Ahead Of Our Time

Driving through the Cheyenne and Crow Reservations was disappointingly not noteworthy, at least to the eye of those “just passing through.” We did meet some folks at a campground who were just arriving to work on the reservation for a one year stint, but they were staying at the campground instead of the reservation- seems they were a bit concerned about the idea of the reservation being a “sovereign nation” unto itself and didn’t wish to live among the Indians, even though they were there to help. I did not get enough information to understand the real issues, but found that interesting at the least.

Found people! In the city (town) of Billings. Big, it seems, by Montana standards but not by those of many other states we have visited. The story of the day, though, announced itself coming out of Billings when we caught our first glimpse of the Absaroka Range of the Rocky Mountains- still covered with snow and looming large above the horizon. Our path took us along and occasionally into the mountains. We stopped for lunch at a scenic pull over, and aside from the two Bald Eagles that flew back and forth along the jagged face of the vertical rock wall, we had the place, and sometimes seemingly the state of Montana, entirely to ourselves. Surely we are AHEAD OF OUR TIMES. Or at least the time of the tourist in this part of the country. Since South Dakota, now quite a way behind us, we have not found a single welcome center open. Many of them have signs in the door reading: “See you in May.” Hello. It is May. I know we changed time zones a number of times on the way west, but I’m pretty sure the month has remained the same…
If not, will somebody clue the new guy in please?

They were putting up a new bronze sculpture of Clark (as in Lewis and…) in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. We took the first ever tourist picture of it. Like I said, we pretty much “own“ Montana at this point. Someone’s got to do it! I am still pondering tonight why it is named a National Forest rather than a National Park. My main reasoning here is that we saw almost no tress in the entire park. Is it possible I failed to see the forest for the trees??? Maybe I failed to see the forest OR the trees....