Our next stop is Helena, a lovely small town, so well kept and clean. We arrive early and drove to see the sights. Mass was just starting at St. Helena cathedral I went in, the wrong door apparently and ended up in the rectory and next to the line of altar boys and priests getting ready for their processional. He kindly directed me to the pews.
The music took my breath away- the acoustics and architecture are astoundingly gorgeous with high vaulted ceilings, and stained glass. It was designed by an Austrian architect in the early 1900’s modeled after gothic churches in Europe. Helena had the most millionaires per capita at that time from mining, ranching and banking and donors funded the cathedral. Amazingly Helena has 4 quilting fabric shops. One shopkeeper was from Altadena and said in the winter they hunker down and sew! The girls are yellow with canola.
The tiny town of Craig, 30 min away has 32 residents and are there solely because of flyfishing guiding. Our guide on the Missouri River was Cameron, a young guy from Helena, who said many houses are being bought by people converting them to airbnbs, making it tough for young people to afford a place to live. He got his degree in Fish and Wildlife Management and said all his friends went back to being guides. When I asked if he’d do it again, he said he supposed the education was a good experience but he really didn’t know what to study. This was the first time I’ve fly fished from a boat and it was hard. First of all it was windy, secondly I have never cast sitting down and thirdly, the fishing is very technical. I made lots of mistakes but he was so patient. We lost quite a few but also landed several. All in all a nice day.
We had dinner twice at MT Ascension, a local brewery and li and behold the waitress was from Northridge. The cashier at Albertsons was from the East Bay. Geez, is everyone in Montana from California?