Montana in the Spring

“The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.”  ~ Norman Maclean,  ‘A River Runs Through It’

As we left Seattle, heading to Denver by way of Bozeman, Montana, we realized we had been hanging around the Pacific Ocean for one day shy of two weeks, chasing down baseball on America’s far left coast.  I feel like that’s significant, though I don’t know exactly why.  It did seem noteworthy though that we were finally turning inland.  It may have something to do with knowing how much baseball, and how much of the country,  awaits us between this place we’ve wandered into and the right coast, nearly 3000 miles away.  It is as intimidating as it is exhilarating.

We have a few days to play with before the Rockies get back in town, so we drove southeast out of Seattle to Mt. Rainier National Park.   There were a number of park roads still closed for winter, but we did manage to get to the southeast part of the park, to the Ohanapecosh Visitor Center.  Except it was closed.  For the entire year.  The Park staffer who was doing maintenance on the facility (changing light bulbs in the still-open restrooms, it appeared), had less than kind things to say about government cutbacks, but happily pointed us in the direction of the Silver Falls trail.  Which was a wonderful,  3-mile loop along the Ohanapecosh River, up to the dramatic falls, to a wooden bridge which crossed the river and its boulder-carved canyon, then back down the other side of the river.   The water was green and clear and deep around the boulders at the base of the falls.   You could look down from the bridge and see the pebbles at the bottom, nearly 20 feet deep.  Back at the trailhead, we had a late lunch at the campground host’s  picnic table, since that position was as closed as the visitor center.

An hour down the road, in Yakima, Washington, there was a state baseball tournament.  Sadly, though we didn’t see any baseball in Yakima.  We only learned about it the next day, having had trouble finding a place to stay the night before.  At the gas station the next morning,  as we were headed out of town towards Idaho, a man asked me about gas prices in Texas.   Then he told me about the Memorial Day weekend baseball.

“You have family playing?” I asked him.

“Yep.  My grandson.  At least his age group is getting to play.  Some of them got rained out.  Drove all the way from  Walla Walla, and had their tents set up.  No baseball for them.”

“Ouch.”

“You said it.  Ouch for them.”

Yakima needs a retractable roof, I decided.

As we drove east across the Idaho panhandle, and into western Montana, the lush mountains gave way to lower, barren ones, then to green, and irrigated farm land, then back to green, forested hills, with green grassed meadows.  It was all attractive to us, even the low shrubbed stretch that looked like a tumbleweed farm, if for no other reason than it was all a  hilltop, a valley, a bend in the road we had never before seen.

We worked on our baseball roadtrip playlist as we drove along.

“America demands it,” Vicki said.

“Right,” I said.  “Of course they do.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Ok.  But nothing too obvious.  They need to be subtle, and clever.  Quirky, maybe.”

“So ‘Ramblin’ Man’ is out?”

“No, it stays.”

“Right.  And ‘End of the World’ stays, too?  It’s not exactly a road song.”

“I know.  I know.  But I think it should stay.”

“I think so, too,” Vicki said.

We drove, and planned, and listened.  And admired Montana.

Though I’m guessing it’s white for much of the year, Missoula is a green, cool, hilly, and inviting place in late May.  I asked the desk clerk at the motel if we could play catch in the showy, soft,  northern grass entrance to the motel.

“Absolutely,” she said.

She asked about my hat, and all the pins.  On hearing the story, she quickly looked up the schedule of the Missoula Ospreys, the Advance Rookie minor league farm team of the Diamondbacks, but they weren’t scheduled to start play for a few more weeks.  She seemed disappointed.

“Maybe we should come back then,” I said.

“Absolutely,” she agreed.  “You should.”

And so, at the base of her green and inviting hills, we played catch in Montana.

Where the Girls are Warm

“Not all those who wander are lost.”   ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

We missed breakfast again.  We actually haven’t made breakfast in awhile now.  And the kindly motel proprietor had said the muffins would be homemade!    We stay up late, reading, chronicling, talking, so that when the alarm goes off, we thank it for the reminder, and sleep some more.  So this morning we shared a quart of chocolate milk and a couple of Little Debbie pies from the gas station.  Vicki wasn’t accustomed to drinking from the carton, but she caught on alright.

Just above Ft. Bragg, forests begin to make their way down from the rolling hills, and Hwy 1 sometimes turns away from the Pacific and heads up into deep woods, the road canopied by avenues of cypress trees.  Only to then turn out of the trees once again and drop steeply back to the shore, dropping at times so low it seems a high tide would surely cover it, at least a little.  And so it winds, dipping down close to shore, ducking back into tunnels of cypress, then occasionally emerging on a high oceanside cliff, with waves crashing and into large dark rocks a hundred feet offshore, sending white spray high into the air.   We stopped at one cliff, and looked down at the rocky shore a hundred feet below us, and watched seals playing in calm, protected waters.   I think they were playing.  They seemed happy enough.

Hwy 1 turns away from the ocean, and rejoins Hwy 101, following the south fork of the Eel River.   There were rapids often enough, and long gravel beds almost continuously, so that it invited notions of camping and rafting.  I’m becoming convinced that California must be one of our prettiest states.  I like California, I’ve decided.

Hwy 101 returns to the ocean, or the ocean actually returns to it, and we continue north toward Redwood National Park.  Towns are scarce, and restaurants are closed, though we aren’t sure why.  Too early in the season, we decide.   Or maybe we just missed the open ones.  At any rate, lunch is orange juice, and a custom trail mix Vicki refers to as Puppy Chow, while we drive.   And we agree that’s ok.  The Steve Miller Band is rocking in northern California, and in between handfuls of Puppy Chow, we decide we need a Baseball Road Trip Playlist.

In the park, we hike to Trillium Falls,  a loop of just under three miles, through a forest of mature redwoods.   The forest is deep and dark, the trees unnaturally, almost humorously large.   We find ourselves pointing and smiling a lot.  It’s cool, and very green in these woods, which seem old, and from another time.  The ferns that spill from the forest floor out into our path seem very happy.  It’s a fun hike.  It’s good to be here, we decide.

We’re two days from baseball in Seattle.