Empire builder

After a few days debriefing and decompressing in Missoula I bid farewell to my new friends at the Wild Rockies Field Institute to keep moving West. I'm footloose, fancy free - a travelin man again.

I caught a bus up to Whitefish to catch the Great Northern Railroad line West over the Rockies through Idaho and the deserts of eastern Washington onward to Seattle. The train was many hours late and didn't arrive until almost 3:00 in the morning. So I wandered the town until I grew bored, laying out a towel to snooze under a big cottonwood tree in a park.

I was dreaming of the deep blue waters of the Pacific when the conductor finally yelled "ALL abooooard!!"