After a harrowing round of nightmares, dawn in Kalispell couldn't arrive soon enough. When I dreamt that the state of Montana had indicted my brother for accidentally starting a forest fire near Glacier and woke up following the site of Joe innocently smiling in his prison mugshot, the time arrived for the slow road back to Bozeman.
As the sun overtook the Rockies to the east, I traced the western short of Flathead Lake, a 300-foot glacial groove that bore the same character of the national park's waterways. Its rich scenery stuck with the highway all the way to picturesque Polson, a tiny resort town on the lake's southern point with all the best views.
In a matter of minutes, the Mission Mountains took over dominance of the eastern horizon, their peaks appearing impenetrable from the two-lane highway. In my first break since the sun glittered on Kalispell's main drag, I stopped for a scenic overlook filling in some blanks about the mountains.
While reading, I heard a rapid series of thuds closing in on my position. Because I stood close to the sign, I had no clue what would arrive when the tracks in the tall grass stopped. But it was just a large dog, possibly belonging to a nearby farm or the owners of the car parked overnight at the overlook. In any event, the dog was friendly, boisterous and hungry. With just a bunch of bananas and a packet of Mother's Cookies, I had little to offer him. This affable creature wanted most what I could not offer - a ride. The dog kept trying to get in my car, and like a spurned lover, began trotting out behind me as I pulled away.
Just like with a real hitckhiker, I cut out quickly from the overlook to keep him from following me into the road. It's too bad, really - that dog would have put a certain punk-ass cat in line really quickly.
Hitchhike in the rearview, I stopped ahead for what appeared a scenic of small, tanned hills and rolling pasture. Then I noticed the fence only contained cows on one chunk of farm, and two distant bison grazed the hills. I stumbled upon the outliers of the nation's own bison herd, a group put under federal protection by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago.
Inside the National Bison Range, I quickly traversed the gravel switchback roads (which are easier to handle when they only allow one-way traffic) and found one large herd lounge and wallowing in the foothills.
Further up the road, as the overlooks opened onto the Mission Mountains and the Flathead Valley, I spotted a bald eagle scouting for prey, a second bison herd on the range's interior hills, and group of elk similarly tucked away. Down on the plains, spirited antelope grazed and raced. I stopped to watch one male galloping at marathon pace toward the females. There was no choice but to watch them frolic - with the rental car due back in Bozeman at 5, all wildlife was local after this. This little antelope show was the last guarantee.
But wildlife won't be kept down in Montana. Ten miles short of the airport, after nearly 200 miles of interstate, one last pass across the Continental Divide with my underpowered Corolla and the encore of the equally steep Tobacco Root Mountains, I glanced a single mule deer standing on a bluff which overlooked the highway. His regal posture seemed a sure sign Montana wanted to offer one more glance of its less tame side.
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