Montana: The Home Where The Buffalo Roam
Dusky, purple mountains beneath the wings of the airplane glisten with snow caps. The plane touches down at Great Falls Airport. The central Montana city of the great American explorers, Lewis and Clark and the famous Western artist and sculpturer, Charles Russell spreads wide from Malstrom Air Force base nearest the airport to the main highway with its hotels, motels, shopping centers and museums. Angled around the Missouri River which cuts a wide, wide swath through Great Falls, is the Lewis and Clark museum. One day to visit this museum isn’t sufficient for the amazing displays, videos and tours available to patrons. A short distance away are the namesake, Great Falls, over which Lewis and Clark with their Indian guide, Sacagaweja, traveled to complete the mission of President Ulysses S. Grant to reach the Pacific Ocean. But, buffalo in Montana have their preferences for the wide open spaces. Onward Ho!
North to the Buffalo
Traveling north, the Montana visitor passes through small towns like the historic Cut Bank. Cut Bank, in 1850, was the sight of a Piegan Indian massacre by the U.S. Cavalry. If you listen closely when that omni-present wind is blowing, you imagine you hear cavalry bugles blaring and the screams of Piegans. The wind in Cut Bank is a signature blend of half scream and unexpected gusts. Further north are the Sweet Grass Hills dotted with Montana butte. They appear on the northern horizon opposite a huge gold sun in an impossibly enormous dome of a sky. Like sawed-off mountains, they stand stately and dignified and oblivious to the awe of their onlookers. With a swerve into a northwest direction, the Montana Rockies are everywhere in a rose-colored afternoon sky. Vast open land stretches green and olive, dotted with herds of buffalo. Buffalo maintain decorum under the most scrupulous tourist eye like big furry brown and black dots on the massive open landscape. Here, is where the buffalo roam among mountain goats, gold mountain lion and an unusual bird called a "Plover" whose acting skills for a member of the avian community is Oscar-worthy. Get too close to the Plover’s nest and it acts as if it has a broken wing. You follow it as it feigns injury, getting further and further from the location of the nest. This is one drama not to be missed.
Mountain Climbing in An Alternative Fuel Vehicle
Arriving in East Glacier, a very Montana town with Blackfoot Indian influence, the trip through Glacier National Park is a must-see. In East Glacier, the opportunity to visit small shops, sleep in a mountain cabin and enjoy meals in a western style restaurant is as convenient as the red alternative-fuel mountain bus that will have visitors climbing the Cascades high into the clouds. Snow falls lightly as the driver points out various sights of interest. The snow falls. But here, high up in the Cascades Range of the Rockies, the sun is still shining high overhead. When the day is done, the fresh, clean mountain air wearies lungs unused to the air’s purity and drowsiness sets in as the sun begins to set behind the quaint mountain cabin or the luxurious hotel with the mountain just outside the window. No one ever really leaves Montana once the plane arrives back home. It remains in the heart and soul of every visitor from the moment the buffalo appear on their vast grazing plains.
