Visiting Montana

If you're anything like me you've spent your life seeing amazing pictures of beautiful places and have said to yourself, "I should go there someday." (Incidentally, this is exactly what led to our trip last year to Tofino, which we'll be repeating in a couple of weeks.)

For a lot of people, Montana is one of those places. For me it's always been one of those, "I'm sure we'll get there someday" destinations because let's admit it, I'm a sucker for the history of Europe and I have a deep and abiding love of the coast. Montana has neither. What Montana does have is my mom. And my mom has cancer. So we're making our first trek up to the wilds of Bozeman for a week next month to visit with her between chemo and surgery.

Obviously this is not your typical vacation. In fact, it's not really a vacation at all. My mom will be working (that is assuming she still has the energy), and we'll be working.

[Side note: my job is really amazing. I'm not sure where else I could tell my boss, "I need to go to Montana for a week but I'll be online and working" where said boss wouldn't even bat an eyelash. His response? "You're already remote so it doesn't really matter to me where you work from. How's your mom? How are you?"]

However, if an effort to capture some of that Montana beauty I've heard so much about, we're renting a house on 20 acres along the Gallatin River, close to her house and close to town. We also have a day trip planned to Yellowstone to check out the buffalo and the geyser. I don't know what this trip will be like. While I'm looking forward to spending time with my mom, and seeing the place she calls home, this isn't exactly a trip I am looking forward to.

Photos courtesy of meganpru, localism, and random Google Image finds.