I didn't take these pictures but they capture Montana wonderfully: http://montanafilm.com/directory.htm

It was a short trip, just Wednesday to Saturday, but coming home and stepping into my apartment I felt that strange sense of dislocation as though I were stepping into someone else's life.

After being up for about an hour, I left the house at about 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It was very foggy at the airport and I was surprised when my 6:30 flight took off on time. I had two connections to make and everything went very smoothly. Note to self: in the future fly Northwest if possible; avoid transfers at Chicago airport at all costs.

Landed in Billings, Montana at about 1:30 p.m. From the air, there is very little vegetation in Montana except in the river valleys. Billings is in the Yellowstone River Valley, a branch of the Missouri. The airport is on top of a steep hill.

Everyone else had arrived on August 3, 2004. I had a trial scheduled so I had to come a day late. The trial canceled at the last minute, but it was too late to change my plans. According to everyone else, I had not missed much.

The team from our county consisted of the judge, two county attorneys, a guardian ad liteum (attorney who represents the children), the head of the drug treatment facility in town, the head of the political science department at the university, and the head of the child protective agency. We are trying to organize a specialized court unit to deal with parents who have their children taken away from them due to drug problems. We attended a number of workshops covering the nature of drug addiction, and the legal issues confronting drug courts. We also observed drug courts in the various host cities where the seminars were given and met as a group to set up the core plans for our own court system.

My role as parent's attorney is to be a fly in the ointment. I've been trying my best to put in enough safeguards and incentives so that my future clients will want to participate. I've gotten input from other attorneys in the local community who will also be representing parents, and during our meetings I made it clear that what I'm asking for is less that what others in the community are ready to insist on. I'm not offensive about it, but I have been able to get our court to adopt a few safeguards that I haven't seen in other courts.

So anyway, I had three evenings to explore Montana, and I took advantage of them. The first night I drove my rented car 300 miles out and back on the highway out to Bozeman, Montana. The first hundred miles or so was fairly level driving, with the highway resting at the bottom of the wide Yellowstone valley. The distant hills had an appearance that I can only describe as chiseled, rougher looking than the slopes near my home and covered in grass instead of trees. I saw quite a few cattle. They appeared smaller than the dairy cows common in my area, and they were solid black instead of the black and white spotted variety I am more used to. There were a few brief downpours and in the distance I spotted a few huge lightning strikes that were so far off that I heard no sound from them.

The sky does seem larger in Montana. The clouds look bigger and more distant somehow. I would guess that it is the size of the Yellowstone valley that provides markers for the eyes, making it easier to recognize the size of the clouds. The sun and moon will appear to be bigger when close to the horizon for much the same reason.

Bozeman itself was a relatively small city with touristy feel about it. There was a festival going on downtown and I stopped and wandered the streets for about twenty minutes. On the way back, I pulled over to the side of the road and slept for about two hours. I finally pulled into the hotel parking lot at about three in the morning.

On Thursday, I made a short visit to the Pictograph caves, where the Indians had stayed for thousands of years and left paintings on the rock walls. It was a small park, with a fifteen minute walk sufficient to cover everything. It was set in a beautiful canyon though, with blocky, yellow rock outcroppings. The yellow color is very different from the dark grey shale that makes up most of the rock nearer to home. Although I had seen steeper canyons at home, the difference in the rock made it worth the trip. I got back to the hotel at 8:00 p.m. and fell asleep early, making up for over extending myself the night before. I had intended to go to the valley where Custer had been defeated and look for an ice cream place (Custard's Last Stand: I know there's got be one), but I was just too pooped.

Friday we finished work at about 3:30 p.m., so I took off for Wyoming. Drove through Red Lodge, Montana and then out Route 212 over Beartooth Pass. The view from the mountains south of Red Lodge is spectacular. The road scales the side of the mountain ascending thousands of feet to a maximum height of 10,947 feet. It is narrow and winding, with dropoffs hundreds of feet down. At the top of the mountains there was still snow, even in August. It took less than two hours from Billings to get to the summit. I stopped at "The Top of the World Store" before heading back down. The clerk rang my purchase up wrong and apologized, but I managed to check myself before making some stupid remark about the altitude affecting his brain. Probably a good thing. For a view of the road I drove up scan down to the bottom of the page on this link.

On the way back, I stopped in Red Lodge for a bite to eat and to pick up some souvenirs. Red Lodge is very touristy, and there was some sort of biker convention going on. I got back to Billings around 9:30 p.m.

My flight left the following mornng at 6:30 a.m. Overall, a great trip.