Jul

06 Photo Friday: Ennis, Montana

If you’re new here, subscribe to my RSS feed and/or newsletter. We love our readers and hope you’ll be back!

Our plans to go to Big Sky from Jackson fell throughthe fact that it was shoulder season and there wasnt a whole lot open paired with, shocker, the rain paired with the route that wed have to take back through Yellowstone againso we decided to take the quickest route from Wyoming back up to Montana.

We searched and searched and searched some more for a place to stop along the way to Missoula and kept coming up empty. This is where it comes in handy having fellow travel writer friends, as I happened to be emailing with my friend Mattwho is the Outdoors expert for Discover America among the many hats he wears; and also the same helpful soul who redirected us to Miles City weeks priorand also well-versed in Montana. He pointed us in the direction of Ennis and Beavertail National Forest.

Well, the rain followed us (again, shocker), so no outdoors for us, but we stayed at the most beautiful little RV park in town.

In fact, this was our backyard (all for the bargain price of $31 a night for a full hook-up):

Not bad, right? The best thing about the amount of precipitation the area had received is that the countryside was nice, lush and green.

Ennis itself was darlingfunny how the favorite places on this trip were the unexpected stops Id never even heard of beforeand when there was a brief respite from the rain, we wandered around downtownjust as the rain started to pour again! Seriously, we cant catch a break. And thus, got no photographic proof of the old-fashioned Main Street-esque area. Instead, we drove around shooting random ceramic fish statues from the truck for something, anything, to do.

(And I stole SVVs camo hat for the occasion. He said it looked better on me anyway, so I inherited the $5 Wal-Mart find and he replaced camouflage with a moose cap.)

Driving back to the RV park, we saw a big tent in an open field. SVVs interest was piqued so we veered over in that direction. I bet its a livestock sale! my Western-savvy self exclaimed.

I was, in fact, right.

We didnt attend the auction, but we did visit the steer for sale. Part of Ellas ongoing training is getting her acclimated to a variety of situations and other animals. The steer were the perfect opportunity.

And she was goodat first. Until Mama Steer with her fresh-out-of-the-oven calf, umbilical cord still attached, lunged at her and started hissing!

This set the puppy off, who in turn started growling back.

The cowboys laughed as the steer were straight-up terrified of our six-pound ball of white fluff.

The babies, on the other hand, were unfazed. They just sat there and looked at us with large unblinking eyes.

While the timing of our trip may have not been ideal due to the turbulent spring weather, I still think it was worth the sacrifices to see all the newborn wildlife staggering about on wobbly legs.

Cows seemed to be a recurring theme of this trip, and while theyre not exactly a novelty in this country, I couldnt help but point my camera in their direction every time wed come across a herd.

Especially when that herd included babies.

We didnt leave with any steer to take back home as a souvenir of our time in Montana, but we did leave with a lot of nice photos. And at the end of the day, to us, thats worth more than ~~livestock~~ gold.