Montana Getaway

A few years into my teaching career I decided to take the summer off and see as much of the continent as I could afford to see.  I was going to drive to Alaska.  My friends and family must have thought I was nuts but it made no difference.  I spent months studying maps and plotting my course.  As a sign of how dedicated I was to the trip I sold the coin collection I'd been accumulating since I was eight years old.  I even removed the passenger seat of my Jeep Wrangler so I'd have a place to sleep when I didn't want to pitch a tent.

The trip was more that I could have possibly expected.  My first night I watched the sun set over the badlands of South Dakota and was startled awake by a lightning storm that kept me up for hours.  What a show.  From there it was on to Glacier Park in Montana, Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies and the Inside Passage along the rocky coast of British Columbia.  By the time I finally made it to Juneau I'd already been on the road for two weeks I was sleeping in my Jeep in a campground near the base of the Mendenhall glacier.  It was cold and wet and I was feeling pretty miserable.  I wasn't out of money yet but I still had to make it home.

Two days after arriving in Juneau I was back on the car ferry headed for Skagway and the long road home. So much for my Alaskan adventure.  It was definitely an experience but Alaska just turned out to be the end point.  The real beauty for me turned out to be the Rockies.  

A few years ago my wife Jennifer turned fifty.  To celebrate she decided she wanted to travel somewhere tropical.  While she may have enjoyed our trips to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc. her dream vacation would had to include less mountain hiking and more beach time.  We decided on the Caribbean island of St. Martin and both of us had an excellent time but when she asked me where I wanted to go for my fiftieth I knew I wanted to take her with me back to Glacier.  

I recently finished writing a piece about our last trip to the mountains.  In it I described how we decided to break up the long drive to Colorado by getting off the interstate.  We spent half a day on the back roads of Kansas where we discovered the horribly misnamed Garden City.  There may actually be beautiful gardens hidden somewhere in Garden City, Kansas but its real claim to fame - or infamy - is the smell.  The city is surrounded by stockyards containing countless thousands of cattle and a stench that could make Pepe Le Pew vomit.  We eventually made our way to Colorado and visited Rocky Mountain National Park and Garden of the Gods but our detour through Garden City made for the most memorable story of the whole trip.  

Garden City would have remained little more than a punch line in our travel adventures until I found an article in the New York Times. The FBI uncovered a plot to blow up a mosque and an apartment complex Containing over 100 Somali refugees who had resettled in Garden City to work in the stockyards and the nearby meat packing plant.  Three militia members were arrested and are currently awaiting trial.  

Hate in the heartland.  Terror in the tall grass.  You choose your title. We had a great time on our vacation but revelations about the Garden City plot have me rethinking our next great adventure.  There only has to be one turd in the punchbowl to change the mood of any party.  So imagine my shock when I discovered that a neo-Nazi leader makes his home just outside of West Glacier, Montana in the resort town of Whitefish (yes, WHITE-fish.  You can't make this stuff up!). Anyway, it turns out that Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi who coined the term "alt-right" spends part of the year in Whitefish where his mother until recently ran a successful real estate business.  Spencer has been using his mother's address for his National Policy Institute for years.

Spencer's mom has discovered that being associated with neo-Nazis is bad for business. City leaders and a human rights group called Love Lives Here don't want Spencer or his Nazi 2.0 brand of white identity politics connected to their town.  But instead of blaming her failing business on her son’s rancid political beliefs she's playing the victim.  She actually posted an article titled "Does Love Really Live Here?" which prompted a white supremacist website called the Daily Stormer to come to her aid.  The website called for an "old fashioned troll storm."  The Stormer posted the personal information of people in the group.  That's when the troll army started rolling.  Three members of Love Lives Here are Jewish.  They've received a torrent of anti-Semitic calls and posts on social media.  

I thought Whitefish was a quiet ski town.  It isn't anymore.  Like Garden City there’s more going on than you might think.   Maybe Jenny and I should consider just staying home.