May 17, 2017
Snow. Fields. Cows. More snow. More fields. That is the vision I believe almost all of my friends in North Carolina had when I told them we were moving to Montana. I think most everyone had visions of me being surrounded by acres and acres of land (with snow) with no signs of city life around. And they are partially correct.
Bozeman, where I am living in Montana, is surrounded by just that exact picture. But Bozeman itself is NOT that.
Now, I was living in a town with a population of just under 8,000 people. And Bozeman has a population of just under 42,000. So in terms of all my local shopping and culture, I’m now in the ‘big city’! I mean, Target is now only 10 minutes away not 45 minutes. That right there was a pro on the Bozeman Moving Pro/Con list just a few months ago.
The biggest difference is that in North Carolina, I had many cities within an hours driving distance…and those cities were truly ‘big cities’. You know, the kind with skyscrapers or even buildings with more than five stories? I asked Matt just yesterday if there were any skyscrapers in Montana and he just laughed. I took that as a no. Here in Bozeman, the nearest city is at least two hours away (with Bozeman being the fourth biggest of the state).
To help put it into perspective a little better, imagine the city you live in with absolutely no suburbs around it. It’s as if you can draw a line around the city and color it in. Anything not colored in is the gorgeous, spacious Gallatin Valley and beyond…for about two hours all around….with the occasional small, small town sprinkled throughout.
I am learning that things in Montana are not quite the same as the more metropolitan areas I am used to. I was researching zoos here in Montana and found one in Billings. I plan on taking Liam sometimes but I’m glad I checked the website first before I got there and was majorly confused before becoming disappointed. There are no elephants or giraffes or chimpanzees like I normally think of at a zoo. But Liam will be just as happy seeing the tigers, wolves, owls, and beavers…so I see a trip there in our future this summer.
Matt and I have laughed several times about my reaction when we went to the Grizzly Encounter a few weeks ago. My (unrealistic) expectations of a drive-through grizzly bear experience seem ridiculous now but that is just a perfect example of my way off expectations that I’m learning to turn down.
On Saturday, Matt, Liam and I went to “Montana’s Biggest Indoor Water Park”. Now, I would place money that it is probably the only indoor water park in Montana but I could be wrong. It has an attached “resort” so I had visions of Great Wolf Lodge in Charlotte, NC. We drove two hours to the ‘nearby city’ of Billings. Gorgeous views along the way but nothing in between. I have to assume there was at least one gas station along the way but I didn’t see it if there was. Matt had looked at booking a room for the night but they were full. It’s a good thing, though, as Liam was finished playing in about three hours.
But it was great family outing. Liam loved playing ‘baketball’ in one of the pools (his deletion of the /s/ sounds is still so precious these days). He’s getting better at swimming with his float and so he loved swimming back and forth between Matt and me. There was a big toddler area with some water slides and squirt guns and such but he was very apprehensive about all the water falling from above. The one time that the large bucket at the top of the play area filled up and dumped all the water down, Liam grabbed onto my neck and wouldn’t let me put him down for a few minutes. He enjoyed the water slides some but not near as much as I thought he would. The boy LOVES slides but with all the newness he was a bit skeptical of them at first. He wanted me to go down with him so I broke the age/weight rule and headed down with him several times. Not that any of the teenage lifeguards cared.
I don’t know if I’m truly getting old or if my ability to judge age is off, but no one working there (from the front counter to the lifeguards to the concession workers) could have been over the age of 22. As I waited for close to twenty minutes for our nutritious lunch of hot dogs and chicken fingers, I calculated that the workers had to have been born somewhere around 2000. Not even in the twentieth century!
Liam’s favorite part of the water park was the wave pool. He had a blast just floating up and down as the waves came by. I have a feeling, though, that he will not have the same feeling when we’re at my parent’s place in Myrtle Beach in two weeks but maybe he’ll prove me wrong!
And the best part of the water park? This momma got to go down a ‘big person’ slide a few times and didn’t have to wait in line for 45 minutes to do so. They had two three-story water slides and I felt like a kid again going down them. I was shrieking and laughing out loud as I went through the dark tunnel on the tube having no idea which way the slide was going. And, my smile got even bigger when I got down to the bottom and saw Matt and Liam waiting for me and I listened to Liam talking all about how Mommy was coming out of the purple slide so fast.
Montana may have twice as many cows as people and it might have a tenth of the population of North Carolina but the four of us (yes, I am including Tippet) are enjoying all of the adventures no matter how big or how small.