller than my Honda Accord. That was the second space that we tried. I stuck the landing the first time but Monika got whiny about not being able to open her door. We were finally able to relax once TSA confirmed that our chocolates were free of bomb residue.

The Missoula airport had half a moose up on the wall. That's a hoot. We only had half-an-hour of daylight to take a quick lap around Missoula. We'll get a better look in a few days when we loop back through on our way to Helena.

Friday, 4/27/2018

We picked through the meager free breakfast at Days Inn and found coffee and yogurt. FYI, breakfast is my metric for ranking vacations since visiting Indonesia.

Today's goal was to get from Missoula to Bonners Ferry, ID. We took Highway 200 which follows Clark Fork River through a mountain valley. The route is grandly scenic with snow capped mountains, pine and fir forest and of course the river. Conditions were perfect for driving: dry and clear and the roads are well maintained.

We encountered horses and cattle, wild deer and sheep and the enigmatic Montana motorist. They are, first of all, rare. One surmises from the high ratio of miles of road per driver that the Montana driver must once have been a prolific species that has dwindled, leaving only their roads as evidence, like fossils.

Montana drivers are relaxed. This is pleasant, very pleasant, until it goes too far. While road rage grabs all the headlines, pathological road relaxation goes untreated. Montanans have a unique nihilism which they express by picking their cruising speeds completely at random.

Montanans do not tailgate. They stalk. They drive from faraway places to trail you at a constant, comfortable gap no matter how you vary your speed. Nothing can shake them, including passing lanes. I admire the concept but they are useless. Montanans do not seek to pass. They live for the chase. Indeed, the only way to get a Montana driver to exceed the speed limit is to get one stalking you then exceed the speed limit yourself.

Speaking of which, the legal process for a body of people to incorporate a city is to erect a 25 mph speed limit sign upon otherwise good highway and hold that ground against all oncomers. First comes the 55 mph checkpoint followed by 45 mph, 35 mph and finally 25 mph. The penalty for speeding is summary execution or so I have gathered from the fact that Montanans universally pass through these respective checkpoints at 50, 40, 30 and 20 mph.

The farming villages and small towns along Highway 200 have no sense of feng shui. The yards are littered with broken machinery and bits of building materials and no thought has been applied to color palettes.

We stopped in Thompson Falls, population 1,356, for lunch at Minnie's diner, Yelp 4.7. I proceeded to eat the most average steak and eggs of my entire life. It wasn't bad; that would be below average. It was eminently edible. My rating out of 5 is exactly 2.5 out to 7 decimal places. Monika ordered fettuccine alfredo. She succeeds because she doesn't know that what she does isn't possible.

Montana has more casinos than Seattle has Starbucks. I'm not sure what to make of this.

We passed Lake Pend Orielle, another gorgeous lake in a series of gorgeous geographical features. If we move to Montana then canoeing will be high on my list. I would like nothing more than to canoe with my wife and dog, breathing in the beauty and making notes in my journal so I can properly satirize the experience later.

We made better time than we expected and arrived in Bonners Ferry mid afternoon.

Saturday, 4/28/2018

My uncle D_ and his wife S_ cooked eggs, sausage and “muffin in a cup” for breakfast. The coffee is good. D_ roasts his own beans. D_ and S_ work at doing just about everything that they can for themselves instead of working for money and buying things. They built their house and many of the furnishings in it. They have a workshop where D_ makes jewelry out of copper wire and S_ makes quilts. These are but the latest of many hobbies and crafts.

D_ and S_ have 4 daughters who all married and settled a stone's throw away. My cousin K_ and her husband J_ (is a cousin-in-law a thing?) took Monika and me shooting. This is the third time for me and the second time for Monika. We shot an AR-15 for the first time in all of its glory and assaultiness.

There were good conversations all around. My best conversation was with S_ and my two cousins once removed A_ and T_, aged 20 and 16. We pulled some deeply held beliefs like taffy. It was challenging for my cousins but they couldn't get enough of it. Though unlikely, it is theoretically possible that someone could read something that I've written, so out of respect for privacy, I'll leave it there.

Our rental car is a white Nissan Altima. I like it. It corners nicely, is reasonably powerful, is fuel efficient (37 mpg), has awesome range (600 miles) and the brakes work really well. The seat is good enough that I can usually forget about it but ultimately, like most seats, it is too small for my long thighs. I carry my cross.

Sunday, 4/29/2018

We ate more eggs, sausage, “muffin” and coffee.

Today's goal was to get from Bonners Ferry to Kalispell, MT and explore Libby, Eureka and Whitefish along the way. We drove east on Highway 2 to Libby then north on Highway 37 to Eureka then southeast on Highway 93 through Whitefish onto Kalispell.

Libby felt paralyzed. The homes were a real hodge podge. Some are well kept. Some are falling apart. Many are littered with broken down vehicles and machinery and downright trash that was never picked up after some half-resourced project or another. There are too few young people.

Lake Koocanusa was the most marvelous geography yet. We are glad that we took that route on the advice of everyone in Idaho (Eureka was not part of our original itinerary). The water is a cold yet tropical sort of blue. The drive presents vista after vista of pine covered mountains framing the lake.

The land is all windy mountain forest until all of a sudden it's open plains some of which is Eureka. Eureka is charming. It's small and spread out. It is far away from everything including itself. It is a touch weathered but looks loved. Monika and I don't know how we would live there so we won't but we understand why people would. There was still snow on the sides of the road which set Monika to brooding.

People build using the resources at hand. In Montana, that's timber, stone and brick. In Whitefish, it's all of that plus money. There are trophy homes all about. The downtown is glossy and trendy. It is like a plant made from grafts of many plants and transplanted. I think it tries too hard. To be cool and hip, you must first appear not to be trying to be cool and hip. I would feel compelled to take pictures of my steak before eating it. Monika doesn't mind any of this at all.

In Kalispell, my heart fluttered when I observed a driver exceed the ridiculously low speed limit by 5 mph. “Could these be my people?” I wondered. But dusk was setting in so exploring would have to wait until morning.

By random impulse, we chose to stop for dinner at MacKenzie River Pizza. The taste was serviceable. The real highlight was our waiter Tucker who spared a few minutes to fill us in about Kalispell things.

Montana is the “Treasure State.” It's more like the “Depot State.” You name it, there's a depot or a yard for it: truck depots, train depots, bus depots, plane depots, backhoe depots, lawn mower depots, motorcycle depots, boat depots, snow plow depots, junkyards, lumber yards, timber yards, corp yards, grave yards and finally every redneck's front yard is a depot. I guess that one man's depot is another man's treasure.

Monday, 4/30/2018

We ate the free breakfast at Hampton Inn. Everything was satisfactory. We got plenty of fuel for the day. I couldn't find the coffee because it was in the lobby. I got some on the way out.

Today's goal was to explore the communities around Flathead Lake. It's a very big lake and completely gorgeous, my favorite geography so far. It rained on and off but the weather was good overall. The drive is so relaxing and beautiful vistas so pervasive that Monika has begun nodding off. Our shoulders are feeling better. Is it just time away from sitting at our computers? Or is it the low blood pressure and relaxed mood?

Monika had a logical route planned out but I felt overeager so we proceeded in order of desire instead.

Somers is a tiny community built on a spur. It looked good on a map but the roads are narrow and twisty and most of the buildings are old and small.

Bigfork is a town of 4,270 nestled between the Flathead River, Swan River, Flathead Lake and mountains. It has borders. It is obviously setup for tourists to pour in during the summer but for now it remained dormant. It is my standout favorite town. It has identity and purpose. The little downtown is confidently cool with, finally, for the love of god, a handful of promising pubs and cafes.

Polson was the pleasant surprise of the day. It is a town of 4,488 with room to sprawl. My homework indicated that it was the armpit of the region. Instead, we found neat, freshly painted homes with all common signs pointing towards safety and happiness.

I turned down Back Road (literally). Something about the lighting and the closeness and hugeness of the clouds and mountains was really spectacular. Montana mountains end abruptly. There are no foothills. We got a third of the way to Missoula before remembering that we needed to be back in Kalispell by nightfall.

We stopped in Lakeside for lunch at Tamarack Brewing Company on the advice of our waiter Tucker from the night before. The beer was excellent. Our favorite was the apricot wheat ale, both good and different at a time when we have begun to starve for both. The burgers were very good but not quite great. The search continues.

We returned to Kalispell in the early evening. Sunset is late. Kalispell feels familiar, a little like Ventura. It's a town of a city. There is a downtown and strip malls and some big box corporate stores and a lot of nice middle class neighborhoods. There is traffic but it's tame enough compared to what I'm used to. Corporate development sucks some of the life force out of the land but darn it, it's useful. Humanity needs to figure out how to build a town where everyone somehow gets to live on the edge of town. Drone delivery, perhaps?

The entire Kalispell and Flathead Lake region is mostly free from the redneck junk that littered so many of the properties that we'd seen so far. It is aesthetically conscious.

Monika and I flew in thinking that we wanted a log mansion. They are pretty, given appropriate acreage, but they look downright silly on small lots. The real action is all about gray-blue houses with white trim.

We made a pilgrimage to Costco. It was a carbon copy of the Costco back in San Luis Obispo. There are a few little differences. There's no line to get gas. Instead of SuzieQ there's Alpine seasoning. I guess the script for Costco is to centralize 99% of the supply chain but localize the garlic salt. There is no hard liquor except for Irish cream. I guess it qualifies as milk. What a farce. And of course the wine selection is sadder but that's hardly fair considering that San Luis Obispo borders wine country. We found Santa Maria strawberries, whee. But we did not find bulgolgi, boo. There are a few local items. We bought everything that had huckleberries in it because that's the law.

At the checkout, I put my membership card in the little plastic conveyor belt grocery divider whatchamacallit. It saves multiple seconds which, when multiplied at [California] Costco rates of efficiency, by the end of the year exceeds the GDP of Zaire. Apparently, this was not a thing for the unwashed people of the Kalispell Costco. I may have started a trend.

We returned to the Hampton Inn having accomplished our primary mission. Yes, we would aspire to live on Flathead Lake. Yes, we would rent in Kalispell while we tried to make that happen.

Tuesday, 5/1/2018

We ate the free breakfast at Hampton Inn again. They vary the menu! Today, they had omelets and Canadian bacon instead of scrambled eggs and regular bacon.

We are investigating Montana in part because of my growing concern that leftism is advancing in California. I say leftism to distinguish the movement from traditional liberalism. In the 1990s and 2000s, I only encountered leftism on the Internet, where it's impossible to quantify, and in liberal arts departments in high school and college. Lately, I routinely encounter people in real life espousing racism and sundry bigotry. Being conservative openly is the new “coming out of the closet” which is ironic considering how the center-left is the new alt-right.

I understand why some Montanans would be hostile to Californians moving in and colonizing. I don't want to bring any of that nonsense with me. I want to leave it behind. For the record, everyone we have encountered personally so far this trip hasn't shown a hint of hostility.

However, this trip has helped me to appreciate aspects of California culture. Californians are creative. They know how to experiment and mix things up. They know the value of time. So far, the people and towns of Montana have ranged from depressingly stagnant to a bit bland. The innovation engine seems stalled. I notice the lack of creativity in the architecture, the speech, the music and especially the food. Mixing colors, words, sounds and ingredients in compelling and tasty ways does not come naturally to these people. They are not half as vibrant as the land.

Today's goal was to get to Missoula. Due to yesterday's impulse decision making, we began by backtracking north to investigate Columbia Falls. It's a bedroom community for Kalispell, not by design seemingly but rather by evolution. The people maintain their neighborhoods immaculately. We would live there. All we have to make sure of is that they're not Mormon. I have no more quarrel with any individual Mormon than anyone other individual. It's Mormons en masse that are intolerable and that's how they tend to travel.

We attempted to drive further north to Lake McDonald in the near corner of Glacier National Park but the rain started coming down in sheets. Not knowing the road and fearing that it could turn into a canyon road at any moment, we turned back.

We took Highway 83 to Missoula through a mountain valley of forests and lakes. The population is sparse. It's a “next gas 40 miles” kind of back highway. Pretty landscape yadda, yadda, yadda, we are becoming jaded. Cold and snow couldn't care less about latitude. The further south we went, the more snow there was. One lake was still frozen over. It's the first of May. I may be from SoCal but I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

Missoula greeted us with thick traffic. It's not that the city is so dense so much as that the infrastructure is so under built. I activated urban driving mode which was a mistake. Nobody understands that I will easily clear my left turns nor that they don't have time to turn left in front of me, etc. I almost ran down a pedestrian on account of scheduling conflicts.

We arrived at our Airbnb. It was a spacious upstairs studio with good feng shui. We spent the next couple of hours recuperating and scouring Yelp for somewhere to eat. The ratings are useless since nobody in Montana has functioning taste buds. We have to look at pictures of the food ourselves. Missoula is trying. They are failing but at least they are trying.

Downtown Missoula is taller than it has any right to be. I immediately read the signals as we walked along: long hair, trimmed beards, red jeans, tattoos, facial hardware, plugs, t-shirts for saving the planet and leggings from boutiques. A wild blue hair emerged then waddled away. There's a vaping room. I began to believe that dinner might have flavor.

We ate at Masala, an Indian cafe. The food was authentic. It wasn't perfect on account of not being made to order on account of, I presume, low volume. I asked the couple behind us in line if they'd like to share a table and they accepted and that went okay. They were nice people. They were not from Montana but they were nice people.

We have been checking out grocery stores here and there with the conclusion that no, Montanans do not have poor restaurants on account of competition from home cooking. However, Good Food Store pleasantly broke the rule. It had 14 types of flour, magical bread made from none of them and eclectic cheeses sold by the milligram. It all makes me ponder. Can we have both complementary colors and gluten? Is it possible to plate food without tattoos? Can we decline both country music and communism?

Wednesday, 5/2/2018

For breakfast, we ate curiously dense bread purchased from the Good Food Store. We drank black tea and non-homogenized milk.

Our goal for today was to explore south into the Bitterroot Valley. Today was as close as we'll get to a stop day since Hamilton, our destination, is only an hour away.

We drove south on Highway 93. The valley was pretty but our standards for geography have inflated drastically. It was merely beautiful woods and mountains. Meh. What about winding rivers? What about lakes of unusual size? What about heavenly sunbeams and clouds so close that you can see the angels sitting upon them?

Lolo is a suburb of Missoula. It's nice but ultimately not compelling. It is, however, fun to say. Lolo, Lolo, Lolo. Yoyo, YOLO, Lolo.

There are more casinos in Montana than any other single development. We capitulated. Congratulations, Lucky Lil's of Lolo, you're our 10,000th casino so so you win a special prize. The casino was dimly lit. There was no cigarette smoke. The air was okay the same way that the air inside a bus is okay. The antechamber contained about a dozen video machines. There seemed to be at least another couple of chambers deeper within. We fed $5 into the shredder. We got up to $9.20 at one point but gave it all back like the suckers we are. We left 5 minutes later.

Hamilton and tinier Corvallis are mostly mansions. There are log mansions, brick mansions, stick mansions and one with a copper plated roof that reflected glare most ferociously. I've never before had to flip my rear view mirror polarization on account of a roof coming up behind me.

There are regular houses too, all nice and inviting, all very elegant and even stately. Even the condos look good. The region wants only for one Mexican family to move in and build a cyan and mint green adobe pueblo like a mole on a fashion model's face, a spot of yin to accentuate the yang.

We are not sure where people work in order to afford all of these mansions and riding mowers. Hamilton has a Stepford quality. Monika guessed retirees. I guessed a secret alpine ziggurat and human sacrifice.

There are extensive paths running the entire corridor from Missoula through Hamilton that would make for great road biking. Hmm...

We returned to Missoula and ate at Romeo's Italian Kitchen. It was on par with Amechi Pizza, a regional takeout chain in Southern California worth 10,000 Pizza Huts but never to be confused with fine sit-down dining. The search continues. We may have to buy garlic cloves and a stick of butter, sauté those puppies and just pound them down.

Monika is in favor of Missoula as it offers her the best hope of ever eating sushi or being employed again. I am against Missoula on the principle that it is similar to San Luis Obispo but inferior.

Thursday, 5/3/2018

We ate bagels, yogurt and milk that we had purchased from the Good Food Store two days earlier.

Our final mission was to explore Helena. We originally intended to visit Butte but crossed it off our list based on everyone's advice. However, given that we have 2 nights in Helena, I do the driving and Monika picks the route, we decided to reinsert Butte into the itinerary and add Bozeman. Today's goal was to explore Butte and Helena.

We drove southeast on I-90 to Butte. The weather was warm and sunny and the clouds were small. Pines grew thick on the north faces and thin on the south faces. Between the weather, the color tones and the vegetation, I almost could have believed that I was driving between Buelton and Santa Maria back in California.

Butte is a queer town. We started by walking downtown, Broadway at Main. The buildings are 4-6 stories tall and heavy with brick. They are aged and will probably only last another 500 years. It was eerily quiet. Visually, there were people about but audibly it was a ghost town. The first floor story is occupied but the upper stories are mothballed.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A grand and engraved stone building, a bullion bank from what I can gather, has a vinyl banner trumpeting its rebirth as a sports bar. The commercial area is surrounded by Victorian homes, opulent in their time, now awkward on account of having no good place to put a refrigerator.

People seemed really happy to see us walking around. I think they wanted to drink our blood after nightfall.

The streets lined with Victorian homes lead directly into Montana Tech. It has student housing. It seems silly given the immediately adjacent under-occupied buildings. Maybe it's cheaper to build new than to renovate. Maybe parents want a tuition + dormitory package. Maybe governments spend money poorly.

The Berkeley Pit is really big. I had to find a place to dispose of soil from Monika's potted plants once and it was difficult. The Berkeley Pit is a bigger deal. Yet, it's not really so big after having driven 80 mph for a while on a nearly empty interstate.

Headed out of town, so we thought, we passed through a whole new section of town. It's new construction. There are minor mansions, condos and boxy corporate things. It's vibrant. There's traffic. It's odd juxtaposition. In conclusion, I don't understand Butte.

We drove northeast on I-15 to Helena. The lower elevations reminded me of the California central coast except built to a larger scale. There are the foothills with young chaparral green from spring rain. There off in the distance are the mountains. The high ground at the central divide is its own bleak biome. Perhaps it will brighten up in June.

Helena is a patchwork quilt of development. Each commercial area is surrounded by neighborhoods. There are two downtowns, one for evening dinners and one for buying a mattress. There are largish office buildings around the capitol. I guess that's about it. Rush hour is stop and go traffic on account of the old world layout.

Helena has graffiti. It's minor but it stood out because it was the first time that we saw any. Otherwise, the downtown drag is very pleasant. The signs call it a “walking mall.” It is off street with the shops facing in towards a wide pedestrian avenue.

There is patio dining! The burgers and beer look good and an Italian restaurant looked very legit and even more expensive. Perhaps these white collar workers know what chicken marsala tastes like. We pushed our luck and tried eating Chinese at Jade's Garden. We ordered two items. One was alright. The other was bland.

The distribution of gut girth among Montanans diverges. There are the sporting people and the fat people. The people of Helena are slimmer, on average, and evenly distributed about the mean.

I wrote an e-mail to Matt Christiansen, cohost of Beauty and the Beta on YouTube, asking to meetup and he graciously accepted. We'll meet tomorrow evening. Looking forward to it! I named Monika as my waifu in my message then realized that joke doesn't work in text coming from an Internet rando. Matt is either a brave man or desperate for free sushi.

Friday, 5/4/2018

Breakfast at the Helena Super 8 was about as expected, better than feared. The coffee was poor.

We drove Highway 287 south then I-90 east to Bozeman. The landscape increasingly becomes plains though hills and mountains are always visible in the distance. The mountains come closer near Bozeman.

We exited the Interstate then suddenly: welcome to little California! Good grief! The people can drive, tactically that is. The town is surprisingly dense, not from high rises but from its blob layout and older, more tightly packed development. Downtown is essentially one long street (Main) and 2, sometimes 3 stories tall. It was full of life. There were lots of college students, patio dining, booths setup on the sidewalks, brightly colored decorations, attractive store fronts, etc. There were pleasant aromas of thoroughly seasoned hamburger patties being seared.

I couldn't stop laughing. Here we were, 1250 miles away from home (as the car drives), right back where we started. Monika didn't mind at all. I conceded that she had a point. I originally set out to Montana wanting to shed some aspects of home but along the way I stopped taking some other aspects of home for granted. Bozeman felt like a happy medium. Too bad the rental prices are equally high.

We had some time to kill before meeting Matt, but not too much, so we stepped into Rice, a Thai Cafe. We ordered Thai iced teas and chicken satay. They were great! There were chunks of peanut in the peanut sauce. The chicken was yellow from turmeric. It was garnished with red onion and cucumber dressed in rice vinegar. We were stunned.

We met Matt at VII, a large sushi restaurant. That was good food, too, though I was too engrossed by the conversation to pay much attention. We jumped around a number of different topics, a number of them fairly personal. I suppose that shouldn't be too surprising given that the impetus for meeting up in the first place was that we're both interested in some of the same things enough for him to want to podcast and for me to want to listen. I had to corner Matt by threatening to superchat him before he would let me pick up his tab.

We drove back to Helena in the dark, hyperalert for deer. I got to use my high beams for an extended period of time. We made it back.

Sunday, 5/5/2018

We ate a smaller, wiser breakfast at Super 8.

Today's goal was to get from Helena back to Ventura, CA. The flight from Sea-Tac to LAX was a party plane. From the purple mood lighting and the cringeworthy flight safety music video to the energy of 50 high schoolers traveling as a group to the round of applause upon landing, the return to California was most fitting.

Monika and I will no doubt continue to debate and redebate the merits and risks of moving to Montana on various time tables and scenarios. I don't worry too much. Those are details with consequences too chaotic to predict.

I return with greater appreciation for Californian creativity. I expect to flee the excesses of California then immediately find myself defending its virtues while shoveling snow.