Montana (2001)

I don't travel much, but when making a trip far away, America was number one to go to. After making many plans, talking about it for several years, my friend and I were first planning on going to Disney World Florida, but after going to DisneyLand Paris, we were so disappointed on that one, we felt like going somewhere else there. After a long search, I happened to find a motorcyclestore in Montana where they sell motorcycles like we own. At least, I thought I did....

Montana is a great natural enviroment and that's my style. With some help on where we could go to, we also spent some time in Wyoming. Although we had planned our trip carefully, everything went different than we had planned. But at the end, it was the best vacation I could ever dream of!

Our first problem started before we'd even left the Netherlands. We were suppose to go at the beginning of October 2001, our flights were booked. Then, less than a month before, we heard the awful news, at the 11th of september. Although a lot of people cancelled their flights, no matter what would happen, we would go anyway. And I'm very glad we did....

We arrived in the middle of the night in Billings, MT and our first problems already began. We had rented a car, but our car was nowhere to be found. While my friend was looking for it at other places, I was looking at a 4 wheeldrive, making jokes on how nice it would have been they had accidently given us a car like that. We were both so tired, that we didn't even notice the licenseplate on it, it was the same as on our papers. Here we were, looking for a normal car for about half an hour, not knowing the 4-WD was reserved for us!

Just outside the airport you can see Billings, which seems very big and very crowded with all the lights lit up. Personally I wanted to get out immediatly, I'm not too fund of very crowded places and was there for it's beautiful nature. Not big cities, but we had to find a motel there. Next morning, sunday, I got out but other then expected, it was very quiet outside. In fact, I could stand in the middle of the road, there was hardly any traffic. Finally a nice start!

Marshall, who at the time we were planning our vacation, was spending some time at his ranch in Montana, insisted that we came over to have a look at his ranch. We made a pitstop in a nice little town called Belfry, to ask for directions to the ranch.

Our entry at the ranch

We had planned to stay a few hours, have a quick look, and be on the road again. But when we came there, not much later we were invited to spend the night, so we also got to see a few things on how life on a ranch is. One day became two and two even became three days, we were really having a nice time there! These few days were a very nice experience, since it's the kind of thing you'll not find anywhere here. Walking between wild cows, the chickens and pigs walking behind us, just like the dogs. Even most of the horses were walking freely at 27000 acres.

It's hard to describe how much 27.000 acres is, but it took us 3 trips around the ranch  before I knew I'd seen it all. This is just a tiny little piece.		Wherever you'd go, the dogs, chickens and pigs would come along.

At night you could hear the coyotes, for which I even got up at 5 in the morning to hear. After a few days we got on the road anyway, heading for Cookcity. It started with a sunny day, great day for sightseeing the place.

Yellowstone National Park
Around 7 PM we put up our tent, while it was starting to get cold. (When we arrived in America, we were walking outside in our t-shirts.) Yet, not much later it was extremely cold and in the morning, we woke up at six, the tent was covered with ice and snow. That was the other beginning of a surprisingly vacation. Someone told me about the Montana weather, "If you don't like the weather, come back in 10 minutes." You could say that indeed.

The very first gaststation we came across was also covered in snow. According to the owner, that wasn't even much snow. He said "We park our snowmobiles on top of the houses and often drive off like that", and showed us some pictures of Cookcity how it looks about 8 months a year, loaded with snow.

We went on to Yellowstone National Park, where we got in a snowstorm. We could get out in time, we we're very lucky we got the 4-wheel drive, unlike a few other people whom we didn't see at the end anymore. Not even after waiting for nearly an hour. (Good thing there are parkrangers. :)

The beginning of Yellowstone		A few minutes later...

Just outside an entry of Yellowstone National Park

The next few days, we had stormy weather, sunshine, lot of wind, so anything you can think of.

Wyoming
Yellowstone goes partially through Wyoming and we wanted to see a ghost town, so we went to look for one. But it wasn't what we'd expected... again.. It turned out to be a museum which was rebuild as a ghosttown with old artifacts, but worth taking a look at.

A rebuild ghosttown with some artifacts.

Missoula
Finally, Missoula, where we wanted to visit the motorcyclestore.
When we got there, the place was hard to find up in the woods, the "store" turned out to be just a backyard loaded with motorcycles of a guy who had the same hobby as us. All the trouble for nothing, so we thought. But we had a great time anyway and after talking about one of our bikes, the Suzuki T125 Stinger, he led us to a store in town, Suzukidealer Mike Tingley, who should have one as well. And the owner of the motorcyclestore did have a wonderful restored Suzuki, which was on the back of the store, between a few other bikes that weren't for sale. We had the privalege of sitting on it, while we could make a few photo's.

After a few days stay in Missoula, we got back on the road, but we didn't know where to go to, since we still had one week to go and we'd seen everyting we wanted to. And camping, what we wanted to, was out of the question with that crazy weather. So now what? We started to drive back towards the ranch, stayed one more night in a hotel and headed back up there, hoping they would know a solution for us. As kind as they were, we could spend our last week again at the ranch, that was even more than we had hoped for! That week was even better than the one before. We could help a little with the cows they had captured back for checkings and some for selling. A few cows were even on the loose, which we avoided from walking towards the road. We were in one of the pick-up trucks from the ranch for our own safety. That was, until I got out of the truck to close the gate and 4 cows came running towards me and my lovely fiancé was so smart to drive away from me instead of picking me up. Good exercise for me, but good for my relationship....?
The last one had to be captured by rope, so totally in cowboystyle!

Nick taught us the basics of using a gun and let us shoot a couple of rounds. First with a light gun, then a .357 Magnum and after that even a 12 gauche shotgun! You're saying that to a couple of people who live in a country where guns are hardly allowed and only with strict policies! Robert and Gina took us to an American auction, like we'd never seen before. And I'll certainly never forget the magnificent few hours at the Rocky Mountains where they were building a cabin. What a beautiful sight and so peaceful. And of course the meeting for farmers and ranchers in Billings was also worth going to, though we had to miss the rodeo, because it was almost an hour drive back to the ranch, so it would have been too late.

Despite our vacation going completely wrong so to say, it was the best I could ever think of. Even up till today I still think about it nearly every day with great pleasure. Well, nearly? My tattoo I had done in Billings at Eagle Tattoo Studio will remind me to it every day.

More images from the ranch and Montana can be found in the photogallery.