Glacier National Park

From Seattle, we drove into the future. It was the longest drive at 650 some miles and by the end of it patience was frayed, cutting words had been uttered, awkward punches thrown, throats clawed at and torn, blood all over the upholstery no deposit coming back now and Champ's limp, lifeless carcass stuffed into the trunk.

Not really. I've been reading Dave Eggers and he's been rubbing off on me. Print fingers and bits of text and paper scraps stuck all over me.

Just a long journey.

But we did drive into the future, over the Continental Divide and into Mountain Time.

Hold on.

...and into Mountain Time.

I like that. I wish everything ran on Mountain Time. It sounds better than Greenwich Mean Time. Champ repeatedly (he likes to tell his stories more than once), repeatedly taught me (his words) something he'd seen on the box, a programme with Stephen Fry where he poured water from a bottle on one side of the Continental Divide and said eventually that water would flow to the Atlantic and then poured it on the other side and said it would flow eventually to the Pacific. Every day's a school day with Champ in tow.

When we hit Montana, we ploughed through valleys hugged by big round boulder looking mountains that took an age to slip from the windscreen, down the chassis and into the wing and the rear view mirror. Houses lost in utter remoteness. More horses than I've seen outside of the Cotswolds. Big sky country.

We got stopped for speeding by a friendly ranger with a gun who allowed me to step down from the vehicle to search for my license in the trunk. Madcap, frantic, Champ was throwing his underwear and dirty shirts on the backseat everywhere and foraging in the glove box, in amongst apple cores wrapped in waste paper for the time being while I flung about maps and flyers and town guides in search of the rental agreement. We must've looked like a right pair of idiots. Then I popped the trunk to reveal even more mess and 2 dozen beer bottles, some empty some full and the ranger asked, Uh, have you boys been drinking this morning? Come on old chap, it's not even noon.

We took Going to the sun road through Glacier National Park. The scenery was vast. As much as I hate those expressions 'In other words' (weren't the first ones clear enough?) and 'Bigger than words' (what does that even mean?!), Glacier was pretty big and very otherly. Huge, expansive Lake McDonald and St. Mary Lake pinch the park around the belt. Along the banks wall-side and down the banks to the valley floor wildflower sprout, purple bunched fireweed and swathes of alpine daisies, Indian paintbrush and so many others of every colour like Eden or a Miyazaki Hayao landscape when put together with a bright blue sky and deep green grass.