I feel like there is never enough time during my “normal” life.  I get up every morning at 3:30 AM, feed the animals, get dressed, and drive 40 miles to work.  I have a hard time relaxing when comes to vacation time.  Today was a good example.  I had a struggle just “going with the flow”.

We woke up to another beautiful Montana morning.  The sky was a rich blue and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen.  The Rosebud Café was closed yesterday so we were looking forward to breakfast there today.  It’s only 3 miles.  Since we’re going that way the laundromat was only a block farther.  We packed up a weeks worth of dirty clothes and headed into town.

The Rosebud was ok but as I mentioned earlier, I was having a hard time just relaxing.  Breakfast was pretty normal.  The server was friendly and efficient but I just wanted to get moving.  I’m not sure where I wanted to move to but sitting in this restaurant wasn’t what I was looking for.  I did make one interesting discovery.  It appears that there is a “regular” here at the Rosebud who is somewhat famous.  They keep a special place for him in the corner just in case he needs to change clothes.

Guess who eats breakfast here. Hint: find the phone booth with a blue suit in it.

Breakfast was done so off to do the laundry.  The laundromat was interesting.  They had a lot of rules about where miners and diggers could wash their clothes, how much soap to use, and “make sure you turn off the TV – this means you”.  There was no restroom, the change machine didn’t work, and the pop machine had been empty for a decade.  This situation didn’t help my outlook much.

We took a short trip to Columbus, MT (about 15 miles away) to see if we could find something interesting.  We found another small town with about 90% of the storefronts sitting empty.  (Sad that this is pretty typical in the United States.)   The only things open were an O’Reilly’s Auto Parts and a Rock / Gem shop.  Not exactly what I had in mind.  We did discover there was a shopping center on the edge of town.

In the shopping center was the local visitors bureau.  The woman working in there must have been pretty lonely.  I asked one question about “things to do in Columbus” and received 20 minutes of information regarding everything in the area.  Some of it was useful and I’m sure the woman enjoyed helping us out.  With several pamphlets and maps in hand we walked next door to the Bear Tooth Café for a light lunch.

Yesterday we had learned that there was a band at the Cowboy Bar and Supper Club in Fishtail.  They were having a band according to the hand written sign.  We thought that would be a fun way to spend Friday evening.  What kind of music would you expect at a bar in a small town in Montana (a bar called the Cowboy no less)?  If you guessed a jazz band you would be correct.  The place was packed by the time they started playing.  Instead of relaxing, I sat through 2 songs, paid the tab, and hit the road back to the cabin.

The Band at the Cowboy Bar and Supper Club (the drummer looks like Robert Di Nero.

The wind was blowing like crazy and there were storms all around.  I was glad it was only 3 miles back.  I sat on the deck and tried to figure out why I was having trouble relaxing on this trip.  I didn’t come up with a good explanation.  Tomorrow I have to try harder not to be so anxious.  We have big plans for tomorrow (and we have clean clothes to do it in).