Missoula Montana

So, I’m going to start blogging about the places I’ve been so it will help me remember what they were like for later in my life. Hopefully I’ll remember I had a blog.

I’m going to back up a ways and start with Missoula, Montana. Every time I told someone I was going to Montana they would jus t go on and on about how beautiful it was. I wasn’t sure I bought it, but I was ready to see. It didn’t seem extraordinarily special when I got there, but I did notice decent looking mountains and some interesting terrain. The trees outside my hotel all looked like they had eyeballs on them which was very unique.

I went to diner the first night at a place called Biga Pizza. It had really high reviews on TripAdvisor and both people I was training said it was excellent. The food was not what I expected, but I received my first glimpse into the culture of Missoula. I never did find a decent meal there though.

This is a university town, so sudo hippies and Prius drivers were expected, but Missoula was very unique from other college towns I’m used to. Norman has those that crave a utopia of green living and gluten free eating, but there are also the bleach blonde black pant wearing sorority girls to balance the action. Here there was no balance. In the restaurant, I began counting all of the people wearing river shoes. You know, those 1990’s craze of material and Velcro? Well, the trend is alive and well in Missoula. I also began to notice that I was one of only two women wearing makeup. My waitress was the only other person even sporting lip gloss and mascara. This began my constant search of anyone that dressed like me. I found no one. The women didn’t wear makeup, they all wore some form of athletic gear, and the men all sported t-shirts and shorts.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against living healthy and doing good things for the environment, but I have never been to a city where EVERYONE biked, kayaked, or hiked every day. These people were fairly fanatical and I didn’t see any of my fellow red-meat-eating- smoking-cigarettes- gas-car-driving comrades.

The beauty of Montana was revealed to me on a drive to Great Falls, Montana. It was beautiful. I saw landscapes I had only seen in screensavers and pictures and that I mostly thought belonged in other countries. There were green rolling hills, amazing gorges, interesting shaped mountains, and beautiful rivers and streams. I had to drive through some scary roads through those mountains, but I am very glad I did. Unfortunately because I was driving I don’t have any pictures to remind me of exactly what it looked like, but I have images in my head, which I’m sure are already skewed by now, but I’ll hold onto what I can remember.

The weirdest part of Missoula, Montana was that it seemed everyone knew everyone else there. The two women I was training didn’t go to school together and they had only lived in Missoula for between 10-18 years, but they talked about at least 100 people that they knew in common. Their kids are not similar in age, but they all did play soccer. I just kept thinking if that was the only link I had to someone from Moore, would I know that many people in common. I know I wouldn’t. The town has a festival/gathering thingy every Thursday night during the warm months and it seemed that at least a third of the town was there and most of them knew each other. Imagine thousands of people in your hometown mingling as if it were a small house party. That’s how it was there. It was interesting but refreshing. Maybe this is how all communities should be.

Overall my trip was interesting and fun. I did get to see some beautiful parts of Montana, I experienced some very different culture from my own, saw my first ghost town, and learned about smoke jumping and forst fires. The one thing I’m still trying to figure out from my trip is the name of type of mountains I saw on my drive. They were very steep and would be out away from other mountains in a very flat area of the land. They jutted straight up and seemed flat on the top. I don’t know what those are called.