I'm back from a quick trip to Hot Springs, where I spent a night at the Symes Hotel. It's long been on my list of things to do in Montana, and I'm happy to have finally crossed it off. Hot Springs is roughly a two-hour drive from Missoula, if you're taking your time, and I was. I took pictures, but none are great enough to justify spending the time on editing and uploading them. Here are some mental snapshots:
-Hazy gray spring skies and fields of dun-colored grasses. Snow-dusted mountains. Clear roads, but scatterings of drizzle, freezing rain and spitting snow. "Wambies" and "baby moos" bucking and toddling after their mothers in muddy pastures.
-Stopping underneath the Perma bridge (don't know if that's the official name) over the Clark Fork River to stretch my legs, and finding fresh greenhouse flowers scattered about at the water's edge, then a wooden cross hand-painted with hearts, dolphins and angels, honoring an 18-year-old who died in 1997. Perhaps it was thrown off the bridge in some sort of letting-go ritual? Rest in peace, Joey.
-Camas Prairie, one of my favorite places in western Montana. A quiet valley ringed by low mountains and ceilinged with big sky. The valley floor marked by rolling waves of soil -- gigantic ripples left by the exodus of Glacial Lake Missoula flood waters some 15,000 years ago. It took a geologist, Joseph Pardee, looking at aerial photos in the 1920s, to recognize this as the same phenomenon that occurs on the floor of a streambed, only on a massive scale.
-Hot Springs, like so many Montana towns with a post office, a hardware store, two groceries, two bars and a dog walking slowly across Main Street. A boy on a bicycle rode past and asked me, "Do you have any money?" A handful of great little antique-slash-gift shops, most of them closed while I was there. One store, The Bluebird, open and selling hand-beaded jewelry, aprons sewn from vintage fabrics and nag champa incense. I got an early start on Christmas shopping.
-The Symes Hotel, hot sulfurous water exploding from mismatched faucets, wet excited children running and yelling down narrow hallways, my room bravely refurbished in not-quite-shabby-chic. Montana steak and perfectly cooked spring vegetables in the hotel restaurant, served by a dreadlocked waitress. The ahhhhh of steaming mineral water and a plastic cup of red wine in an oversized clawfoot tub.
-Biscuits and gravy at the Bison Cafe in Ravalli. Would've had huckleberry pie, too, but it was too recently baked to cut. Just my luck.
-Grandma's Front Porch, a charming little house and three outbuildings overflowing with country knicknacks between Arlee and Missoula. I'm not much into knicknacks, but bought another Christmas gift and a jar of amazing chocolate sauce.
And now it's back to reality -- laundry (since Tango puked on my bed while I was gone), errands, schoolwork, paperwork galore. Sigh.
1 Comments:
oooohhhh...sounds like fun! I say...post the pictures anyway! We wanna see!
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