Montana--Part One (more photos in second part)

I have always liked to travel--not the actual getting on planes, trains and into rental cars part, but the experience of leaving your own known familiar setting and arriving at a new place, absorbing, taking in and becoming full with new sensory input.

Travel is different, however, when you are considering moving to the location. You see it with different eyes. Will you want to walk to that little coffee-shop, say, at two in the afternoon after a long day of work? Will you be able to, depending on the weather? You can forgive elements as a traveler that you would have a harder time coping with as a resident, like a one-room bookstore, a casino on every corner and a very sad state of fruit and vegetable affairs at the local grocery store.

E. and I have just returned from a four-day site visit and interview (E did the latter, not me) in a very small town in Montana. I visited Montana about three years ago and fell in love with it--a location known as the Flathead Valley, a town called Whitefish, which is essentially a village of California ex-pats. Very hip and cute but still flavored by that rural Montana feeling. I was projecting the quaintness of Whitefish in my mind onto this part of Northcentral MT, otherwise known as "the plains."

Below are photos taken with my (old) digital camera of the town we visited holding the thought that we might be living here for at least two years, possibly more. The job interview went well for E. To say they liked him is an understatement. But we have a lot to think about as you can see:

I think it's a beer factory?









We just couldn't get over a stop called "the Kum n' Go."









Our new home?








So THIS is Shangri-La!