autumn in montana

Last week we drove to Montana—all 14 hours in one day—to spend a week with my parents in Fort Benton, which for those of you who haven't heard of it (what, really?) is in the north-central part of the state and the last time I checked, had a population of about 1500 people, although if I'm wrong on that number, I'm sure someone who lives there will see to it to correct me.

I packed our bags according to what I thought would be fitting for a typical early October week, but to our surprise, it was almost 90 by the end of our trip. Maybe no one noticed that we wore the same three shirts over and over.

The first three days that we were there, my sister and her family drove up to visit. We had a very full house with people sleeping in every nook and cranny, but no one seemed to mind. Everyone headed down to the levee to enjoy the beautiful trees, falling leaves, and the peaceful Missouri River.

There is a walking bridge that used to terrify me when I was a kid because it was only restored about a third of the way out and when you got to the end you could stand at the chain link fence and look out at all of the rotting boards that were barely hanging on right next to the large gap where their neighboring slats should have been. It's much nicer now—finished all the way across the river—but it still gives me chills when I look down through the cracks. Alden didn't seem to be bothered by them too much. We showed him how he could drop sticks down and watch them hit the water.


Then I showed him one of the little games that my sister and I used to play. We'd each grab a stick with leaves on it and drop them down on the upstream side and race across to the other side of the bridge to see who's stick would appear first. He thought it was brilliant. This picture is of him racing.

Patrick took this shot of the nieces and I just love it. It reminds me so much of me and Tanya when we were little.
We were hoping to get a nice family shot against the serene backdrop... we got absolutely no cooperation from the kids and this was the best we could get. They both just wanted to get down and do their own thing. I still think it's kind of cute.

My mom always plants a huge vegetable garden, and this year was no exception. Most of the bounty had already been harvested, but Alden got to help pick the gourds. My mom grows tons of them to use in a school project (she's an elementary teacher). Alden gladly helped haul them to the house one by one. Can you see the strain in his face!! It was hard work.

He was so excited and he talked about them all week. The funny thing was that he couldn't remember the name of them and he kept calling them "goaches." Within just a few minutes of correcting him with the right word, he was calling them goaches again. By the time they were done working, there were 51 of them in the pile.
Because it was so hot, my parents needed to give some of their trees a really deep soak. Alden was thrilled to be the hose-holder. He kept swinging it around and we were all just waiting for him to hit his face with the water, but somehow he managed to miss his head every time. That is until my mom tried to show him how to hold his finger on the end to give it a little more pressure. Apparently there was a hole in the side of the metal and as my mom covered the end with her finger, water shot out full-force directly into Alden's eyes. If you zoom into the next picture you'll see his reaction!! My mom felt really bad, too.
By the time we shut the water off, there was a huge mud puddle. I tried as hard as I could to keep Tula distracted, but she was thrashing around so bad, fighting me to get in it. I finally gave up and plopped her down in the middle. I figured she was wearing black pants so what's the big deal. She thought it was fantastic.



Here's another attempt at a family photo. I think it's time to call in the professionals!
Here are the kids with grandma and grandpa. I love the way this photo of my parents turned out. We took these on the last night of our trip right before driving to Loma to eat dinner and go see some buffalo.

On our way home we stopped to pick some wheat for Alden to take back and share with his preschool class. I turned around to look at an amazing sunset and was fortunate enough to see eight antelope run by about a hundred yards away.

It was a great trip, and I am always amazed at the beautiful sights that Montana offers. On our drive back, we had to slow down on one of the mountain passes for a few ranchers riding their horses on the highway herding a bunch of cattle. It was really an unexpected treat for all of us to see.