Montana Trip

I am not sure if all of you knew this or not, but we recently went on a trip to Great Falls, Montana. I figured that I could give you some highlights on the trip. We flew out of Baton Rouge around 6:00 in the morning and flew into Billings, MT around 10:45 in the morning. Here is an aerial picture that was taken between Denver, CO and Billings, MT.


Billings is about a 3 hour drive from Great Falls, so we had the Wilson’s meet us at the airport to pick us up. We arrived over there with all of them wearing LSU shirts. They were wearing LSU National Championship shirts, to be exact. So that was pretty cool to have everyone supporting my alma mater. In Billings we were quick to find something entertaining to do. We just drove into this neighborhood and started climbing a hill in the back of it. They had a couple of really cool rocks to climb up on. It was pretty fun, nothing too difficult to do wearing blue jeans and Doc Martins. I was very surprised to start hiking up the hill and see evidence of deer walking around up there. It was right in the back of a neighborhood, so it was not expected at all.


Saturday night we got back to Great Falls to find that there was a fresh blanket of snow covering the ground. We immediately took out the sled and started going down the hill in the front yard. That was a lot of fun.


Sunday morning we went walking the dogs around the neighborhood. We played on the ice that was on the sides of the road. We even came across a Hurricane evacuation route sign….oh wait, that is a SNOW evacuation route. After our walk we went to church. Their church is about a mile down the road, easily in walking distance. Matter of fact, almost everything is a walking distance away. They have a shopping center that is pretty close by. They can get groceries, go to The Home Depot, eat a Chili’s, or many other things all without getting the car. And…you can bring dogs into The Home Depot. How cool is that? I think that the way that gas prices are going that would come in handy…Not bringing the dog into stores, but walking to them instead of driving. The boys’ school is a short walk away also.


For lunch we stopped in at a Fudrucker’s. I had never been to one of those before. That was my loss. I couldn’t believe what I had been missing. It is a little pricey for a burger meal, but it sure is good stuff. We use to have one here in BR but it closed down a while back. After lunch we made a stop in at Scheel’s Sporting Goods. That was a great thing to do. Its like a really big Academy Sports. They had all kinds of good stuff. I had a $25 gift card from my Birthday (thanks to the Wilson’s) so I was shopping for something that I could use my B-day money. I found the perfect thing. I was walking around looking at the knifes when I saw the coolest knife around. Justin is always talking about a “muskrat” knife. They make a pocket knife that has two identical blades on it. For some reason this style knife is called a muskrat. Well, they are hard to find and I found them, so I bought one for me and one for Justin. I also came across a great deal on some hiking boots, so I had to get me some of those too. I ended up spending around a hundred dollars. The best party about that is that there is no sales tax in Montana. So when I found $120 boots for $64.99 they cost me $64.99. How about that? Sunday night we went to a Sunday-school gathering where everyone cooked something. So we had this big meal with a bunch of people and then had our lesson. That was pretty cool.

Monday it was off to the slopes! We (the boys: Glenn, Scott, Luke, and Nate-Dog) headed down to Showdown Mountain to do some serious snow boarding! It was so fun. I am a good skier but I had to try out snow boarding since that was what everyone else was doing. I had a blast with it. I think that I am switching over to the other side. Justin will be very happy to hear me saying that. I think that I was a pretty quick learner. I wasn’t nearly as good as Glenn and the boys, but I was able to keep up. Nate is still the little dare devil, there was no holding back with him. Luke is really good too. It is a pretty small ski hill so we were able to hit up all of the runs throughout the day. Of course I didn’t try to go on any blacks, maybe next year.


Tuesday morning I kind of slept in a little bit. Since Glenn went to work and he was going to pick me up around lunch time, I was in no hurry. We also went walking the dogs around the Missouri River while waiting on Glenn. He had to work two days that week. He was going to Helena on Tuesday and Butte on Wednesday. I like being able to hang with Glenn around his work. He has a really interesting job and I am always happy to watch him work. After work on Tuesday we went to Mount Helena. We wanted to do a small hike. Of course Glenn told me that I wasn’t going to need my hiking boots, so I ended up hiking in my running shoes. Oh well. The hike was a great one. We were able to make it to the top and we saw mule deer while we were at it. On our way down we kind of got lost going around the back side of the mountain, but we still made it back to the truck before dark. That night we ate at a saloon. Burt and Ernies was the name. Hanger treated me to a steak dinner. Mmmm mmmm good.


On the way up to Helena Glenn stopped to show me where they jump off the rocks into the river (during the summer).


Wednesday was our wonderful day in the small town of Butte. Glenn saw a lot of patients, I played a lot of Tetris and talked with the patients about really cool things, such as “phantom pains”. We made our way all the way back to Great Falls (two hours) so we could get a good nights sleep and go right back through Butte the next morning (to get to George Town Lake).

Thursday Glenn saw one patient at the office in Great Falls and then we were off to George Town Lake. It was just outside the city Anaconda, MT. As soon as we get into the area of our cabin we noticed a HUGE snow hill that we were going to do some “totally-wicked” sledding or tobogganing as the Canadians would say. We were in a hurry to get settled in just to be able to go to the hill and try it out. Oh, and our cabin….it had a hot tub outside on the deck! Yeah, that was AWESOME! We all put on our snow clothes and headed up to the hill. We played over there for a long time. That was a lot of fun. The only thing that could have made that better was having a snow mobile to carry us from one place to another. The snow was kind of hard to hike around in before we were able to get it packed down a little bit. I guess that I am not used to walking in knee to waist deep snow.


Friday was a big fishing day. We went to the lake to cut some holes in the ice and try to find some trout. We also brought things to be able to play some hockey while out there. So we had a shovel that we were going to use in order to clear the snow from the ice. After about 5 people and 2 or 3 hours of time we cleared the ice and tried to play a little bit of hockey. It was ok, the ice was really rough. More so than what I had been on in Colorado. Fishing was fun too. We had the gas powered ice ogre to cut through the thick ice, so Glenn drilled out 8 holes to fish in. We never did find where those fish were hiding though.


Of course when we got back to the cabin I was ready for some more tobogganing. I just went out there by myself and found the best way to get down that hill. Even though I was alone I was still having a blast. It is something that is really fun alone, but to have someone with you enjoying it is that much better. I am sure that I would have tried even dumber things if I had more people out there telling me to go faster, higher, or whatever.

Saturday morning we made our way to Discovery Ski Hill. This place was a little bit bigger than Showdown but only because the backside of the mountain was covered in black runs. Actually they were all double black diamonds. I am sure that I don’t ever have to mention that I stayed away from those. That was another really fun snow boarding day. It didn’t take long for me to get too comfortable with snow boarding. So I tried zooming past Glenn and I ended up falling really hard. It felt really bad at the time but that’s ok. I lived through it and I am not going to let it stop me from having fun. Vivian even came snow boarding with us. She is pretty good too. I was very impressed with the Wilsons’ talent in the snow boarding division. Amanda did not want to try it out. She was having enough fun on the sidelines just watching.

Since it was our last night at the cabin I took Glenn with me to the snow hill. We did some tobogganing together. We took pictures and video of each other going down and stuff. It was a lot of fun. I wish that I could have a tobogganing party for my birthday every year.

I haven’t really mentioned much more about the hot tub that was on the front deck. I am pretty sure that the hot tub took up most of our time while at the cabin. We were constantly getting in and out of that thing. It was something nice to be able to get back from sledding or skiing or playing hockey and get in the hot tub. Man that was nice. The best part about it was that we were able to freeze our swimming suits outside. It was also really nice to go out there at night under the clear sky and look at the stars! Makes me want to move to Montana just to have a hot tub in the winter!



Sunday morning we all got up early to have one last dip in the hot tub. We then cleaned up and made our way to Billings. It was snowing really hard the morning that we were leaving so it was really pretty with all of the trees covered in snow. With the snow came tough road conditions. At one point we were following two snow plows on the interstate. That was cool to watch them clearing the road. Thankfully we made it to Billings with no trouble. It was sad to see our trip come to an end. I really liked being up there and playing the entire week. We were on time for our flight but the flight wasn’t on time us. Our flight was about 3 hours delayed and we missed our connection in Denver. It worked out pretty good though. The airline paid for a hotel and three meals since we couldn’t fly out until the Monday morning. Since we were put up in Denver we got to call up my friend Shawn and his wife Kristen (Amanda’s friend) to come meet us at the hotel. That is something that was really nice. We don’t really get to call them up too much and say “hey, come on over and hang out”.




That pretty much concludes our Montana trip. I hope that it was fun reading through that incredibly long post. I told you that I had to make up for missed time.