July... already?

Guest: “Boy, it’s really nice to get up here and away from reality for a bit.”
Chef Brian: “It’s only bad when you start to think this is reality.”
Guest: “Oh, I’m not that far gone yet.”
Chef Brian: “Have you met my staff.”

Too true Bri Bri. Too true. For example, a Police report for Livingston, Montana:
“A moose was sited on E Finch St around 7:30 am yesterday, apparently trapped in a man’s backyard. The police were unable to find the moose.”

The last couple of weeks have been awesome. There have definitely been highs and lows, but on the whole Mountain Sky has been really good to me. Family season is in full swing and next week we are at capacity with over 80 guests! That’s a lot of tarts! It’s amazing how much more satisfying it is to hear 25 six to ten year olds tell me that the Dirt (chocolate pudding, oreo crumbs and gummy worms) I made them for dessert is the best dessert they have ever had than having the coach of the Chicago Bears tell me my Basque cake, which took me two hours to make, was pretty good. If I’m ever having a bad day, I know to go look in on the kid’s program eating my cookies. I now only work AM shifts, so I now have every afternoon off to do as I please. Which usually involves hiking, running, sitting by the pool, and long naps. We only go into town about once a week, either to get dinner at the Rib & Chop House (local steak restaurant where they serve fish bowl margaritas) or peruse Padmina, a store worse than K-mart that sells awesome American themed clothing and carhartts.
Dance night shenanigans.

My days off for the past two weeks have been fantastic. I headed up to Helena, which really felt like going home, to see my cousin and all of her crazy friends. We stayed up late, hung out with some good people, drank a lot of beer, and went to an extremely sketchy bar where a bunch of hicks were rapping, woke up and went to the farmer’s market and had an amazing breakfast. Helena is about two and a half hours northwest of Emigrant, which in Montana is next door. My cousin is crazy and fun and Helena was a blast. I’m so happy to have family so close!

This last weekend I headed down to Pinedale, Wyoming to see Miss Katie Rouse in her little trailer. We went to some music, went on a hike, tried harassing some East Coasters on the phone and just got to hang out. Living out at the ranch is awesome and I love all of the staff and my friends up here, but it was definitely a relief to see someone who knows and loves you completely. And now this weekend Miss Rouse is heading up to me for the Livingston Roundup and some good ole’ Montana fun.
Katie in her wee trailer.

Back at the ranch this week Sous Chef Jeff, the fishing guide Bistis and I headed down to the Yellowstone River to do some fishing. Well, I sat in the back of the drift boat, while they fished, but it turned into quite the evening. Jeff got off work around 7, so we headed down to the river to do an 8-mile float, totally doable in the remaining three hours of light. We’re about a mile into the float and Bear, Jeff’s dog, jumps from the boat and swims to the shore. We were just coming around a bend so we had no idea what he was after, but we get around the corner and boom, two skunks are just hanging out. The three of us look at each other with just looks of total dread. So we’re yelling at Bear to get away from them, but of course he’s ready to eat them and could care less about our yelling. So of course he’s sprayed… three times! And then we were next to the bank trying to get Bear back into the boat, but the skunk is chasing Bear down toward the river, so I start screaming for Jeff to move his boat. Fortunately Bear outruns the skunk and is back in the boat. Back in the boat with us for another 7 miles. Now, this smell is unbelievable. When you smell a skunk on the side of the road, it is NOTHING in comparison to how horrible freshly sprayed skunk smells. All three of us were on the verge of vomiting and of course Bear is totally freaked out and trying to get away from the smell, so he’s running around the boat, rubbing up next to us and getting it everywhere! The wind was blowing the smell right into our faces the entire tim so that Jeff would turn the boat backwards for a stretch just so we could breathe. But at that point all we wanted to do was get to the take out. Bistis tried to fish for a bit, but the smell was so incredibly horrible Jeff just pushed the boat for the next hour and half. Thankfully Bistis and I didn’t have to ride with Jeff and Bear back to the ranch, but I still get whiffs of the skunk every once and awhile. A hilarious story, but not a good night fishing.
The dog who ruined it all.
At least it was pretty.