Posted on 02/05/2012 6:21:51 AM PST by Dysart
Imagine you're a 12-year-old girl[or POTUS]. Ponies and clothes are your favourite things. You've just been shopping and you're wearing your new cowboy boots, new jeans, a blue checked shirt and a real cowboy hat. You've had breakfast – blueberry pancakes with crispy bacon, just the way you like them – and now you're walking across a sunlit meadow, filled with gently grazing ponies. You're feeling pretty good.
A tall cowboy with a slow drawl asks if you'd care to help him round up the ponies into the corral so you say yes, as casually as you can. The ponies neigh and toss their manes, kicking up dust and jostling as you lean over the wooden rails to share your apple with a fine chestnut quarter horse called Rudy. You lead him into the yard, feed him and groom him, saddle him up and get ready to go for a ride in the mountains. If you're imagining it properly, you're about as happy as a 12-year-old girl can be.
Which is not bad if you're her father, either. I'd taken my daughter to The Ranch at Rock Creek, a 6,000-acre spread in Montana which opened to guests last year and may well be the ultimate place to live out those cowboy dreams, whatever your age. That was certainly the intention of Jim Manley, a New York financier who bought it after a 40-year search for a pristine stretch of wilderness with a river, native forests, elk and deer but no grizzlies or rattlesnakes. He wanted somewhere he could hike, ride and shoot. Somewhere he could encourage others to adopt the frontier spirit – while making sure they didn't miss any of the comforts of modern life.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
What—do you work for the Montana Tourist Bureau??
Don’t try to sugar-coat this dire situation!
The problems are much more grave than that!
With the free-roaming beasts of prey, absence of speed limit, open-container-friendly laws and widespread gang violence, Montana has become a war-zone on the scale of Syria, Nigeria and Oakland, California.
The only sensible option is to stay the hell out!
p.s. And wood ticks! Did I mention the wood ticks??
And btw, Idaho is also delightful, although I've only passed through a couple of times.
Yeah, and the way the authorities put the kebosh on the rash of serial murders and rapes there is sickening. No one in their right mind should take a family vacation, let alone move to the area.
A wood tick got my sister. I NEVER go anywhere without my flame thrower.
Dang bloodsuckers!
>>>A wood tick got my sister.<<<
Hell, my sister got a wood tick. For a pet. Up to six pounds now, takes a half-gallon of fresh blood a day.
Happily the corpse-strewn streets, alleys and hiking trails make that a reasonable proposition.
I hope that it was truly an orphan tick.
Nothing ticks off a mama tick more than someone messing with her larva.
Awful place, wouldn’t catch me there (grin).
Awful place, wouldn’t catch me there (grin).
Dang bloodsuckers!
I couldn't agree more.
bttt
bttt
Where Jerky Comes From........
I have in my album a special photo of a rainbow arching over Lake Hebgen, sprinkling its colorful array over West Yellowstone backdropped by the mtns, and caught on our drive North on a little rural northbound hwy. Do take the trip when you can.
Great postcards.
Do you work for the Montana Department of Tourism? /s
It’s on my bucket list! And looking forward to seeing those mountains!
A few of the pictures at the link:
The only Western state I've missed is Utah...it sure looks uniquely adventurous. And I like that.
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