Every year on the first Saturday in December Bozeman has a Christmas Stoll where they block off Main Street, the stores downtown stay open late, vendors sell food and various charity fund raising events take place.
The last two years the Christmas stroll has been one of the coldest nights all winter. This year it was about 50 degrees.
Since I live about a mile from school I usually ride my bike there. Tuesday it snowed about 6 inches in town during the day. When it came time for indoor ultimate that night I decided to hoof it and take some pictures along the way. That might be a more common occurrence during the winter months as the road seemed to resemble an ice skating rink.
These are from a nighttime bike ride a little while ago. Bozeman can be pretty dead sometimes, once we got off of main street I don’t think we saw a single car the rest of the night.
Last weekend we walked around Missoula a little and managed to walk in and see the last 5 minutes or so of the MSU Bobcats against the University of Montana Grizzlies.
Cat-Griz is certainly the big rivalry around here and usually a big deal, too bad we got blown out something like 35-3. Nothing like walking in on the waning minutes of a football game to observe a real slice of America. As far a rivalries go I think Carolina-Duke basketball is still my preference.
These were all taken with a Canon Powershot SD 850. I like that little guy.
As we were coming home on I-90 the Cascades around Snoqualmie pass were really reminding me of North Carolina. There was plenty of moisture and before you got too high the elevation was just right for lots of deciduous trees. One thing is for sure, this understory was anything but sparse.
We decided to stop and walk around a little before the rest of the 480 mile trip back to Missoula. I turned off at the next sign for a state park and we ended up at a lake about 3 miles from the interstate (I didn’t get the name).
The weather was lightly raining and not overly hot, which in its own special way added to the atmosphere a little I thought. Despite the grayness it was nice to see something other than a Rocky Mountain pine forest for a change.
It is late and I need to go to bed, but I couldn’t resist taking a picture out my bedroom window of the snow that is falling. I love how snow makes everything so quiet.
These were all taken the last day we were there. It was a big day, I’ll tell you what.
I hope there are plenty more aquariums in my future because I really like the Seattle Aquarium. It has a lot of species that you would find in Puget sound, which is neat-o.
Yesterday we went for a short and sweet bike ride up on the hills around Bozeman. We did a loop starting on the Story Mill Trail, crossing Bridger Canyon Road, going up and around to Sypes Canyon Road, and then coming back on some other road that definitely wasn’t Springhill. There was basically no traffic, warm weather, and amazing views of the Bridgers and Gallatin Valley.
Despite being a little ritzy Fremont was pretty sweet. There was a lot of activity in a couple little blocks, and the leaves on the trees lining the street were in prime fall colors. It was a little bit like a fairy-tale land, with a troll and everything.
To get to the Ballard Locks you had to go through a neighborhood called Fremont, and we stopped and walked around a bit on the way back. It was an eclectic place with some fairly well to do folks around. Wikipedia says
Sometimes referred to as “The People’s Republic of Fremont,” and at one time a center of the counterculture, Fremont has somewhat gentrified in recent years.
Definitely not your average neighborhood though.
The second day we went to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks (aka the Ballard Locks) and the accompanying Carl S. English Jr gardens. Two places every bit as spectacular as their names.
I would have happily made the 3 mile trip from Capital Hill to Ballard for either some locks or some gardens and to have both of them together was an unstoppable force the likes of which I may not encounter for a long time to come.
Hilary and I just came back from an extended weekend visiting her friend Stephanie in Seattle. She has a sick crib in a super-neato part of town (Capital Hill) and was nice enough to show us around town and let us harass her for a while.
Seattle is a city with an impressive amount of things going on for its size. I am fond of it.
