The final days to home

Yellowstone River flowing through Missoula.

In our last week on the road, our attention shifted from experiential to contemplative. From absorbing the places and people we encounter to thinking about our return to Seattle and what we’ve learned. But there have been a few places of note.

Dinah playing Disc Golf at our Bozeman hotel.

In Montana, we passed through several smaller cities that each had a different character. Billings felt like a working town including its two refineries processing all that Canadian oil. Bozeman was a place where many Tech Bros who could work remotely chose to move to and seemed as though it was becoming the Montana Marin County. Missoula was hard to figure out in our one partial day there. But all three are close to nature with a clear active life style vibe.

Along the way, we raced through Butte trying to avoid thinking about the Berkeley Pit, the most toxic lake in America that looms over the city. The pit is a mile wide open hole where chemicals from the now ceased mining operations of the Anaconda company have leached into the water over generations, making it alive to only bacterial mutants that specially evolved in the lake to survive toxic metals and the like. It kills everything else that the water touches .. especially the hapless geese that stop by for a paddle. The people who made all the money aren’t paying for the cleanup.

You have to appreciate a fish report posted at our Missoula hotel.

You can visit the Berkeley Pit in a nice viewing station above it, for $3, according to the State of Montana tourism website. I guess Montana wanted to advertise other attractions than its gorgeous prairies and mountains!?

We then stayed on a cabin at the side of Coeur d’Alene lake in Northern Idaho. The lake was beautiful and we were able to relax one final time (and well, Dinah spent most of her time here working on a paper for the Transition Design Conference in Mexico City in July) before re-entering the bustle of Seattle. The town!? Felt very much like a resort/summer home town with a party school (Northern Idaho University) attached. Very hard to relate to but very cute in a white bread style.

The Palouse, created by the ice age Missoula floods, remains one of the most beautiful farmlands in America.

Like Butte, Coeur d’Alene has its own environmental catastrophe that it’s dealing with. Silver Valley, upstream from the lake, was the world’s largest producer of silver for about 100 years  .. and all the residue from that mining flowed downhill affecting rivers and the lake … which is maybe safe to swim in!?  I have to say, we looked at the water but couldn’t be motivated enough to go for a dip. Also, it was cold. 🙂

Our last night on the road was in Spokane. Dinah had never been to the largest city in Eastern Washington and I’d not been since about 1994. We very much enjoyed Spokane. From the downtown architecture with many attractive and well-preserved buildings of the early 20th century to the impressive Spokane River that tumbles through town in a series of cascades to the nice feeling urban neighborhoods, we liked it. Reading about Spokane, it seems to have some economic difficulties, but it was hard to see from walking through the city .. other than the ever present homeless in American cities.

Crossing the Columbia River felt a bit like crossing the Rubicon ..

Then yesterday, we traveled through the beautiful Palouse, crossed the Columbia River, scaled the Cascades, and arrived in Seattle in the afternoon. It was raining. We’re ready to give Seattle a go now .. but somehow, after 104 days traveling throughout the US, it does feel a bit foreign to us.