For the past six weeks and change, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have been seriously out of pocket, executing a somewhat long and drawn out move westward (at least starting the return back home).
She was presented a sterling opportunity to further her objectives within the management group (retail) with Orvis; we strongly debated the opportunity as it involved work in the DFW metroplex, though as it turns out her primary responsibilities are pretty far north in the mass of humanity clustered here.
We did some exploring and found a little town of about 6,700 (most of whom live in upscale neighborhoods surrounding the actual historic community) and have rented a recently remodeled 71 year-old, original wood-floored, high-ceilinged house two blocks from the town square and a block off the railroad tracks.
Town boasts two sit down restaurants (both closed on Mondays), a surprisingly good pizza guy, a sit-outside-on-the-picnic-table burger hut (also closed on Monday, visible from my office window) and a donut shop with pretty damn good road coffee.
Turning off the main road and easing into town is like traveling back 30 or 40 years through a time portal.
Kids still play outside, riding bikes all over town and walking to the snowcone shack (down by the tracks), people wave walking or driving by, and the whole damn town appears to turn out for home football games (we’re only 4 blocks from the stadium and hear every call sitting on the back porch). There’s even a remodeled town square and park hosting farmers’ markets, movie nights and other stuff some of us remember doing as kids way back when.
We’ve already scored access to a couple of bass-rich stock ponds around in exchange for casting lessons and the redfish and other fly friendly targets on the coast have been calling our names (loudly) as we get settled.
We’ll be back in Montana in a few weeks for some play and fishing with Jake in Bozeman (and business) and then back and forth much more than the past 18 months or so allowed while we were stuck behind the Dixie Curtain.
The sunsets aren’t quite like the one above taken west of Bozeman, though it’s been great to see big sky again.
Back to regularly scheduled Chi Wulff programming here shortly.
