This past weekend, Jess and I took a trip to see our good friend Scott. If you don’t remember, he’s the one that came with us during our trip to Portland last month. He lives on a farm outside of Shelby, MT. It was great to get away for a weekend and relax. We left Friday after work, the trip was about four hours long. We stopped in Three Forks for some coffee, something that we keep forgetting to remind ourselves not to do again. The coffee there isn’t the greatest, maybe a notch above truck-stop coffee. We did get ourselves some caramel and cinnamon rolls, those on the other hand were great! We made one more stop just before Great Falls to top off the gas tank and get some snacks for the last hour of the trip. We arrived shortly after 9 p.m. and stayed up till about midnight.
I enjoyed sleeping in the next morning. I say ‘I’ rather than ‘we’ because Jess went out for a quick run, which left me to sleep in a little longer. I rose from my slumber just a few minutes before Jess got back. Jess had some leftover cardamom bread that she brought with, so we made up some batter and made some french toast, along with some eggs. As we ate our food, we discussed the plan for the day. We had initially planned on going up to Canada to see some beautiful natural sites, but Jess and I forgot our passports, so we decided to go out to a place called “Rock City.” Rock City is basically an outcropping of water and windswept rock formations along the Marias River. It was fun driving along the country roads and narrow dirt paths to get to the location. Upon arrival, Jess and I quickly pulled out our cameras and began snapping away. The various rock formations are fun to climb and jump on and around, but a recent layer of snow made some of them a little more difficult to scale. It was chilly as we walked through the various formations, probably due to the fact that we both forgot our jackets in Bozeman, a testament to the long and extended Autumn that we so enjoyed until just last week. We eventually wrapped up our photo excursion and headed back to the farm. Along the way we stopped for Chinese food in Shelby. The rest of the day was filled with relaxation and good conversation. The next morning, we enjoyed another late morning. Jess and Scott made scrambled eggs, bacon and toast with some of Jess’s pumpkin butter. We eventually headed off to church.
It is always interesting to go to another church and see what they do differently. We sang some songs, mostly familiar ones and eventually sat down for the sermon. As we listened in the high school auditorium where the congregation meets, I couldn’t help but analyze the room, the distractions, the cadence of speech as the pastor preached. This is a side effect of being in charge of large group gatherings, especially ones where you try to minimize the distractions. I have a tendency to hyper-analyze most gatherings, usually to my detriment. Probably one of the most different things about this church is the way they do communion. The whole congregation comes forward and the men serve the women and the children the elements before themselves. It definitely was a different experience. The service concluded and we were invited to a congregational potluck, but we had made other plans for lunch. We went over to a friend of Scott’s to have burgers. We had just a couple more hours before we needed to head home and enjoyed watching most of a movie before heading back to Scott’s, packing the car and heading home. The weekend went by quickly, more quickly than either of us wished. We drove back to Bozeman, refreshed from a wonderful weekend.
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