Missoula

My brother Davy drove an epic 950 miles from Lake Tahoe, California to Missoula, Montana last Sunday. The following day we hiked up to the “M” (putting letters on hillsides is a big thing in Montana) and watched the sunset from Sentinel Mountain.

Starting tomorrow Davy and I will be starting the drive back to North Carolina. It’ll be the first time I’ve been to Asheville since Christmas.

Went for a bike ride yesterday in the Missoula Valley along the Clark Fork River. I brought along the old point and shoot almost as an afterthought, and I’m certainly glad I did. One thing is for sure, you ain’t gonna be takin’ no pictures if you don’t have a camera with you.

We intended it to be 2 or 3 hours and it ended up being about 8. We got a little lost, but I think that is part of the fun of riding a bike sometimes. We’d brought along a decent amount of food and water, but we definitely stopped at the first gas station we saw coming back into town.

Our rides were two newly purchased Long Haul Truckers, the first steel-framed, as well as the first brand new bike I’ve ever owned.

Rock Creek is about 20 miles east of Missoula. It is a nice place to do some car camping, even if you forget your sleeping bag.

I am a firm believer that the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions ever.

It was a pleasant surprise to stumble upon the Adventure Cycling Association in Missoula, which seems to exist solely for the purpose of promoting bicycle touring, one of the best ways to travel possible.

There were a lot of fun pictures on the wall of people doing tours who stopped by and ended up having their pictures taken, so I did the ol’ take a picture of a picture. Hopefully they are big enough here to see whats going on.

Ah yes, bicycle transportation, no war required.

A few random pictures from last weekend in Missoula.

Before there was Glacier there was Missoula, Montana.

There was more to my trip to Missoula last weekend than just Obama. It was actually Hilary’s birthday on Friday. Happy Birthday Hil! Now she has joined me in the 28 years young club. It is fun to have a friend from North Carolina living so close. 2 and a half hours away is basically next-door in Montana terms. If everyone I knew lived out here I’d probably never think twice about moving back east.

I met her posse, a nice, down to earth group of folks, and we went out and experienced some of the Missoula scene. Good times. I don’t go to bars in Bozeman much these days, and If I’m not in bed by midnight I probably turn into a pumpkin.

The two city shots were from a short hike Hil and I did on Sunday, which offered some good views of Missoula and the surrounding area. Even with the clouds (basically a given in these parts recently) the weather was decently warm and it wasn’t snowing and we weren’t walking in snow, all of which I was thankful for.

On a warmer note, the high is supposed to be 67 in a couple of days, and since it has been snowing basically everyday for the past week that will be a nice change.

One last thing, I’ve been making the pictures a little bigger these day, if they are too big let me know.

As promised here are a few more pictures I took of Barack Obama in Missoula, Montana on April 5th.

Describing what is was like being there is a difficult task. The energy there was like a concert, Obama was a rock-star as he stood up on stage surrounded by eight-thousand cheering fans. He spoke for an hour or so on a variety of topics such as energy, education, and foreign policy. He spoke about the change that our country needs desperately and immediately after the eight year political train-wreck that has been the Bush administration.

After he finished talking he spent about twenty minutes interacting with the crowd, shaking hands and holding no less than three babies (I don’t know what compels people to hand famous people their babies.) before waving a last goodbye.

You left feeling good about the world and good about politics, which was a nice change. I felt inspired to try to bring about a small part of the change that this man is obviously working so hard to impart on our great country.

I’m including a video of a short part of his speech, someone has segmented it into topics and uploaded it onto Youtube.

My friend Hilary and I saw Barack Obama speak for about an hour on Saturday in Missoula, Montana. He is an excellent speaker and it was one of the more powerful events I’ve been to in a long time.

More thoughts and pictures to come.

The entire trip to Seattle from Bozeman consists of driving 5 minutes to I-90, staying on that interstate for 10 hours or so, and then exiting in downtown Seattle. About 200 miles west of Bozeman lies the great city of Missoula where my friend Hilary just moved to.

My traveling companion Luke and I stopped for a little while and visited Hilary and Missoula’s fairly vibrant downtown. It was a good stop, unfortunately we had to carry on before the snow overtook us.