Day 44 (Friday 8/3/12)- Missoula, MT

After realizing Butte, MT is a place to avoid, not visit we skipped out rather than stayed and headed back to our unanimously favorite town so far. On the way we stopped at Grant Kohrs National Park and its working ranch. The intention of the ranch is to give visitors insight into the time when cattle ranching was most popular.
The fully furnished home the Kohrs lived in was undergoing construction at the time of our visit and so we only got to see it by slideshow. Based on the slideshow we recommend that you stop by if ever in the neighborhood (though that scenario is probably unlikely) but stop by after this fall so as to miss the slideshow approximation. The presentation was only good enough to show that the real deal tour seems cool. One bit of salacious trivia from the talk was Kohr's acumen as a businessman. Which might be a nice way of describing his manwhorishness. He married 7 women, from 7 different native tribes, so as to guarantee more clientele. 

Since we didn't get to see the actual historic house our favorite experience was drinking Cowboy coffee. We shared bitter coffee with a sweet ranch hand who, in her day job, or more acurately, winter career, is a school teacher. This summer she is on a National Parks exchange and described to us how cowboys traveled several states at a time delivering cattle. She went on to say that this was a booming industry until the year of 1867 when a devestating snowfilled winter caused the death of up to half of the cattle in the north plains (estimates vary between one-third and one-half). The ranch also has several displays, cattle fields and a blacksmith shop with demonstrations (with a kooky and fascinating blacksmith/mad scientist).

Back on the road we made it to Missoula by mid afternoon. This turned out to be quite a great day as we got to watch my favorite musician on one of our favorite T.V. shows (Nas on Colbert), Isaiah loaded up on all the free magazines he could manage and I got to shop 'till I about dropped at the fabulous "My Sister's Closet thrift store" (the price was right!). Also worth mentioning: Isaiah got a sport coat for $4 at the Goodwill there (Though I'm as likely to wear a suit jacket on the trip as you are to visit middle of nowhere Montana. I wonder if my fancy looking coat will distract from my van beard). Such a great town. We miss you already "Zoo."
　

Grant-Kohrs National Park ranch

Grant-Kohrs National Park Ranch