Entering the mountains

DAY 6 - SHERIDAN TO MISSOULA, MT
Missoula, Montana is one rockin' small town! Small victorian grid of streets with buildings to match, mountains all around, a college to provide the students which creates these small cool bars and shops. We drove into town around 7.30, ordered pizza in the hotel and sat out on the balcony of our hotel.

We learned quite a few things in the space of a small amount of time. The air of Missoula is sweet and lovely. The view outside our hotel is stunning no matter what direction you look. The pizza of Missoula sucks (at least the one we ordered did). After pizza, Colleen went out for a walk and ended up at the very cool (and very crowded) Rhinoceros bar for a wee pint. Tres cool.

Our drive today began around 10 with straight forward highway driving. We entered Crow territory, had Kentucky Fried Chicken next to the site where Custer had his last stand, and drove and drove through more mole mountains. Then we entered the foot hills.

Now the bald, grass-covered bumps, that looked as if they were covered by velvet, were across from great expanses of rocks covered in trees. We would enter a mountain pass, with the rock walls closing off the wide open sky; it was like being sucked into something, having that sky closed off.

Then we would turn a corner, roll down a twisty hill, that would open into another river valley. A corner turned, another mountain valley, with grey slate smooth rocks on one side, red, slivers of rock -- slivers as large or larger than the car; like plates stacked on top of each other and perched sideways -- on the other.

And this is just the beginning of the mountains.

No fave signs for today. And we had to struggle for a great amount of time with my iPod to only find out that the carTalk shows I downloaded were not at the right quality and we could not hear. So, here we go again.

I must admit that, at times when I look at the photos I've taken from the car I look at them and say to myself, 'What the heck did I see here?' Oh, well. Part of the process, I suppose.