24. overdue update (weather)

How is it that over two months have passed and I haven't posted any updates?!? In my defense, the holiday season is a really busy one (both personally and professionally). And in that time I was really trying to enjoy the extra time I had at home with Husband and Kid!

While I was "gone" I probably wrote at least a dozen really excellent blog posts...in my head. At some point I'll get them all typed out, but for today I'll just briefly comment on the weather.

Having lived in the same midwestern climate for basically my whole life, I had internalized the rhythm of the seasons. We'd have a few flurries in October and November that would melt, by December we'd have snow that would stick, and that snow would stick around until March.  It always snows during the boys' state hockey tournament in March.  Never plant your garden before Mother's Day. August is unbearably humid. Etc.

I could tell you without any hesitation what was "normal" or not for our region.

But now we've moved from the "humid continental" climate of Minneapolis...

source

...to the "cold semi-arid" climate of our area of Montana.

(our two closest big cities)

For the most part, the weather is pretty similar. (It's not like we moved to Alabama or something!) But the effect of the mountains can't be underestimated! First, it's just much drier. Second, there are these crazy things called chinook winds that MELT ALL THE SNOW. In the middle of winter! It's crazy.

So, at the beginning of last week it was below zero most of the time, with single digit highs. Totally normal for January, right? But this week it hasn't yet dropped below freezing. Even at night! And today it was actually RAINING as I drove home from work. In January!!!

While in some ways this is the coolest thing ever, it's also quite disorienting! This whole week I've had to double check not only the exact date but also the MONTH! I could have sworn it was March, but instead it's only mid-January.

I keep checking with my coworkers to ask "is this normal?!?" and they keep assuring me it is. Apparently the averages are about the same as Minnesota (albeit a bit more dry) but the variability is even greater.

This is going to take some getting used to!

23. hometown tourist

One of the things I've enjoyed most about having moved is being able to explore our new home town and home state! I originally intended to make a separate post for each new area or attraction that we've visited, but since I've gotten so far behind already, I thought I'd start with this brief summary. If I can stay on top of this going forward I'll do longer descriptions in the future...

HELENA
State Capitol - free to visit, it's a beautiful building with a lovely view of the city and surrounding mountains.
Old Governor's Mansion - a lovely old mansion that costs about $5pp. Your experience will likely vary depending on the quality of the tour guide.
Steve's Cafe - delicious restaurant for breakfast and lunch! I don't even like traditional breakfast food that much, and I loved this place.
Brewhouse - excellent lunch or dinner place with a wide variety of brewpub menu options and many beers on tap.
Broadwater Hot Springs - a gym with wonderful hot springs pools (4 of varying temperatures). Costs about $9pp, plus $1 per towel. A wonderfully relaxing experience! There is also an indoor gym for kids (free with their admission), and the restaurant next door serves DELICIOUS fresh/organic foods.
Carousel - located next to the Exporatorium (children's museum), it costs just a couple dollars to ride. Note that all riders (even grown-ups) are required to be buckled to their horses. Also, the ice cream counter in the building is impossible to skip once you are at the carousel!
Cathedral - modeled after the cathedral in Cologne. So  beautiful! Free to visit.

GREAT FALLS
In Cahoots for Tea - a WONDERFUL tea shop right in the downtown area.
Giant Springs State Park - state parks are free for anyone with MT license plates. This park is on the north side of town and showcases a lovely warm-ish spring right along the Missouri river.
Ryan Dam / the Great Falls - about 5 miles outside of town (you'll need a map to find it!), there is a lovely picnic area overlooking the dam and the falls. Also a fun suspended bridge to walk across to get there!
Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center - super informative! It costs about $8pp (or free if you have an annual parks pass or a senior parks pass, since this is a national park site) and it is totally worth it. They have a great display describing everything about Lewis and Clark's expedition to find the boundaries of the Missouri River (since that's what the US had gotten with the Louisiana Purchase) and to find the Pacific Ocean. I learned a lot! The movie was a bit cheesy, but worth the ~20 min if you show up at the right time. There are also some lovely paved walking paths outside along the river.
River's Edge Trail - a long paved trail along both the east and west sides of the river. With the bridge crossings, you can have jaunts of a few or many miles. Very pretty.

THE CANYON (between GF & Helena)
Recreation Road - a beautiful drive! A little slower than the interstate, but definitely prettier.
Izaak's (in Craig) - who would have thought that a sleepy little fishing town like Craig would have such a fabulous restaurant?! A little on the pricey side (we had been expecting bar food based on the outside of the building), but totally worth it for the culinary masterpieces they have. The interior is really classy. (Note that they close for the winter each year.)
Tower Rock State Park -  located at the Hardy Creek exit along I-15, this state park (free to anyone with Montana plates) has a path for about half a mile, plus visitors are free to explore anywhere beyond that / off the path. There are beautiful views that will make you thankful you're not portaging like Lewis and Clark were!

BOZEMAN
downtown - this is an affluent area, probably thanks to the college. The downtown is many blocks long and has many, many interesting and independent shops. The jewelry stores selling Montana sapphires have really beautiful things! Kid also highly recommends the toy store. :)
Missouri Headwaters State Park - outside of town a bit, this is worth the slight detour off the interstate in order to see the headwaters of the Missouri. Not quite as impressive as walking across the headwaters of the Mississippi, but fun nevertheless.
Wheat Montana - also outside of town a bit, this restaurant/bakery is to die for! They have great pastries and wonderful sandwiches. They also sell a lot of crockware, flour, etc. Definitely worth a stop!

We're looking forward to many more adventures under the BIG SKY of Montana!

22. living off-grid

Back when we started dreaming in MN about our future lives in MT, we were really excited to pursue off-grid living. We wanted to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels, to be more mindful of our energy expenditure, to be first-hand stewards of our environment, and to save a little money on our monthly expenses. One of the draws of our current house was that it seemed to be set up perfectly for just that! Solar powered electricity, water from the (very deep) well on the property, and a wood stove for heat. Perfect!

It was only after we moved in that we realized how naive we had been.

Not that we regret it, mind you, but there has definitely been a HUGE learning curve. And a realization that no one (the previous owners, the inspectors, our realtor, or the neighbors) pointed out the incredible blinders that we had on as we imagined this idyllic life for ourselves. For example:

1. There is no lumberyard nearby. So wood for our fireplace involves driving about an hour each way to fill up the back of the pickup with scraps. The wood is cheap (less than $25 for the full truck bed), but when you add on the time and the cost of fuel there/back, it adds up. And since we didn't want to risk running out (see previous post for fear of what the winter will be like up here), Husband ended up getting seven full loads. A pretty big up-front cost in order to have "no" heat bill for the winter.

Two loads. (And building a wood shed is definitely on our to-do list.)

2. The solar power doesn't work so well on cloudy days. I mean, we always knew we'd have to run the generator a bit, but no one told us just how much we'd have to run the generator. We didn't run it hardly at all for the first month we were here (August/September), but after that we started getting cloudy days and we also realized that the panels, although placed high enough above our Quonset directly to the south of them, are situated just between two hills - which effectively block both the early morning light and also the afternoon/evening light. Not a big deal in summer, but definitely an issue as the days get shorter. So recently the neighbors told us that the old owners used to run their generator for SIX HOURS PER DAY in the winter!! Quite different from the "oh, we just use it for back-up on cloudy days" story that they told us. We're already looking into whether we can cost-effectively move the panels to a better location on our property...

Husband built a shed for the new (stronger, more fuel-efficient) generator we invested in. 

3. We absolutely LOVE having visitors, but it was quite a shock to see our energy consumption change each time we've had house guests. Even in just the few months that we've lived here, we've already gotten MUCH better about turning off lights when we leave a room, using task lighting instead of whole-room lighting, not keeping electronics plugged in overnight, etc.  A huge apology to my parents (and my inlaws) for every time I've left all the lights on in the house!!


Well, we wanted an adventure when we moved, and we have definitely been getting that! It's just been so challenging in completely unexpected ways. Pretty soon we'll be true pros as this off-grid living stuff, but in the mean we are definitely soaking up the knowledge as our blinders are ripped from our naive little eyes. :)

21. more snow

As you probably saw from my last post, we were relieved to get through our first snowfall of the year. We were still nervous, however, because it wasn't a huge storm and we didn't know what it would be like after the snow really started to pile up.

I'm relieved to say that we are feeling much more confident after this past week!

Last weekend we started getting dire warnings about a MAJOR snow system coming our way from Tuesday through Saturday. I took it slow driving home on Tuesday night, and also left plenty of extra time driving in on Wednesday. It wasn't too bad, as long as I wasn't tempted to go faster than I wanted when other cars came careening past me! I wanted to be safe, thank you very much. On Wednesday I got a hotel room in town, and I was glad I did because there was a multi-vehicle crash on the bridge leading out of town. On Thursday I again took it really slow, particularly as I anticipated each bridge. Terrifyingly, I saw an accident that had just happened (I didn't witness it, but the family was still in the vehicle and totally shook up when I stopped to call 911 for them), and about 3 more crashes (all on bridges through the canyon) before I got to my parking lot to switch from my Impreza to my full-size pick-up with the studded tires. But getting up the mountain was a breeze!

Thankfully no one was hurt!

Friday I again took it slow (and slower still on the bridges), but I ended up having a delightfully uneventful ride to/from work. And when I got home from Friday night, I proclaimed that we would not be leaving the mountain until work/school on Monday. It was so beautiful!

Kid and Dog spent lots of time sledding

We visited with several neighbors today, and cautiously tried to probe about how typical this amount of snow is. (We had to have gotten at least a foot.) Thankfully, we were reassured that this much snow is VERY unusual for any given storm, and that we could still expect the Chinooks to melt the snow at least a few times throughout the winter. One neighbor showed us photos of the January that he broke ground on his house and there was no snow on the ground until the February photos when they were putting the walls up!

We know that weather can be fickle, but we are definitely relieved that our trucks handled the snow just fine (although we did put the chains on today, just to make sure we knew how to do it, even though it wasn't really necessary) and that my little Impreza will be fine as long as we're cautious on the interstate. It feels like a huge hurdle crossed to realize that we don't have to worry quite so much about winter snow any more!

20. our first big test

Last week we had the first big snow fall of the season. By Sunday night, the forecast was for 12" of snow in Great Falls starting Monday afternoon and ending mid-day Tuesday!! (Apparently it was a fluke to have so much snow in early October, but also not completely unheard of.)  Husband and I brought my little Impreza down to the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain on Sunday, and he gave me a crash course in a how to drive a pick up truck.  Eekk!! (Being from Minnesota, we certainly aren't afraid of snow. But doing it at 4000 feet on a unplowed dirt road would definitely be adding an additional challenge to our winter routine!)

Monday morning I added about 15 min to my commute (one hour instead of 45 min), to leave time for driving a pick-up, making the switch at the bottom of the mountain, and taking the slightly longer way to work (by necessity, since the parking lot is one exit down from the exit I would normally take). The morning went off without a hitch, and I anxious watched the weather through the day.  Unfortunately I had a recruiting dinner I had to go to that evening, so I wasn't able to leave town until about 7:30pm. At that point it had been snowing for a couple hours, but hardly anything had stuck yet since the ground was still so warm. I called Husband to confirm, and he agreed that it wasn't too bad so it would make sense for me to come home instead of getting a hotel room for the night.

As I left town, the sun had set and it really got dark. That's when I realized that the interstate has absolutely ZERO street lights on it. And that's when the snow really started to come down.

Oy vey.

I think I hit a max of 50 mph on my drive home, a drive that I usually do at 80 mph (which is exactly the speed limit on interstates in Montana). It was SO dark and SO icy in spots that I was totally hunched over the steering wheel and white-knuckling it. I terrified that I might slide off an icy bridge and end up in the river of careening off a cliff.  I was incredibly relieved to FINALLY make it to the parking lot, just so I could stretch my shoulders a bit as I transferred to the truck.

The drive up the mountain in the truck was even a little easier than I expected. The snow was really coming down, but there were only a couple inches on the road. In fact, it was almost harder to drive with the mud underneath than it would have been if the dirt road had been frozen in the snow! And when I rounded the corner to our house, there was Husband, standing at the foot of the driveway with the lights of his truck lighting the way for me. It was even a bit romantic to see him standing there in the blustering snow, making sure that I made it home safe and sound!

Since it took me about two hours to get home on Monday night, I left that long to get back to work on Tuesday. So that meant that I got home, went to bed, and got right back up to leave again. The drive was dark on Tuesday and still snowy in spots, for it was definitely easier since the snow had lightened up and the plows had had some time to clear the interstate. It ended up "only" taking 90 min to get to work on Tuesday, but I was still pretty exhausted that day.  By the time I got home for dinner on Tuesday, I was ready for bed!

It was certainly tiring, but it also wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. It definitely would have been easier if I hadn't had that dinner to go to, and it's nice knowing that I could do a hotel if I ever need it. But even with the extra time, I was still thankful to sleep in my own bed. And I'm proud that I made it through the first snowstorm of the year!

Here's Kid enjoying the snow on Tuesday at sunset

19. cultural differences

We expected a fair amount of culture shock with this move, and we have definitely experienced it! Some of it we foresaw, but some of it has been a surprise. Here are some of the things we've noticed so far:

"gossip"
I don't know if this is a Montana thing or just a small-town thing, but it seems like everyone knows everyone else's business. We noticed this on our house-hunting trip, when the realtor we were with was very, very open about saying exactly who he sold each house to and for exactly how much. Minnesotans (or at least Twin Citians?) don't talk about finances much, so this was a bit of a surprise for us. And it's not just finances! Montanans just generally talk more about what other people do, and comment on others' choices. (Which really makes we wonder what everyone is saying about us...) It's taking some getting used to!

DMV
I'm accustomed to going to one place to get my driver's license renewed and to get my car tabs renewed. Here, however, there are two different offices - the state-run office handles drivers licenses, and the "city-county" office handles plates and tabs. Also, since there's no sales tax (on anything!) here, the price to register a car is more expensive than what I'm used to. But some things are the same across state lines: it's still miserable to wait in line for literally hours in order to get the task done.

niceness
Everyone is so, so, so, so nice! And it seems authentic, not like the passive aggressive "Minnesota nice" that I'm used to :)  We have some great neighbors who would literally drop everything for us if we asked for it. I'm looking forward to the temperature dropping so I can start baking some thank you treats for all the wonderful neighbors we've met so far.


license plates
I literally couldn't tell what the "standard" license plate was until I went to the DMV. There are five "standard" plates and SOOO many specialty plate options. Seriously, the options are overwhelming. It makes it challenging to play the license plate game while driving because you see all these different ones, but they all turn out to be just from Montana.

beer/wine in grocery stores
It's crazy to me (coming from Minnesota), but you can buy beer and wine IN THE GROCERY STORE! Even Target has alcohol for sale, right there on the endcaps!! Hard liquor is in separate stores, but it's SO nice to pick up a bottle of wine while getting the rest of the dinner stuff in the grocery store. Now if only my local Target would start carrying my favorite wine...

casinos
They're everywhere! Seriously, you'll see about 10 casinos on every block. I don't know how they all stay in business! And it's not like they look welcoming, or seem to be known for their buffets, or anything like that. At some point we'll have to check one of them out, but for now I'm still just adjusting to seeing them all over the place.

dirt roads
There's the city roads. There's the interstate. And EVERYTHING else is dirt roads. Even in rural Minnesota or Wisconsin, my experience was that most roads are paved. Not so around here! But I guess that's what I should have expected with the incredibly low taxes in Montana.

I'm pretty sure these are just the tip of the iceberg, so it'll be interesting to see what else pops us for us as we continue to get settled. We've also been adjusting to living in the mountains (off grid) after living in a big city for so long. So in addition to the general culture shock of moving to Montana, we've also had the adjustments of living in the middle of nowhere. Things like:
-no pizza delivery
-driving >45min to get groceries/gas/etc
-needing a cell booster to get any service for our phones while at home
-getting satellite cable and internet (which means we have to closely monitor how much we stream each month!)
-no trash service at the curb
-prepping to heat our new house with wood this winter
-needing high clearance 4WD vehicles(?)
-learning to manage the solar power for electricity, and closely monitoring what we have plugged in when

But despite all these challenges, so far we have all been loving it! Kid is making friends and enjoys going to school, Husband seems happier than he has in a long time, and I'm loving the whole experience as well. So far Montana is an adjustment, but a fun one!

18. we made it!

The last month or so has been an absolute whirlwind! But we successfully purchased our house (whew!!!), moved in all our stuff, and are starting to unpack and settle in. We also started our new jobs/school, and the pets are getting comfortable. (Cat LOVES being an indoor/outdoor kitty now!) Lots more updates to come, but for now I'll just celebrate that we are officially Montanans!