Speckled Puppies

My Mountain Boy, Jamie and I drove just north of the border the other day to a small and dying town called Belfry Montana, to pick up (of all things) a couple of lottery tickets.
Surprisingly we are not millionaires as of this writing, but after stopping at a convenience store to pick up the tickets, we on the spur of the moment decided to continue on to a small ski town in the mountains called Red Lodge.
The town is only about 10 miles from Belfry but it feels like a completely different world than the one we had left only a few thousand feet below.
Belfry is located in desolate high plains country.
Red Lodge is a sweet, quiet, isolated town located in the mountains.
While on the trip up and into the mountains we pulled the truck over to a lookout point for a few minutes to take in the view.
It was a clear day and just as the saying goes, it seemed as though we could see forever.
At the pull off I took some pictures of wide open spaces and then walked over to a group of large boulders where my guy and my dog were looking out over the same scene.
As I sat down on one of the boulders I looked down into the dirt at my feet and found this dentist wine cork.
With the over sized teeth he had in his mouth, the over sized teeth he carried in his hand and the pair of pliers he hid behind his back - and with the complete randomness of my find in the dirt - I smiled and then laughed.
And then I picked up the whimsical cork, snapped a photograph of it and then shoved it deep into the bottom of my pack.
A tacky and unexpected keepsake in the middle of a quiet country drive.
I keep these kinds of random things for years.  Sometimes forever.
My sons treasure chest traveled with us down to Wyoming.  My baby gave me it to me many years ago, it has no value to anyone other than me, and Juneau was not going to keep it.
And so I asked LC to pry it loose from the freezing and frozen ground, with it covered with snow, so we could shove it into a corner of the bed of the truck before we left.
My blue shells and white shells - a collection built over many many walks over rocky beaches throughout Juneau also came with me to Wyoming.
So did the large collection of nuts and pods and seeds and pine cones I have collected over multiple walks and trail runs over many years in Tennessee.
The damned couch in Juneau had to be left behind.  I can replace a couch.  
But I can't replace seemingly ridiculous and worthless items that are actually meaningful and worthy to me............... 

A view from Highway 120 somewhere between Cody and Belfry.........

A few miles into the climb we unexpectedly came across a series of structures that have been preserved in remembrance of a coal mining disaster that killed many miners in 1943...........

The pull off with the forever-views and the toothy smiley-cork.........

We did not spend a lot of time in Red Lodge, but we greatly enjoyed our brief visit.

Red Lodge is a small (though bigger than I expected) mountain, seemingly tourist-based town, containing the predictable antique stores, espresso bars and art galleries.

Smaller than Cody, less financially stable and more dependent on tourist dollars than Cody (at least by this first-time visitors initial impressions), but a very sweet town.

A statue found close to the center of town on a sunny and mild day in the Montana mountains...........

We stopped briefly at a closed train-depot-turned-gallery.

Although we could not walk through the gallery there were interesting items outside on the grounds that I photographed..........

A picture taken of a house across the road simply because I liked the sun burst above the second story windows...........

A wonderful painting on the side of one of the commercial buildings in downtown Red Lodge...........

Downtown...............

On the way out of town I asked LC to pull the truck over to the side of the road so that I could take pictures of the creek running through town..........

As we were climbing out of town I looked behind me and saw the most beautiful of scenes.

The town sits in a small valley and on this day was completely surrounded by beautiful and snow covered mountains.

I had to stop for a few minutes and take it all in from this elevated position.

Looking down on the scene below me it was easy to fall in love with this little ski town.

And it was easy to picture this town in the summer.  

When all of the hard wood trees have leaves on them I could easily imagine this town almost disappearing under a green canopy............. 

Jamie has run of the entire back seat of the truck during our traveling adventures around Cody, and we keep the back windows partially open for her.

She has taken to sitting in the middle of the back seat recently though, so she can see out of the front window.

There were a couple of times during our mountain visit when we had to make sudden stops and she face planted into the center console.

I put my sweater down to try and buffer her against the sudden stops, but on the way back from our visit to Red Lodge Jamie decided that the soft console made a very good pillow ..........

Today I have been thinking a lot about one of my young managers that I left in Juneau.

He submitted his letter of resignation two weeks after I left and as of this writing is on the ferry on the way back to Bellingham Washington.

And then on the way home to start life over again.

He was only in Juneau for three months and I remember making jokes with colleagues before he arrived that he was as excited as a "speckled puppy". 

He is a good manager - young, shiny, enthusiastic, knows his field, and is very good at what he does.  

I was as excited as a speckled puppy to have found him as well.

The department head also submitted his letter of resignation recently and is leaving sometime within the next week.

It is all so maddening.  And so sad at the same time.

All the people who have left over the past year.

All the lives that have been disrupted.  The livelihoods that have been disrupted.  

I move forward every day dedicated to the belief that things will be OK for me and for LC and for the both of us together.........

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow........

Albert Einstein