Stuart Peak

Since the sun does not rise here until after 8 a.m., it's pretty easy nowadays to do a dawn patrol. I took the day off from job hunting and hiked Stuart Peak.

Stuart Peak is a midlevel peak in the Rattlesnake Mountains National Recreation Area and Wilderness. The Rattlesnakes are a group of high peaks which back Missoula to the north. The entrance to the area is about 5 miles from downtown Missoula.



About a half-inch of sloppy snow dropped the night before in Missoula -- which translated to close to an inch at the trailhead, which is at about 3,500 feet.



The first 3 miles are wide and easy, then the climb begins in earnest.



It's dense forest much of the way, though you do get some views.



The summit is at 7,900 feet but I turned around about 600 feet shy of that when I ran into deeper snow, dense fog, strong winds



and big bear tracks.



I celebrated a successful hike with stickers!

16 feet of Nissan, 15 feet of trailer

Laura got the good news last Thursday -- she was hired by the school district, and would start work on Monday.

With that major hurdle out of the way, and nothing promising job-wise for me in the near future, we decided this was a good time for me to go to Houston and get the truck and trailer.



Buying a one-way ticket on short notice left us with few options. On Saturday we left the house at 5.30 am and drove nearly three hours -- including up and over the Contintal Divide -- to Bozeman, whose airport looks like an upscale ski lodge.



I flew from BZN to IAH via a six-hour layover at DIA. The flight to Denver took us over Yellowstone and the Wind Rivers and featured a great view of the Tetons. My parents picked me up in Houston, where for once the temperature was NOT 95 degrees, and we had a late dinner at Taco Cabana. I spent the next day packing and unloading and reloading the trailer when I realized there was too much weight on the tongue.

I left Houston on Monday and again went to Bryan, Waco and Fort Worth. It got dark way before the Panhandle but as there were no campgrounds I wound up pulling into the KOA in Amarillo -- perhaps the most expensive campground on Earth -- at 11.30 p.m.

I was up the next day and out by 8. Wanting to bypass Raton Pass, Monument Hill and the mess that is Denver I went north from Amarillo through Stratford and Boise City and entered the weird depopulated world of the plains. Living in the West I'm well acquainted with what appears to be abandoned towns, but in the West you are never that far from a thriving town even when in what appears to be a dead zone. In the plans, however, all you get is dead zone; there are no resort cities to buck the trend. Texas and Oklahoma were particularly bad for deserted cities; in Colorado, meanwhile, there seemed to be more emphasis on redevelopment and downtown beautification.







From Lamar I headed north to Limon and took back roads to Fort Collins, where I joined I-15. After raining all afternoon the rain turned to snow in Cheyenne and started to come down heavy. I spent the night in the truck at a rest area in Chugwater.



The next morning, with light snow falling but the roads cleared, I went to Caspar and then to Thermopolis and Cody before driving into the spectacular Absaroka Mountains at Red Lodge. I spent one final night in Columbus before making it home to Missoula in the early afternoon.



Laura did not like pulling the trailer, but once you get into the West, where there is more space and fewer people, I found it to be almost enjoyable. I set the cruise at 60 and idled along into the sky. Not a bad week. And now our home has furniture!

Montucky

August: Life becomes single-focused and practically monastic. Ride in the morning. Job hunt all day. Ride in the evening. Make dinner with the parents.



My ride is just about the same every day: 16 miles out and back to the hamlet of Thompsons. The job hunt is just about the same every day: I've carpet-bombed the Interior Northwest with resumes and applications. Dinner is often different but often the same: we don't call it "Mexican food" we just call it "food."

September: More of the same, though it's not as hot. I used to think of my afternoon rides as "rendering the lard," now, 90 degrees feels like autumn.



The job hunts plugs along, though we gradually narrow where we apply to. I made a list of top tier towns -- places which have everything we'd ever want -- and a list of second-best towns. Missoula was a top tier town, and luckily it had the most job prospects.

But job hunting 2,000 miles removed from your goal is difficult, at best. Laura and I decided that if Missoula was the place, then we just ought to head out there. Then, in one day, we both got nibbles on jobs in Missoula. In one crazy 72-hour period, during one of Atlanta's signature downpours, Laura packed the truck and trailer and got them both out to Houston with but one mishap: a flat tire on the Southwest Freeway during rush hour.

We spent two more days in Richmond arranging things before shoving off north by west in the Altima (leaving the heaving truck and trailer in Richmond). For the first two days we followed the route pioneered during our winter ski trips: Bryan, Waco, Ft. Worth, Wichita Falls, Vernon, Amarillo, Dalhart, Clayton, Raton, Trinidad, Denver. We spent the first night in Amarillo and were up before dawn the next day. We saw the mountains at Raton, sampled the good-old Colorado in Trinidad (not to be mistaken for the new Colorado, which might as well be a different state) and saw snow in the Central Rockies. We had each applied to jobs in Boulder, Ft. Collins, Longmont and Loveland and we checked those towns out. I found them to be just what the accolades say: clean, quiet, well-planned and eminently livable. And also: kind of boring and rather suburban.

From Ft. Collins we headed into Wyoming and camped in Sheridan after checking out Buffalo, where I was offered a job I turned down. Finally, on Sunday we crossed into Montana and idled through Livingston, Bozeman, Butte and Deer Lodge before entering Missoula.



I'll always remember the first time I drove into the Salt Lake Valley: it's a magnificent event. Driving down Hellgate Canyon to emerge in Missoula is a level or two less intense than that of Utah, but still memorable: the city set against yellow hills, sparkling afternoon sunlight, and the mountains all around.

October: Our home for two weeks was the Misasoula KOA, which was fine unless it was raining, snowing, windy or very cold. We again fell into a routine: up with the sun, breakfast at the picnic table, shower and dress up, and into the job service, where we'd spend a few hours on the job hunt. We'd break for lunch and poke around town for a bit before heading back to the job office.

We took a weekend to go to the nearby Swan Valley.





We both got job offers which we both turned down -- mine was in a pretty small town not far from Canada, and Laura's was at a nonprofit here in town.

Then it snowed.



We took this as our cue to check out of the KOA, where we were the last campers left and where we'd worn the grass pretty thin, and into a very livable apartment, which was no more expensive than camping, really.



Hopefully, we'll get some furniture soon.

There's lots going on, but not a whole lot to report. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, here's the Bitterroot River above the confluence with the Clark Fork to keep you company.

What Does the World Look Like?

So here's one of two nearly identical videos I made from photos of our year-long around-the-world trip. It's the first time I've used video editing software and obviously I had problems with some of the editing features (yes, I know I misspelled Uruguay!). Anyway ...