Montana is the first place I had ever heard the term “Big Sky”. Growing up on the East Coast, the horizon was usually blocked by so many trees, it never occurred to me to consider it as anything more than a strip above the tree tops.
When I moved to Denver, Colorado over 20 years ago, my relationship to the sky changed as I spent more time outside hiking, biking, and camping. The privilege of Colorado “blue sky” days became more of my norm. And as much as I knew we needed the water, more than two days of rain in a row would make me grumpy.
Marla and I took about 9 days to travel over 1700 miles from Central Montana to Chicago and we drank in that big western sky in many of the places we visited.
We entered the Great Plains in Central Montana where we camped at the Missouri Headwaters State Park. The Missouri is formed in that very place by the confluence of three other rivers: the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin.
We then went on to western North Dakota where we got to camp with our friend Bailey Diveley and her sister Kendall the first night at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We had the most amazing seats to see wild horses come through the field next to our campsite and watch the Perseid Meteor Shower. The next day, Marla and I hiked a couple of miles of the Mad Ah Hey trail, a bucket list trail for us that goes through the North Dakota Badlands. We will be back with better bikes and bike skills to spend more time on that one in the future.
While it wasn’t exactly camping, but definitely “camp-y” we did happen upon a “gay-ish” karaoke bar in downtown Fargo, North Dakota on a Tuesday night. It was both delightful and definitely weird.
As we travel East, moving across Minnesota and Wisconsin, the sky seems smaller and a little hazier. The hills are green and rolling. The trees, cows, and pretty farms with their red barns are more prolific. It’s still beautiful, don’t get me wrong, just so very different.
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