Two Tuesdays ago, Travis Koster and I started one of two driving days to Dillon to work on a mower conditioner. This was the first work trip I had gotten to take to Montana. As usual, we had to drive to take parts and tools. I've been getting familiar with the I-80, 29, I-90 route after several trips down in the last couple years. Travis had never been to Montana, a trip to Yellowstone as a kid notwithstanding. This is the prime time to be there in my opinion, and we both thoroughly enjoyed the drive.
We made the executive decision to stay in Bozeman on Wednesday night. Shepherd's Garage in Dillon wouldn't be open til 8 or so anyway, so there was plenty of time in the morning to get there. I told Travis my choices for food would be self-serving, but that I wouldn't disappoint. Mackenzie River with Chris and Jim, Jim's dad Roger, and my Grandma was great and as reliable as ever. I also relished stops at my old favorite bars.
This mower campaign was an update of mower conditioners that were launched last year. There was only one MC in Montana. The updates were substantial, but Travis had done several of them elsewhere and we got the job done in a day and a half. Finishing up at noon on Friday opened up the weekend nicely, and we made our way to Winston. I hadn't been home in seven months, and it was good to see my parents and the ranch.
Travis comes from western Iowa and has been around cattle, hogs, hay, and corn his entire life. Montana ranching is a bit different from that environment, and I tried to give him a taste of this whenever we weren't doing other Vermeer-related activities for my dad. Irrigating is mostly unnecessary east of the Missouri so our pivots, wheellines, handlines, and ditches were foreign to him. The scale of the pastures was also beyond what's seen in Iowa.
We stopped by Dave and Barb Clark's on Sunday on our way out. Travis is admittedly not a horseman, and I suspected he had gotten bored when the conversation drifted toward stockwhips, riding, and saddles. I later learned he had never heard such a conversation, and what stuck with him was that it could have happened an era ago with no difference. I'd secretly hoped he'd get that sort of experience. We rolled back to Iowa from there, stopping at King Ropes in Sheridan. I could have spent a full day wandering through all that tack.
Only a few days after getting back to Pella, Sarah and I backtracked to Mitchell, South Dakota for a wedding of a Vermeer engineer who grew up near there and recently moved back to work at Vermeer's Freeman facility. It was a great day, and great trip, and we were glad to be there. Our return to Pella topped 3600 miles for me in twelve days. Just five more weddings to go this summer...
