KentsUSdrive

Power to the people . . . & water, water everywhere

With apologies to Homer, rosy-fingered dawn stole across Grand Coulee, Washington on Saturday, July 29 like strawberry jam on on buttered sourdough toast: warm, red and infinitely sweet.

My new friend, Cliff Snell, and I had shared the cost and Spartan accommodations of a motel room the night before. As it was less than 500 yards from the famous dam, we hightailed it over for an inside tour. (Yesterday, I'd posted some remarks about the beauty and impressiveness of the dam, but by dawn's early light, it was even more imposing.)

I still have trouble getting my head around the magnitude of this project. Conceived by FDR's first administration as a way to get thousands of people back to work during the depression -- and to bring badly needed water to hundreds of arid sections of the Pacific Northwest -- the dam is a monument to engineering skill, imagination and dogged determination. Incidentally, the dam was first intended to be a way to provide irrigation. Those silver conduits you see at the top right of the picture above carry millions of pumped Columbia River water to farms and farmers all over Eastern Washington. Somewhat later, the dam was also seen as a way to provide huge amounts of hydroelectric, pollution-free power to Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Wyoming. Some of the transmission towers can be seen to the right of the irrigation pipes.

The questions that continue to plague me are: who conceived the original idea? Who located the site and saw the possibilities? How was something this massive committed to paper, with the millions of details that had to be considered, accounted for and built? And all this in the days before computer simulations and analysis, and much of the heavy-duty automated construction equipment we have today? The tour Cliff and I took didn't answer these questions, but we learned and saw enough stagger us with the possibility of what humankind can do. (I know , I know: there must be readable books that address these questions, and I intend to search them out...once I finish the 39 books piled up at home next to my reading chair.)

We were taken into the interior of the dam by a huge elevator which accommodates something like 50 people sitting on tiered benches and to watch our descent and subsequent ascent through huge glass windows. There are vast corridors and chambers where we saw the 11-storey turbines and generator shafts spinning at unbroken speeds.  At the end of the tour, guided by a knowledgeable young lady named Erin, Cliff and I had heard (and forgotten) enough statistics to fill an engineering 101 manual. Behind Cliff and Erin is the huge, yellow, one-of-a-kind, Spokane-built construction gantry that slides back and forth more than 200 yards on the top of the dam when heavy equipment has to be lifted or moved.

These few pictures will give you a sense of some of the sights we saw: our walk across the top of the dam to the giant elevators...the descent down while we glimpsed surreal angular structures...the dozens of generators...the cavernous corridors and assembly chambers. One small, but impressive detail: the use of new, energy-saving corkscrew light bulbs throughout the halls and man-made caverns. Across from the dam are cliffs that show the traces of bores where the 'powder monkeys' placed the thousands of dynamite charges that blasted away the bedrock to make a solid foundation for the 500-foot thick (at the base) dam. And above the cliffs, in view for miles around, waves the proud American flag.   

Driving on, we came to a lesser dam 50 miles down the road. It's the Chief Joseph dam, and represents further efforts to harness the vast irrigation and power generating powers to the wild and rushing Columbia River.

Thanks to the ingenuity and dedication of tens of thousands, there's now water, water everywhere...and it's much more than to drink.

Moon Over The Grand Coulee Dam

It's just past midnight here in Grand Coulee, Washington. I've just come from the amazing laser light show that's shown against the Grand Coulee Dam. As the show begins, water begins to flow from the dam until the roar of the mighty Columbia River is the backdrop to the narration and music that accompanies this wonderful show and engineering marvel.

As a new friend (fellow solo traveller Cliff Snell of Vancouver, Canada) and I walked to the benches to watch the laser show, the first thing that met our eyes was a spectacular full moon that had just risen in the east over the dam. (That little white dot up above is the moon.) It just about made the scene perfect.

After the dam was built (opened in 1942), it created a wonderfully long and skinny lake, Lake Franklin Roosevelt. (It's actually the Columbia River, too, but around these parts, the boaters, waterskiers, waterboarders, swimmers, fisherman and idlers call it Lake Roosevelt.) Words convey some of the grandeur of this massive structure (it's the largest cement structure in the Americas, with enough cement to pave a two-lane highway from Seattle to Jersey City and back again; 7,000 mostly inexperienced but desperate-for-work dustbowl survivors built the dame over 8 years; 77 men lost their lives in the process), but the pictures really tell the story. Some of these pictures show the river flowing to the dam; others are pictures of various sites along Lake Roosevelt, and some show boaters taking their pleasure on what was a clear, 97-degree, cloudless day.

Throughout the drive to Grand Coulee from Spokane, there were endless fields of golden tan. These are wheat fields after threshing; the dry farmers in this part of the world are taking their crops a little early, as the unusually high heat and little moisture could damage the stalks and reduce the yield. I didn't know what a dry farmer was, so I asked a man at a hardware store in Davenport, and he said, "Dry farmers don't use any irrigation or water spraying. Just count on the weather."

I haven't gotten very far from Spokane (I arrived late Wednesday night, and spent Thursday visiting the city; the dam is less than 100 miles from Spokane), but perhaps these photos will suggest why. The views in this part of Eastern Washington caused me to stop my van over and over to gaze at the scenes before me. They are simply spendid.

Wolves: awful pretty or pretty awful?

North from Sun Valley, Idaho, we stopped overnight in Stanley beside the fast-running Salmon River. We bunked in a rustic log cabin (one bed, one pullout sofa, high-speed Internet service). Steve got up early, went  outside to the porch for some of the crisp Idaho air before the day heated up, overheard a guy yelling about wolves to a friend of his while they were walking to their pickup. He said, "Hell, I hate the little sons of bitches, want to get them out of the whole damn state a Idaho. All 44 counties. Those people from New York and Illinois, they all have this pretty picture of the Alpha male and the rest of them runnin' away with their tails between their legs. Maybe if they saw a little Elk calf with its guts hanging out, they'd change their minds."

The man, a stocky, pissed-off Wilfred Brimley type, about 50 and balding, passed within earshot. Steve asked him when Idaho started having so many wolves.

"Well," the man said, "they brought 15 of them down from Canada in 1995."

"It got that big a problem so soon?" Steve said.

"Look at the facts. Every darn female in the pack has a litter. You know how many that  can add up to in just a year?" The man turned curious. "Where're you from?" he asked Steve. Steve said, "New York."

The man said, "Well, you can take the sons of bitches back home with you. Goddamn bleeding hearts from New York and all over. Jesus!"

The man's buddy asked how the meeting went the night before. "Went very well," the man replied angrily. "Damn state law says there's a $100,000 fine for killing a wolf. We're gonna get that law changed, you bet."

It's one thing to read about wolves and look at the striking pictures of these wild and ferocious animals. It's quite another to be a rancher, living with these predators. When Steve and I stayed with Jon and Kathy Foote in Livingston, Montana a few days earlier, we heard Kathy fulminate about coyotes (l.)(she says it, 'kai-oats'), and how they were taking down the Foote's cattle and small animals. "Run 'em off whenever we get the chance," Kathy told us. We'd seen one earlier in the day, hightailing it up a steep hill. "Wish you'd had a gun with you, shot the damn thing," Kathy said.

City of Eagles

I recently posted comments on our visit to Libby, Montana...the wonderful cafe (and cafe owner) we found there...and the town's assumption of the Eagle as its symbol and magnet for tourists. Just this morning, the proprietor of the Libby Cafe sent me this picture of the eagle sculpture that spans the main street. The town hopes that the many eagle sightings in and around Libby will draw a large number of tourists.

The Eagle Has Landed...in Libby, Montana

It was a dark and stormy evening...

No, that's not the beginning of another Bulwer-Lytton novel, but what was actually happening in the heavens as Steve Wilson and I drove toward Libby, Montana. As we headed north, the sky to our left suddenly blackened, while the sky to our right remained bright and sunny. It seemed as if our road was the zipper joining two weather systems, and it was.

When we got to the Evergreen Motel, the proprietor asked if we'd come through the tornado. "Tornado?" we queried, eyes ablaze and elbows akimbo. "Yes," she said. "We had a big blow come through here about 20 minutes ago. Trees down all over the place. Up the road, trees flattened a house, couple of cars. When you guys go out in the morning, if you're heading north, you'll probably see the damage."

Stepping out into the pretty little courtyard in front of the Evergreen Motel the next morning, before heading north for the damage and Glacier National Park, we asked where we could get a decent breakfast. We were advised to make a beeline to the Libby Cafe. "You won't find a better place around," the pleasant motel lady said.

She was right.

The Libby Cafe specializes in anything you can make with huckleberries. We learned enough about this blue-black berry (also known as a bilberry) to fill, well, a dozen huckleberry pies. (see below) The restaurant featured huckleberry pancakes & waffles, huckleberry syrups, huckleberry pies, giant cinnamon-huckleberry swirls and huge huckleberry muffins. In fact, if you're a latent huckleberry lover, as I've come to be, you must go to their website -- www.montanamuffins.com -- and you'll find a larder full of tempting things you can order online. Plus more trivia about huckleberries than you may ever have wanted to know.

About The Huckleberry !!

Often confused with the blueberry due to its close resemblance, huckleberries are a wild blue-black berry. Although very similar in taste, the big difference is the seeds within the huckleberry that give it a crunchy texture when fresh and its thicker skin. The flavor is a little more tart than blueberries, with an intense blueberry flavor. Huckleberries are not cultivated commercially, so you will have to find them in the wild. The entire fruit is edible...no need to remove the seeds. Huckleberries can be used interchangeably in most blueberry recipes, so if you find yourself with a huckleberry harvest, just choose a blueberry recipe and give it a whirl. Huckleberry season is normally from June through August. To harvest a large quantity, spread a clean cloth on the ground and shake the plant; ripe fruits will drop onto the cloth.

This isn't an ad, of course, but I do take pleasure in strewing temptation in your path. Steve and I ordered a large bottle each of huckleberry syrup, and both bottles are resting comfortably in my van, which (I hope) is resting comfortably in the long term parking lot in Spokane.

Breakfast at Libby Cafe was by far the most expensive breakfast we'd had along the way (something over $50, including the two bottles of syrup), but also the most enjoyable. We ate like lumberjacks (of which there were four at the next table, and believe me: they didn't have finger bowls. One was a lumberjack-in-training: a girl who couldn't have been more than 14, but already decked out with the prerequisite tattoos). The best part of the breakfast -- huckleberries notwithstanding -- was trading quips with Paulette, the owner, baker, sometime waitress, website operator for MontanaMuffins, world-class josher and self-described Chief Harasser. She's quick, funny, robust and loves what she's doing. Should you ever find yourself in Libby, or even 100 miles north, south, east or west of it, make the trip.

We also learned that Libby used to have a very active asbestos mining industry, but when asbestos was tagged in the early 1980s as being a highly dangerous mineral, mining came to a screeching halt. So did much of the economy of Libby. But they're not quitters. They've got a new plan: eagles. (If you are interested, you can email High Plains Films at www.highplainsfilms.org and request the film Libby, Montana. It's described as a film "...depicting the American Dream gone horribly wrong...")

The morning we emerged from the Evergreen Motel, workmen were erecting a huge arc over the main street. It will be home to a huge metal eagle, spanning the main street, Mineral Avenue (they're not totally quit of asbestos, after all). In fact, Libby intends to build a whole new tourism trade as the eagle capital of Montana. There  are eagle statuettes on several downtown buildings, and eagle sightings in and around Libby are common. We didn't see any while we were there, but we took the locals' word for it. (We did see our share of eagles soaring and gliding on thermals in Yellowstone just a day or two earlier. In fact, we spotted an eagle's nest about 100 feet up in a burned-out tree. In it were two eaglets, on the verge of fledging. Look closely at this picture; the two eaglets are sticking out of the nest, and they are the only two objects that don't look like twisted branches. A park ranger told us the nest weighed more than 6,000 pounds -- we couldn't believe it, either -- and that it had been there for nearly 40 years.)

However, there's good news on the eagle front from Libby. This is a report filed just two days ago by Libby's "Eagle Cam:"

Libby Dam eagles have successful nesting season
This is a big "thanks" to everyone who has been with us for the 2007 nesting season. For all the behind the scenes people "great job", and of course all you Eagle viewers thanks for the contributions in making our site such a success. We have heard from eagle watchers all over the country, and for that matter other parts of the world. It has been a wonderful process to watch from the beginning when the adults started the nesting process (March 15, 2007), to egg laying (March 26, 2007), to hatching (April 30, 2007) and finally fledging (July 13,2007). The down side of fledging is we will not see much activity at the nest now that they have experienced the freedom of flight. We wish them the best of luck in their new found freedom. The story behind them is very remarkable to say the least, since the species was near extinction. This is truly a banner year for our nest and Eagles in general. Both eagles survived the nesting process and the species has recovered from near extinction to being de-listed from the endangered species list. Let's hope we continue to have the success we have seen in the past carried on to the future. Hope to hear from all you Eagle watchers next year, until then!! Mark

Mark J. Andreasen, Park Ranger
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Libby Dam

As for Libby choosing to stake its fortunes on the eagle? After all, the eagle's been the symbol for a slightly larger and older enterprise -- the United States  -- so Libby's got a good precedent, even if the US doesn't have a good president.

We pause to bring you this message

Dear patient readers:

About 12 days ago, I called my wife from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and found she was very ill. So I drove to Spokane (about 30 minutes west, and hopped a plane back to New York City, where I am now. No travel news or adventures recently therefore, but I have a lot to catch up on. I'll be working on them in the next couple of days, now that my wife is recovering.

And then I'll hit the road again. My car, with all my stuff in it, is in the long-term parking lot at the Spokane airport. Pray for me. And my stuff.

Meanwhile, just to give you a peek at some of the spectacular views Steve Wilson and I saw at Glacier National Park in Montana. The first photo was taken on June 29, a 98-degree day; as you can see, the temperatures didn't affect the glacier very much. The second photo shows a fast-rushing stream that comes from the melting glacier some 12,000 feet high, and cascades into the valley nearly two miles below. I've also included a shot of the touring cars they use at The Inn at Lake McDonald to ferry tourists around the hairpin turns on the Road to the Sun. (I found it hard to believe that these funky cars are manufactured to this day by the White Motorcar Company, but one of the staff drivers, Milo, told me this was so. FYI: they run every 15 minutes or so from the front of the Inn.) If you're acrophobic, as I am, you will want to take the touring car. Luckily for me, Steve was driving our van.

Where to eat: Lessons learned from motel owners

In the late afternoon of June 30, Steve Wilson and I were driving downhill on a winding little road in west-central Idaho, looking for a small place named Chocolet, a lakeside town that seemed from the map to hold charming views. We planned to hole up there for the night, if it looked OK. Somewhere we failed to see a sign (there weren't many around), and the next thing we knew, we were in St. Marie.

It was a bigger town than many we'd seen. (On our map, it was represented by a black dot inside a circle, indicating a town of some size.) There was a main street, maybe two dozen stores, with at least six intersections. One of the first things we came to was a motel, and as it was about 6 PM, we decided to get a room for the night. The parking lot of the motel was empty, so we knew we'd have no trouble.

Hah!

When the clerk appeared, she told us that there was only one room available. How could that be? we wondered. No cars in the parking lot.

"Summer's when all the utility crews come to do their work, fixing up what got knocked down or damaged in the winter," she said. "Place is pretty well booked up for the next couple of months. They're probably all out drinking beer." We grabbed the room, lest some sleepy trucker barge in to claim the last spot. Anywhere around here you'd recommend to eat? I asked. (I've been making it a point on my whole journey to eat only at local restaurants -- west of the Allegheny River, they all seem to be called 'family-style restaurants')

The motel clerk (she turns out to have been the owner ["kicked my no-good husband out years ago."]) said there were a couple of 'family restaurants' in the area, but the best one was Big Eddy's, about a half-hour drive along the river. "They've got elk steak and beer and it's where all of us go. It's real good. I'll call for you, see how late they're open," she said.

We made the drive, and it was beautiful. At exactly the mile-marker she mentioned (people in small communities give mile markers as directions, making it pretty easy to find where you're going), there was Big Eddy's. There, too, was the mosquito population of central Idaho. Nonetheless, we elected to eat outdoors, especially since the tattooed female wrestler who waited on us said they'd seen a moose drinking in the lake just a few minutes before. We hadn't yet seen a moose on our travels, so this was irresistible. Fish jumped in the lake, wrens swarmed overhead and under the deck we were sitting on, Steve swears he saw an egret floating above us, a deer hopped off into the brush on a nearby island in the lake, and the neighborhood mosquitos and all their friends moved in for some tasty new blood.

Steve and I ordered elk steak, despite our misgivings at eating meat of such an elegant and graceful creature. It was submerged under some kind of goo masquerading as 'elk gravy,' and was served piping warm with canned and limp string beans and some kind of mystery pudding that tasted like turkey stuffing, but not very.

Steve had a beer called Moose Drool, in honor of the possible sighting, I thought. That, and an Idaho brew called Flat Tire, were the only two brands Steve would drink in Idaho. (I still can't get over the names.) I ordered cranberry juice. "You mind cranberry mixed with something?" our waitress threatened. "Anything you got," I said warily. A minute or two later, she plunked a bottle of cranberry, raspberry and strawberry juice in front of me. "Everybody likes that," she directed. 

We kept eyes out for the moose. "He might be down to the water anytime now," our undershirted waitress told us. "Keep looking over there." I made a run back to our van to get the mosquito repellent, which we slathered all over ourselves, and instantly became more comfortable. Still no moose. The waitress offered (by way of an excuse we thought): "Rich guy likes to come here to fish. Lands over there on that little island in his own damn helicopter. See that clearing? Makes so much noise, scares anything in sight or sound. He'll probably come up tomorrow."

We surmised that the moose might have been hiding out, in anticipation.

"So how'd you like the steaks?" she ordered.

"Very tasty," we surrendered.

But here's the lesson, long in coming: be very wary of a motel owner's or clerk's advice on where to eat when you're in an unfamiliar place. What they like, you might not. And having taken the advice of more than 15 motel clerks on my travels, I can attest that either they're geting kickbacks from the places they recommend, or their tastes in food are wildly different from mine. (I don't come equipped with exotic tastes, even  though I've lived in New York City for about 25 years. I'm pretty much a burger and coffee kind of guy, but it has to be a good burger and fresh, strong coffee. Steve points out that most of the coffee we got was brown water.) That advice also extends to gas station attendants and road workers. The best 'where to eat' advice I have received on this trip so far was from the lovely curator of the Allen County Historical Society in Lima, Ohio. She recommended KewPee's, and so would I.

The Town That Time Forgot

We were meandering down a county road on a lush and sunny Sunday morning. Having spent the night in a trucker's motel in St. Marie (people who live there pronounce it "Saint Mary"), we were making our way slowly into central Idaho. 

We rounded a corner, descending a small hill into what looked like a deserted little  town. My friend, Steve, pointed to a small gray building just off the road, about 10' x 12'. A sign said "Bovill Jailhouse--1910." Small weeds grew up around the abandoned hoosegow. I stopped to take a picture, trying to imagine who, if anyone, had ever been incarcerated there, and for what. We found out a few minutes later. As I was returning to our van, I encountered a man coming from the town's only market. He was carrying a can of soda. I said, "Good morning," and asked if he'd lived here long.

"Lived here most of my life so far," Gary Loomis said. He seemed pleased to stop and talk with us, and he was certainly friendly. "I came here at age 9, in 1948. Moved from Seattle when my father got a job here. He was from here."

Gary told Steve and me a lot about the town's history. "It's 100 years old. We're  celebrating our Centennial in a couple a weeks. About 300 people live here now. Not many young people anymore. Town's had its troubles, believe you me. We got a mayor's been accused of child pornography. Trouble is, he fiddled with the taxes, foreclosed on a lot of places, bought most of the buildings and land around here when the owners defaulted on taxes. Bought them as distresses. Now he owns most of the town. Hard to vote him out.

"Bovill used to be a busy place. Town center was busy on Saturday nights then. Should have seen it. Truckers and loggers filled it up, got drunk, fought. Town siren blew at 9PM, all us kids lit out for home, otherwise the sheriff would arrest you. Even had a theater here. Then it got turned into some kind of museum. Then it just closed up. I hear there's plans to open the theater again." Gary told us that J.R. Simplot (the man who made a fortune growing, processing and selling Idaho potatoes to McDonald's Ray Kroc) used to have a big silica mine in Bovill, and that Potlatch had for years a major logging operation. "Town thrived in the 40s & 50s when JRSimplot and Potlatch were here," Gary said. "Simplot was running a silica mill for glass manufacturing before he got into the potato business, and Potlatch grew from its logging operations into making pulp and paper and plywood. I worked on many log drives. Big horses (Percherons? Steve suggested) would drag the 1,000-plus pound logs to the river to float them downstream. 'Course that's gone now. They've gone and dammed up the river. But we were pretty busy skidding the logs by horse and decking the logs on landings, waiting for river to flow.

"I went to school in Bovill," Gary said. "School used to be good-sized then. Not so much now. We have a school, but it's pretty small. Big house up on the hill there used to be a rooming house for the itinerant workers who'd come for the logging. It was empty for some time. Now I understand some family from somewhere else bought it and is fixing it up to live there all by themselves."

Since there didn't seem to be anything in business -- the gas station, the hotel, the  theater, the other market, the newspaper -- I asked Gary where people shopped. "They get their groceries in Moscow, at least a half-hour away. Not much here any more."

The dilapidated-looking building shown above is the former theater (later museum), and the man standing beside it is Greg Hall, son of the mayor. ("Young Greg runs most of his old man's businesses these days," Gary told us. "His father is pretty old, has some kind of disease as I understand." As we happened by on this particular Sunday morning, Greg Hall was opening the building to check on the condition inside. I asked him about it. "Inside's pretty much OK, roof needs fixing," he said, but he didn't want to stand around and talk. We drove further up the street, and were surprised to find more than two dozen nice little frame, single-storey houses, each with neatly trimmed yards, and lots of lawn ornaments. (No flamingos, though.) And most of the families had late-model cars.

Not being used to such small places, I was surprised to find that Bovill had its own post office. "Oh yeah," Gary said. "We got the mail here, just one fella works here now, other stuff that's essentials. Some people like to make their home here, commute to Moscow and other places. It's peaceful here these days. Quiet."

After we had talked nearly half an hour, Gary said he had to get home (a house about 100 years up the street). "Wife'll be waking up. She sleeps late Sundays."

.

Little Big Horn...A welcome companion...Classmates Foote & Wilson at Foote's Montana ranch

One of the surprises in my late June visit to Bismarck was Ft. Abraham Lincoln. That's the fort in central North Dakota from which Col. George Armstrong Custer set out on his doomed mission to drive the Ogalala Sioux back to their reservation. When I got to the Little Big Horn site in southern Montana, I found it hard to believe that Custer took his 14th Cavalry all that distance; it must be at least 400 miles of hard riding, with wagons of equipment. Custer had built a spacious, comfortable house for his wife and himself at Ft. Abraham Lincoln, and they were becoming used to a life of entertaining politicians and other military friends. (The woman in the foreground was an excellent guide, playing the role of a typical washerwoman at the fort in the late 1800s.) They had installed a large piano, a pool table, a full kitchen (with three 'servants') and furnished the house with many handsome pieces of furniture from the East. (Imagine the weight of all these furnishings, and then carting them by wagon and train all the way to Bismarck, North Dakota.) The ceilings were unusually high, probably more than 11 feet. Mrs. Custer had installed a special bay window to break up the linear feeling of the walls in the family's living room. As  commodious as Custer's house was, indoor plumbing was not one of the luxuries of officers' quarters at Army forts, regardless of their rank; the Custers, their guests and their servants all used the outhouses about 50 feet from the rear of the house. From the front porch of his house, Custer could see the mess tents and living quarters (also tents) of his men. These were constructed of heavy-gauge canvas, and helped keep the men cool in summer and warm in winter. Although difficult to put up and strike, the men could erect a single tent in less than 15 minutes, we were told. Custer's brother lived with Col. and Mrs. Custer; he also died at Little Big Horn. (Mrs. Custer was given just 30 days to pack up the entire contents and quit the house within 30 days after she was informed of her husband's death, which I find pretty harsh and unfeeling treatment.)

The Little Big Horn battlefield is a revelation. There are two cemeteries there. One is a military cemetery, where anyone who has served in the US military (along with family members) is qualified to be buried. The other, the far more touching one, is the battlefield where Custer's men and their Indian adversaries died. The exact places each man fell is marked with small white or brown marble headstones, and it was deeply moving and saddening for me to try to re-live the slaughter that must have taken place in that 98 degree July 1st morning. In  the museum, there is a quote from one of the Indian warriors who fought in the battle: "I have never seen braver men than those of the Army soldiers who fought us." The white markers are scattered all over the mound, and way off in the distance, there are three lonely markers where I can only assume three soldiers were caught and slain as they tried to flee. The whole battlefield was for me a spiritual place, and there was a hush and a gentle wind covering the entire area. The description of the battle by two National Park rangers was illuminating and most complete. The white ranger told of the battle from the cavalry's point of view. The Indian side of the story was described by a Crow indian ranger, and she began to cry as she related the story.

At the end of the tour, I met a solitary traveller who, like myself, was deeply affected by the atmosphere of the battlefield. We began to talk. Her name is Jane, and she  comes from near Buffalo, New York. She had driven out to Montana by herself, and was driving back East the following week. She works as an information librarian (she actually is the boss; she supervises all other information librarians) for the community college network in Buffalo, and while on the journey, she learned that she had just been awarded New York State's highest honor: The Chancellor's Award. She and I talked a great deal about our trip, what we'd seen and what impressed us. Because we were both alone, we decided to have dinner together, and drive down into Wyoming to eat. We had a long talk about spiritual influences, and she talked about how she sometimes senses her deceased mother by her side. I said I'd had the same intuitions from time to time. I asked her if she had any trepidations about travelling alone, and she said she had none. She said she hoped her 20-something daughter could do a trip like this sometime. She'd met many interesting and helpful people, as have I. She said it was one of the best times of her life, something she'd take back home and hold for a long, long time. She said, as we parted, that she was driving into Iowa to see some relatives from her mother's hometown, and then planned to make the trip back to Buffalo in just two days. One of the most interesting aspects of this entire trip is meeting people who have felt the urge to drive into America, as I do, and discover the small but irreplaceable resourcefulness of the people in this great country.

From a night's stay in Buffalo, Wyoming, I drove to a special celebration in Red Lodge, Montana, making sure to drive over the 11,000 foot high Bear Tooth Pass. The special celebration was the for the 50th wedding anniversary of Dave & Ann Knight. Dave's a close school friend who has been successful enough in his lifetime to have acquired the Pollard Hotel, a beautiful old-world hotel in Red Lodge. A classmate of Dave's and mine is Jon Foote, a former Connecticut architect who moved to Livingston, Montana in the 1970s. Dave asked Jon to help with the redesign and refurbishing of the Pollard, so it was a collaboration of old and close friends. I arrived at the Pollard the third week in June, and along with some 75 of Dave's closest friends (many from Boston and Cape Cod, one from Zurich, Switzerland), we found our sumptuous rooms at the Pollard more than pleasing. The day after I arrived, I drove to Billings, Montana (about an hour northeast of Red Lodge) to pick up another classmate and close friend, Steve Wilson. Steve and I, along with Dave's many other friends, enjoyed three days of white water rafting, hiking, horseback riding, pig racing (yes, pig racing) and eating more Montana beef than any of us had ever seen.

Steve and I waddled away after the third day, driving to Livingston, Montana to spend the next day and night with the aforementioned Jon Foote and his exceptional wife, Kathy. Jon, an architect of considerable note, is also a fulltime rancher, as is Kathy. They own some 240 head of beef cattle, and more acres of rolling Montana grazing land than New York City has taxicabs. Steve and I watched Kathy give her quarter-horse a workout in cutting cattle, an intricate process of subtle cooperation between horse and rider. Kathy will drive her horse to Crater Lake, Oregon in early July to compete in a cutting horse competition. "Kathy  and I share all the same interests, and I've received a lot of architectural awards," Jon told us, "but two years ago, I received an award and  recognition that I find almost unbelievable. Here I am, as East Coast guy, being accepted by genuine cowboys as one of them, and being elected to the Cutting Horse Hall of Fame besides. It's an unbelievable honor." While Jon (in the red jacket) told us about his 20 years of riding around the west with his cutting horses, entering every competition he could find, he and Steve spent part of the morning in Jon's barn, loading hay to feed Jon & Kathy's horses. Shortly after Steve hefted a bale out to the horses, Kathy saddled and mounted her horse and gave it a 1/2-hour training workout in the ring while Jon worked the 'critter,' a dummy cow on a pulley. With a series of subtle hand and leg movements, Kathy was getting her horse used to follow the movements of the 'critter,' so that the horse would learn the job of separating and keeping a cow from rejoining its herd. That is the substance of the cutting horse's job, and it's not easy. But seeing Kathy on her horse was like poetry in motionm although at one point, she got on her mobile phone to call her lovely daughter, Megan. It may be just a tad different from old-fashioned horsewomanship.

Montana!

I was in Montana at last!

When I crossed the state line from North Dakota, I stopped my van, got out and throwing my arms over my head, yelled as loudly as I could, "YEE HAH!"

I have had almost a lifelong fantasy about Montana. I talk about '...going to Montana...' a lot, to the point where my New York-born wife is heartily sick of hearing about it. I have dreamed of Montana as a wide-open place of strong, taciturn men, capable windblown women, unending vistas, staggeringly beautiful skies, exceptional quiet and surprises. Always surprises.

I wasn't disappointed.

My introduction to Montana was more than I hoped for. At the Visitor's Center, just a mile down the highway, was Darlene Brown, one of the most pleasant people I've met on this entire trip. She's doing visitor-center duty to keep busy, she said. "I'm a painter. I do water colors. My husband and I are ranchers. I was married before for 30 years to a rancher, but he didn't treat me so nice, so I got divorced and married my husband, who's also a rancher. My kinds are grown and out, and I wanted something else to do, so I went to the community college and took a painting course. The teacher thought I had some talent. Right now, we run a trailer court. You'll see it when you go down the road to Wibaux. You have to go to Wibaux. Named after Pierre Wibaux, the man in the picture behind me, who got rich with the same idea Teddy Roosevelt and the French guy, DeMores, had: slaughter cattle in the Dakotas, then ship the meat to Chicago, rather than have to drive the cattle all that way. But Teddy and DeMores ran into the awful winter of 1886 and lost all their cattle. Wibaux made the idea work, got rich, became a banker. They named the town after him. Go to Wibaux. Then if you're looking for a place to spend the night, go to Miles City and get a room at the Olive Hotel. It's pretty famous."

Darlene told me her website address: www.beavervalleyhaven.com. I got my laptop computer and with her, looked it up. Two very good watercolors. I bought one of a cockerel on the spot. Darlene's sending it to me. "I'd give it to you free if you want." I didn't.

The Olive Hotel in Miles City is where Robert Duvall and many of the cast and crew of "Lonesome Dove" stayed when the TV mini-series was filmed there. I was anxious to see it.

Lots of rooms were available this night at the Olive, but the surly desk clerk wasn't  helpful. "I'm just filling in," he mumbled, never looking up. Finally he found an available room. (I'd been told when I called from the Visitors Center that there were more than 40 rooms open.) Although the room and food at the Olive were somewhat below par (whatever par is), the tradition of the place was worth the stay. The dining room didn't look like much, so I went outside and found a pizza and beer bar just down the street that was louder than the Blue Angels at 500 feet. The bartendress could see I didn't like it. "What're you lookin' for, honey?" she inquired.

"Anything but this," I said.

She grabbed my arm and hauled me into the street. "See that guy right there, walkin' away, in the white polo shirt, black Bermudas?" She yelled at him: "Jim!" He stopped. "This fella wants to find a good place to eat some dinner. Find him one," and with that, she kissed me on the mouth and ran back to take care of her bar duties. Jim obligingly came back to startled me, asked where I was from. "New York city," I said. He nodded, said "I lived in New Jersey once," and led me to a side door of a three story building on a side street.

A sign reading "Club 91" hung over the door. Jim held the door open for me. After I went up a long flight of stairs, I entered a large barroom (a young man and young woman were drinking longnecks, sitting on barstools, talking loudly) with a larger, empty dining room beyond it. "How did you know about this place?" I asked Jim. "I own it," he said.

It felt weird eating dinner alone in a vast, deserted dining room. I counted the tables. There were 51, all set with peaked white napkins that made the room look like a miniature cemetery. I ordered the waitress's recommendation: prime roast beef, Red River Valley potatoes, corn, beans and house salad. (A little lesson from the road: unless you have different luck than I do, NEVER order roast beef. It always sounds good, looks great, smells delicious...and is always tougher than an Army Ranger behind enemy lines. In the 31 days I've been on the road, I've yet to find a good piece of roast beef, and I've been suckered into ordering it several times. No more.)

After sawing my way through the meal, I walked a block back to the Olive. The lobby now sported several tourist-looking people playing slot machines. I asked the teenager on the front desk for a wake-up call at 6:30. "I go home at 11," she said. "Can you leave a note?" I asked. "They probably won't see it," she said. I went to bed.

Breakfast at the Olive was lukewarm eggs, soggy toast and warm apple juice, but was highlighted by the mid-meal appearance of Whitey. He was a very old, skinny man, disheveled, jeans barely hanging off his butt, a Levi windbreaker buttoned to the neck on this hot morning.. He stood for a moment looking around with ice-blue roaming eyes. His long white hair hung straight down from his battered straw cowboy hat. He looked like he had a minute to live. He had wandered in from a side door that I thought was the employees' entrance. Perhaps a vagrant? But the waitress said cheerfully, "Hiya there, Whitey. What'll you have this morning?"

No sound came from Whitey. He rotated his head around the room like an owl, shuffled toward a table near mine and went "whuff" when he sat down. The waitress brought him some cut-up fresh fruit and a hot cup of coffee. He looked toward me, sort of. I said, "Hi, Whitey." He glared fixedly at me. I looked away. I felt out of place, uncomfortable. Then his eyes lost their focus and he glared at a moosehead mounted on the wall. He next glared at the fruit and coffee the waitress had put before him. Without touching it, he struggled to his feet and shuffled out the same door through which he'd entered. He turned around to scope the room once more and went out in the glaring daylight. Never a word. "Who is that?" I said to the waitress. "Whitey," she said. "We take care of him."

The Olive, with all its shortcomings, was redeemed.