Lift Your Eyes - Absaroka Range, Livingston, Montana

Over the river (and Interstate-90, and miscellaneous mountains…) and through the woods …and you’ll eventually arrive at Yellowstone National Park. (In its early 1900’s heyday, you could gray trip to the Park on the tourist train direct from the Livingston, Montana depot.)

Route 66 House On The Hill - Butte, Montana

As a whippersnapper, The Best Husband Ever watched the TV show Route 66, admiring the cool cats who travelled the USA in their cool Corvette.  A few months back, we stumbled across the series on Prime and watched a couple episodes for nostalgia sake, including Season 2, Episode 1 filmed in Butte, Montana. On our jaunt to Butte last weekend, we found the episode’s iconic boarding house still in good shape and just up the hill from the Mother Lode Theatre. Travellers to Butte can stay there and enjoy the Big Sky hilltop views of  Continental Divide mountains and the graduated hues of Butte’s historic open pit copper mine. 

Stage Set Up - Mother Lode Theatre, Butte, Montana

Balcony view of the band stage setup for 406 shows off some of the many gorgeous lines and 1923 design details in Butte, Montana’s historic Mother Lode Theatre. (Click here to see ceiling detail at top of photo.)

Looking Up - Mother Lode Theatre, Butte, Montana

Unexpected beauty found looking up in the top balcony of the Butte, Montana historic Mother Lode Theatre. Great Made In Montana show in progress with Butte’s own Ken Rich opening for 406 and The Tomcats.

Looking Further - Ice & Stone 6 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

And this is the last of these shoreline dreamy-ice images, hoarded and savoured a bit too long unto myself, like that last perfect bite of your favourite holiday food. But even with furious snow/hail/rain flurries today, spring persistently advances and fresh views await.

Looking Into - Ice & Stone 5 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

"Sometimes a man walks into the night and does not understand why he cannot see. He blames himself for the dark he is in.” 

- Henry Meloux in Manitou Canyon, p.107, by William Kent Krueger

Almost Silence - Ice & Stone 4 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“He didn't hear anything except flakes settling on pine and hemlock needles, a sound that was almost, but not quite, silence.”

-from Through the Evil Days by Julia Spencer-Fleming

Seeing Inside Out - Ice & Stone 3 on Rattlesnake Creek, Greenough Park, Missoula, Montana

“For the world is--allow us the homely figure--the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature.” - George MacDonald (1824–1905), in 1867 essay The Imagination: Its Function and its Culture