This is what the scene looked like last night at about 11 pm. They found the body of the woman who had been missing today.

This morning at 8 am an explosion completely demolished several buildings in downtown Bozeman. Five businesses were completely destroyed, including the Rocking R Bar, a fairly popular destination in downtown Bozeman.

I went downtown twice today to see what was happening. It was definitely a dramatic scene, centered around a giant column of dark smoke. Police officers and firefighters were all over he place as crowds gathered at every street corner to try to get a better view.

A before and after picture of the area.

Last Friday night I went and saw Girl Talk play at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds. Girl Talk is one guy, Greg Gillis, who remixes famous songs, mostly from the 80’s and 90’s. The end result is a a little more modern and quite danceable. This was a fairly big show for Bozeman, and I hadn’t danced in quite a while, so attending sounded like a good idea.

The crowd appeared to be super-young. Hilary thought there were a lot of high-school kids, I thought a lot of undergrads, but its getting hard to distinguish those two groups nowadays. Regardless, the kids were excited about the music and a lucky few were certainly more than happy to get up on stage and dance the whole show. It was good he brought people on stage because without them there wouldn’t be much going on. His performance is basically him standing over his computer the whole time, except for a few random times to stand up, grab the mic and holler at the audience between songs.

My one complaint was the sound seemed fairly muddled. That might have been because not many bands play at the Fairgrounds, although I have seen Modest Mouse and Built to Spill there and I seem to remember the sound being fine for those shows. Also there was no encore, which seems rare. Once he stopped the crowd didn’t try too hard to get him back out though. Despite my old man gripes overall it was definitely a good time.

The day after Yellowstone we went snowshoeing again at Hyalite Reservoir, where there is still some winter.

After we left Virginia City we stopped at Norris Hot Springs, about 45 minutes west of Bozeman. The next day Hilary and I went down to Yellowstone with my roommate Ben and his girlfriend Sarah. We tromped around in the woods for a little while and then went to the Boiling River. It was a big weekend with two hot springs in two days, not too shabby.

Before we headed down the road for Norris Hot Springs I grabbed a few more shots of Virginia City, (including the sign).

Right down the road from Nevada City is Virginia City. It was a tad larger and looked like a few people might actually live in houses off of main street.

I had heard about Nevada City but didn’t know quite what to expect. The town was definitely deserted. Even the highway didn’t hardly have any cars on it. Walking around looking at the false front wooden buildings and old trains was a bit like stepping back into 19th century Montana. I want to go back and get a better sense of what this place is all about.

Saturday Hilary and I drove from Missoula to Bozeman, by way of Dillon, Twin Bridges, Sheridan, Nevada City, Virginia City, Ennis, and Norris. Calling these places “cities” is a little generous. Dillon is the biggest by far, with less than 4000 people. Virginia City and Nevada City are literally ghost towns. Ghosts literally live there. They are haunted. Scary business. I need to go turn some lights on.

These pictures were all taken between Missoula and Dillon.

Over the weekend we rode our bikes over to Waterworks Hill and went for a walk in the warm sun.

Here is a short list of things I owned on Saturday but did not on Sunday afternoon

The above items were sitting in an unlocked car overnight outside Hilary’s apartment and someone came along and liberated them. I feel like I am usually careful about what I leave in the car and remembering to keep it locked. I was faintly aware the car was unlocked but honestly did not give it a lot of thought. In the back of my mind an insistence on keeping the door locked was being too compulsive.

I noticed the coat was gone in the early afternoon and that was sad. Hilary mentioned maybe someone was getting more use out of it than I did, which was somewhat of a comforting thought.

That evening I remembered my Ipod used to be sitting in the glove compartment and was not anymore. What is someone going to do with a collection gathered over 4 years of relatively strange independent rock, hip hop, 90’s, etc? How are they going to know when the “broken Ipod” frowny face makes an unwelcome appearance you have to smack it a couple of times to make it work?

I can picture someone getting satisfaction from wearing the coat, but from an old(ish) semi-working ipod not-so-much. Also, the addition of the Ipod turned what I was viewing as a spur of the moment decision into a more calculated effort. On the bright side though it certainly could have been worse.

Now I am sure there is a lesson in here somewhere…

In a little house. in a little village, not far away from Thunderbolt City, lived a whistle fixer named Lunchbox Louie. He had a wife named Bigfoot the Chipmunk and a little son named King Waffle. Every day Lunchbox Louie would kiss Bigfoot the Chimpmunk and King Waffle, and walk to his shop in Thunderbolt City…

A few final pictures from my last visit to Asheville.

We were almost to Drummond and drove out of the sunlight into the fog of the inversion. Everything was coated in ice and we drove by some giant animal sculptures. I made Hilary turn around so we could check it out.

It turns out the place is the residence and museum of an almost 90 year old retired rancher, Bill Ohrmann, who just paints and sculpts now. (I got this information from this article in the Missoulian) The man makes some amazing things. If I was an artist I would like to made an 8 foot tall steel grizzly bear. The ice covered stillness of it all made the experience a little surreal.