Moving the Show to Choteau

After twenty days hovering around Glacier National Park, we've decided it is time to start our journey south. At East Glacier we were in the foothills of the Rockies. But it only takes a few miles to suddenly drop out of the mountains into the very flat plains.

We have heard that northern Montana got lots of snow last winter. We see snow fences along many of the highways. But mostly we see a sea of gold around us. Whether it's wheat, prairie grass that has turned to gold, or wheat stubble--it all makes up a mono-chromatic palette of gold across the plains.

Even in late August, they are still harvesting wheat. This freshly cut field still has the machinery parked by the road. Denisa came from a family of wheat farmers, and she doesn't remember a header anywhere close to the size on this new combine.

Our destination today is in the middle of all that agriculture--Choteau, Montana. We found out the proper pronunciation for our new town is something like "Show-toe." Besides wheat, it seems to be a great place to grow vegetables. We found that there are several Hutterite colonies in this area, and in just four days we have become one of their best customers. They bring their wares to town two days each week, and we were there both days. Here is one day's shopping trip.

We learned that the Hutterites immigrated here from Austria, and live in communal colonies here in Montana and the Dakotas. Everyone in the colony has a job. The sellers brought the food to town that the gardeners and bakers worked hard to produce. They eat in communal dining halls, and live in housing that looks something like barracks. The men wear the plain clothes that we have seen on the Amish. But the women wear brightly patterned dresses with polka-dot kerchiefs over their hair. We loved shopping at their stand, and loaded up on eggs, sausage and bread to take on the road. We're pretty sure it's not exactly nutritious, but that big loaf of bread tastes more like angel food cake, rather than yeast bread.

We climbed to the top of the hill behind the Choteau Mountain View RV Park to get this aerial view of our new home for the next four days. Right across the road from the RV park is a seed company. Just 25 miles straight west is the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains. But the first day we were here, our mountain view at Choteau Mountain View RV Park was shrouded in smoke from the forest fires around us.

We are getting a better understanding of wildfires during this visit to Montana. Even though the big ones are still raging in the forested mountains, we have seen that they can spark and spread quickly across the plains as well. This fire had burned to the highway, and was still smoldering when we drove past.

We are glad that we moved our "show" to Choteau. But the one thing missing here is television. We have never activated our satellite dish, so we depend on over-the-air channels. In the middle of the plains of Montana, there are zero television channels floating around over the air. The same was true in East Glacier. That means this is 14 days without television. If anything is happening out there that we need to know, could someone please text us? We are feeling a little remote, but still loving the adventure here in Montana.