Kalispell (the end)

It is now time for every guest to head back home, towards New Zealand, Texas, North Carolina, Belgium or France. For me, one more day to enjoy Kalispell and its Halloween atmosphere :



A little more shopping : who wants to buy a pair of boots ? (below, part of the women's boots which can be found at the shop at the corner of the street)



Main Street, with all its shops, cafés and restaurants :



And the residential street, with the churches, nice little (or not so little) houses, and plenty of lawyer offices and chiropractors :

MMG Ranch (4)

Good news of the day : our graze team found one of the missing pairs. They changed strategy : instead of looking for looking for a needle in a 75,000 acres haystack, they parked the trailer with the horses, and started driving all over the place, asking everybody if they had seen any cow. They went to the post office, the gas station... And eventually they found somebody who had seen a couple of cows close to the road a few miles away from there. And here were the cows, close to the fence, waiting to be picked up... They will probably have to go on like that next week, as the cows can be dozens of miles away from the ranch, at the end of the summer.

In the meantime, we took care of the replacement yearlings, that we had isolated from the rest of the herd on the previous day and practice cutting and rodeer with them (basically, cutting is the action of separating a cow from the rest of the herd, in order to move it to a separate pasture, or to doctor it, and rodeer is a way to drive them, with horses all around them in a circle, walking constantly).



Below, a few pictures taken from the mountains around the ranch :



And it is already the end of the week. And even the end of the season for the guest activity of the ranch. Part of the staff will be off until beginning of April. If everything's fine, I will be back then !

MMG Ranch (3)

Howdy !

You know what ? We still haven't found those damn 3 missing pairs...

But while other guys went on looking for them, we gathered the rest of the herd, and proceeded with the autumn vaccination and pregancy check. 120 cows to be moved back from the meadows to the ranch, then 3 hours and a half helping the vet with his checks, then a bit than 100 cows to be moved back up the hill to the pasture where they will spend the next weeks.

This may sound pretty easy, but it took us the whole day, and after a good diner, we are all looking forward to a long night. It is getting late : 8:20pm, I should already be sleeping...

MMG Ranch (2)

Howdy !

First of all, please let me introduce you to Buttermilk, my new friend :



We have changed the searching teams who went out to graze, it is still impossible to find those 3 damn cows and their calves. I stayed around the ranch with a few other guys, in order to get ready for the end of the season cattle gathering. This was our playground today :





At the end of the afternoon, it is time for the horses to have a bit of water and lots of oat, and for us to go to the indoor arena for a roping practice



Below, a few pictures of June Bug, the mule of the ranch, and of some of the horses :




"Almost heaven, West Montana,
Blue ridge mountains,
Kootenai river,
Life is old there,
Older than the trees,
Younger than the mountains,
Growin' like a breeze"

(Mr. Denver, Danoff and Nivert, sorry for the words changes...)

MMG Ranch

6:45am, we are outside, preparing the horses for the day. It is still the middle of the night, the sun won't rise before 8:30, it is raining (melted snow, actually) and the temperature is 1°C. Do you really believe that there are some crazy people for whom this is close to heaven ? ;)

The objective of the day, for Brianna who is a member of the ranch staff, Clare from New Zealand, Benny from North Carolina and I, is to find out where the 3 cows and 3 calves which are still outside are hidden, and get them back to the ranch.

3:30pm, time to head back to the ranch. The only thing we have been able to locate was a fresh cow poo. They have been here recently, but now they're gone... It might be easier tomorrow : we should have between 7 and 10 cm of snow during the night, the tracking will be a lot easier.

(sorry guys, no picture today, it was raining too much...)

Kalispell (again)

Only 1°C this morning, the weather is getting fresh...

Time to celebrate Halloween, and here the tradition is still strong :




But it is also time to start preparing Christmas, and this week end the Xmas holiday gift bazaar took place in a historical mansion in Kalispell. In the entryway of the mansion stands an enormous Xmas tree adorned with sparkling lights and shiny ornaments.



But you and I have spent enough time in town, you are here to see pictures of the ranch, well here we are !



7:47pm, time to go to bed, tomorrow will be a very long day...

Kalispell

Hi guys !

The fortune cookie I had after lunch said "Now it is time to call loved ones at a distance. Share your news". I won't call you, but at least I can share the news.

21 hours after leaving Paris (thank you United Airlines for the standard cancellations and delays...), here I am, back in Kalispell.

For those of you who would not know where it is, it is in Montana, up there close to the Canadian border. But you would not be the only one to ignore where it is : the United Airlines employee who checked me in in Paris looked at me in a weird way when I answered Kalispell to the question "which is your final destination ?". Something like "poor girl, she does not even know the name of the airport she is flying to, this does not exist...". Yes it does, madam !
Same surprise in the flight between Chicago and Denver, when the crew announced the gates for the connections. People made a weird face when she announced "Kalispell, gate 93". A mix of "where on earth is that ?" and of "I didn't know that there was a gate 93 in this airport". Yes, there is a gate 93, the tiny one hidden at the end of the small corridor.

And there you get the feeling that you are getting close to the objective : in the airport in Denver, people start wearing cowboys hats, and the plane to Kalispell is the smallest one ever seen (I can hardly stand in it) with only a dozen of pieces of luggage checked in. But after 2 hours of flight, you understand why there were only a dozen of them : half of the luggage is missing, including mine. That will end with a free delivery at the hotel on the following day. They are lucky that I had planned to spend a whole day in town before going to the ranch, they would not have appreciated the 2 hours of drive from the airport to the ranch...

Gosh it is good to be back here : the taxi driver waving at me in the airport and shouting "Hey Marie, I am here !", the girl at the hotel reception welcoming me with a friendy "Hi Marie, how was your flight from Paris ?"... I haven't been here for 6 months, and I don't even need to give my name to anybody, everything sounds as if I had left a couple of days ago. It almost feels like I am back home...

This morning, it is 5°C outside, alternate spitting and sunshine, a standard Montana autumn, a couple of shops / restaurants have disappeared since last time, but as long as Murdoch's, Walmart, my favorite second hand bookshop and the mud pie at the restaurant around the corner are still there, everything's fine.

Something else has not changed : I am still the only pedestrian in town, people would probably be less surprised to see a camel or an elephant walking on the sidewalk than to see this strange human alien who is walking in the town. The advantage is that the pedestrian is treated and protected as any species threatened by extinction : all the cars start slowing down as soon as they see you, even if they are 50 meters away, wherever you are, just in case you might want to cross. One day, someone might make a picture of me walking in a small town in USA, and it won't surprise me...

Buenos Aires

Last moments in Argentina, last moments of warm weather and maybe of sun, it will probably be a lot colder next week...

From the colonial buildings around the cathedral to the old ships at the bottom of the skyscrapers business centre, all the districts look completely different.

In La Boca, people dance tangos everywhere in the streets.

It looks so incredibly easy, that there is no way you can avoid trying a tango lesson. (Un)fortunately, there is no picture of this one time experience, but it was just enough catastrophic and ridiculous to be sure I won't have the idea to go on next year, when I am back in Paris ;)
Believe me, it is less funny, but one million times more interesting to watch a real professional tango show than a first lesson. Even if the pictures might get a bit psychedelic...

Ciao chicos....