Last Days in Butte, MT

Friday, July 29, 2011

As the days winded down for us in Butte, we tried to fit all the things we wanted to do and crammed them into 2 days.

Matt, along with Lucy, and a buddy of theirs took us about 35 miles out of town to fish for the day. When we settled down on the river and sent our casts we once again realized, there were no fish in the water. Maybe it was us, maybe it wasn’t, but this was the second attempt and we came up empty handed.

We decided to move on to another ‘hot spot’. It was just up the road from where were were and was located under a bridge. Being out of the sun was a good thing. When we arrived, the place was jam packed with kids. High School kids. Obviously this was their ‘hot spot’ too. They were not interested in fishing. They all had floats, some of them being actual air mattresses. They would all try to link together and would float away.

This happened with several different clicks of kids. All of them seemingly having a blast and making great memories for themselves.

Lucy found a craw fish and a baby frog while we were there, but we went home with no fish, again! It was a lot of fun though.

Saturday morning we all went downtown to the farmers market. It was impressive. It’s geared to be ‘green’. There was an Amish - I don’t think Amish, but a derivative of - family there, offering fresh chickens, organic tomatoes and everything else they could grow. The chickens were 7-9 lbs and we so fresh. We all purchased fresh, organic produce and tommy finally replaced his lost diamond earring with natural quartz that was excavated locally.

That afternoon we all hung around home and ate an early dinner/late lunch. Matt and Lucy fed us well while we were there. Around 7pm we headed to the demolition derby.

We sat on the grassy hill and drank PBR’s. Yes, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Apparent it’s a big seller there, and in reality, wasn’t too bad. At $2.50 a beer, it tasted great! LOL

Tommy, Briar, and Matt

 

The derby was fun. Briar, Matt’s son, had a blast. Sometime prior to the crashes and mud slinging the derby announcers buried a $20 bill in the mud in the field. In-between rounds of classes competing all the kids were called down into the ring and were told to DIG! What a mess! What a funny thing to observe (when it’s not your kid rolling around in 6 inches of mud). The funniest thing was all the kids congregated in one area at a time. They all followed each other like a herd of cows. When the announcer would tell them, ‘it’s not over there’, they would all move - together- to another spot. It took almost 30 minutes for some little girl to finally pull the muddy, wet, torn, almost illegible piece of currency from the mud.

Briar

can you believe how big these tires are?

Lucy and Matt

look at that face!

such a great family!

Sunday came and it was time to move on. Tommy has a friend, Tom, and his wife, Kelly, who live in Helena, MT. we were expected there by Sunday dinner time.

Matt tried to teach us to walk across a line he has in his front yard before we left. He has a strap tied from one tree to another about 100 feet long. He just stepped up on it, held his hands out and walked. Amazing. Tommy and I tried it on the smaller line. It was about 20 feet long and only 2 feet off the ground. Our line also had an overhead rope to hold onto. I couldn’t do it but Tommy succeeded. - With assistance from the upper rope. Matt made it look effortless.

We pulled out after breakfast and Lucy gave us a loaf of her famous strawberry, walnut home made bread for the road trip. We had such a great visit with them and they were great tour guides and wonderful cooks. We will miss them but know that we will see them again soon when they come to Florida.