A Little Break Into The "Big Sky"

Every now and then, you've GOT to get away, just for your own peace of mind, if nothing else. I find as I grow older, the need for a little break now and then becomes a bit more frequent than it used to. My "Baloney tolerance level" not being what IT used to be is probably a determining factor here.

Last year, Donna & I drove up to Hamilton, Montana to purchase and trailer-back a 1972 ldsmobile 442 for her, and on the way up, we agreed that even if for some reason we didn't like the car, and decided not to buy it....it was still worth the scenic drive. Well, we DID buy the car, and when she got a few days off last week, we drove back up there for a few days of "R&R".

If you've never driven that route, you owe it to yourselves....up through Challs & Salmon, running along with the river, it's beautiful. We didn't really have the time to enjoy it last year, as we had a tight schedule in which to get that car back here, and the "pull-offs" along the river weren't really practical with a car sitting on a trailer behind you. But this time we had 4 days to play with, and no clock to have to run against.

It was a unique time for me as well, because I actually had my wife to myself for 4 straight days.....with no problems at Wally World, nobody coming to the door, nobody calling on the phone, and nobody even knowing where we were at any given time. It was DIFFERENT.

We'd stop along the road, just to get out and look around, take pictures of an elk, and other scenery, and I don't think we missed an antique shop anywhere on the entire trip.

One of them was in Darby, just south of Hamilton. Donna is very much into antique furnishings, old wagon wheels for the backyard and just "old-timey stuff" in general. So am I, so we've always shopped well together, although as a rule, I don't like to shop at all.

She eventually bought a beautiful old 1920's end table up in Hamilton just before we came home....but in a shop in Darby just a couple of days earlier, we were walking around a shop down there, when "Mikey" here spots this glass case with a PRISTINE old 1866 Winchester, brass-framed, octagon barrelled lever action rifle. It was classic......it was beautiful......it was to die for........it was also THIRTEEN GRAND!

Now, right from the beginning, Donna has always been very understanding about my gun collecting, and she has a few herself that SHE shoots, but I knew better than to even bring THIS one up. She had been in that particular room ahead of me and had already seen it. Walking back in there again where I was now standing, she said "I THOUGHT I'd find you in here looking at that rifle."

"Isn't this thing a CLASS ACT?" I said.....testing the waters.......

"Very nice" she replied......"Where do you want to go for lunch?"

Well.............I couldn't have afforded it anyway, I guess I was just hoping a genie would jump out of an old bottle back there and make it all happen! (I'd LOVE to have had that gun in my collection, though). In that same case, were two very old Colt revolvers, one an SAA and the other a Bisley. But all I could think of was that Winchester. It was a sight to behold, and one of the "holy grails" of ALL rifles....if you're a collector.

In Hamilton, we lodged in the Best Western on Thursday and Friday, and would be driving back here on Saturday. For the next two days, we walked around the old parts of town, went hiking in the mountains where the sky is the bluest you ever saw, and we hit every antique shop in the valley, as well as a few gunstores for me. And we kicked back & relaxed for those few days at a nice easy casual pace. It was very therapeutic.

"Open carry" is legal in Montana, as it is HERE in Idaho....and they also honor OUR Concealled Permits as well, (which really didn't surprise me in the least up there). I felt very much at home up there.

I had some interseting chats with a few fellow travelers in the "Continental Breakfast Room" of the motel, including a guy from Oregon who REALLY spoke my language. He'd lived in Oregon most of his life and was telling me about all the changes over the years since Californians started moving up there in droves......how liberal the state had become.

Admiring my holstered Ruger, he told me that no matter WHAT "commie laws" they tried to pass, they could STUFF IT, because HE would never give in to those "ignorant (expletives) in D.C.!", and then he casually pulled his windbreaker open to expose his Beretta tucked into a cross-draw holster.

"Right on brother!" says I.......as we shook hands in mutual agreement.

The folks who LIVE in Montana seem to be of the same accord on preserving our freedoms, from the ones I met and talked to. I strongly suspect that state will be a serious obstacle for the Feds when the day comes.

Neither of us wanted to have to come back here after being up there for a few days, and even though the winters in Montana are bitterly cold, we talked a lot about "someday maybe".......most of the way home.

PS.......Saw a lot of old cars & pickup trucks up there as well........On the way home, just on the outskirts of Challis, some guy had a HALF DOZEN old Hudson Hornets & Wasps, plus an old red '52 Ford pickup that looked like the one on "Sanford & Son"........took some pictures and thought to myself.....YEP-----this is MY kind of countryside!