It's amazing the number of ties to the area.  I hope you enjoy the contrast
from 300 days of rain, after spending so much time with 300 days of
sunshine.  Not to rain on your parade or anything.  ;)

Brian
Team A.I.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <joenveng@cableaz.com>
To: <listserv@azgeocaching.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Big Sky


>   Before moving to Phoenix in 1979, we lived on Big Mountain (near
> > Lakeside and Kalispell)...with Glacier National Park as our backyard.
To
> this
> > day, I have not seen country so beautiful as this terrain.
> >
>
>
> I am another with ties to Montana.  I was born and raised in Cut Bank
which
> is on the other side of the Divide from the Kalispell area and Glacier was
our
> backyard as well.  My father actually helped build the Going-to-the-Sun
Hiway
> back in 1929 - 1931.  That hiway was built at a cost of
> $1million/mile...unheard of then.
>
> I have also lived in Missoula, Bozeman, and Butte.  I lived In Montana for
> most of 36 years.  I would jump at the chance to move back up there, if I
> could find a means of gainful employment equal to what I have out of
state.
> Sadly, that, in most cases is just not possible.
>
> Montana has changed a lot since I was younger.  The small towns such as
Cut
> Bank are dying the death that most small towns in America are now.  When I
> graduated from High School Cut Bank's Population was about 4500 and we had
121
> people in our class.  I saw this years graduating class was 58.  The town
now
> has about 3000 people.  A lot of the people there are the parents of the
baby
> boomers most of whom's children have moved to other states to find decent
> work.
>
> The larger towns, Missoula, Bozeman, Kalispell, and even Billings, Helena,
> Butte, and Great Falls have changed as well, but that is from an explosion
of
> being discovered.  They have become playgrounds for a lot of out of state
> people who have bought up a lot of the property and developed it for
summer or
> winter thrills.  All well and good but the bad part is that the traffic
has
> just expanded to the point that it is out of hand.  This is more so in the
> Kalispell and Bozeman areas.
>
> I miss the days when with permission you could hunt or fish just about
> anywhere you wanted.  No one charged you, and in most cases the land
owners
> would tell you where the deer, elk, antelope or whatever had been running
on
> their property.  Now you have to apply and pay the land owners for the
> privelidge to hunt on their land.  Which is their right as land owners,
but
> really just takes the fun out of things.
>
> Still even with those changes, I would love to live back up there.
>
> Anyway, Brian, good luck to you and your family.  I would sure like to be
> moving up there as well, but I guess I'll have to settle for getting
rained on
> in Oregon.
>
> Joe
> TeamBlunder
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