Missoula to Helena

Happy Memorial Day from Missoula.

Today there is sunshine and the temperature is a reasonably comfortable 60 degrees. Missoula is an unusual small city, sitting at the spot where 5 mountain ranges (the Garnet, Bitterroot, Sapphire, Rattlesnake, and Reservation Divide) come together, so any direction you look there are mountains. There are also two rivers coursing their way through and around Missoula, the Clark Fork (pictured) and the Bitterroot.

After being unable to get out and move around much for several days of driving in the rain, I decided to go see downtown Missoula and the University of Montana. The University was "seen" in very short order. Physically it is very small.

I arrived in downtown Missoula just as the Memorial Day ceremonies were getting underway. (When you don't know an address to give a GPS, try City Hall or County Courthouse; County Courthouse worked in Missoula, and that's where I ran into the ceremony.)

This was an old-fashioned celebration with active duty service men and women in full-dress uniforms or camouflage, some elderly VFW members with rifles, three bagpipers, a color guard, and a group of one hundred or so looking on. After a few speeches, flowers were taken to the memorial statue accompanied by the bagpipers, then a rifle salute, and the playing of Taps. Guaranteed to make me teary. Then someone read the Gettysburg Address. Cool.

I spent an hour or so walking around downtown, got a nice cafe au lait, got lost and let my iPhone rescue me, and headed back to my room at the Hampton Inn. I decided to move on to Helena today instead of tomorrow, and they were very accommodating. Everyone in Montana is very accommodating.

Tomorrow I will have coffee with Laura's friend Adam and get his advice as to the direction to take across eastern Montana to North Dakota and the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. He has already suggested I divert to see the Bair Family Museum. Should be fun.