My heroes have always been cowboys.

 It’s 6 AM and I made it back to the front porch of the Sacajawea. It’s a comfortable 45 degrees. 

What a day we had yesterday. We started the day watching notable Montanan Curt Pate break colts. He put them in the corral and with tremendous patience haltered them and

slowly convinced them to accept a saddle and finally mounted them. In a world of instant gratification, it was a beautiful sight to watch how this process went.

 

Later, we rode a side by side over the 63 Ranch (named for its establishment in 1863). Beautiful and rocky! Mission creek cuts the ranch down the middle.

After lunch, we saddled up. I rode Hannah and Elizabeth was on Happy. Curt took us by a beautiful trout stream where you could see nice rainbows taking bugs off the topwater. We rode high on a ridge where earlier that day we saw a black bear and her cubs. On the trail, we walked over a large deposit of bear scat. Fresh with flies swarming around it. I was hoping we might see the bear up close but only saw their leftovers.

 

Married to a Texas girl, there was nothing better than to see Elizabeth back on horseback. And the background was simply magnificent. We crossed Mission Creek to make our way to the section (640 Acres) where the cattle were. Following

us were Curt’s dogs. We had the opportunity to watch the cattle dogs do their thing. Wow!

 

We hung around for supper and sat on the porch to watch it rain until we went in and shared stories. The ranch owner and his wife

treated us to two meals cooked by their chef. It was a perfect day. As the song says, "my heroes have always been cowboys." Being around Curt for 12 hours, I'll finish the song; "they still are today."