Joey Jessica Photographs » Lifestyle and Wedding Blog

Was heading back to the studio yesterday and saw these cool colors and shapes in town.

So on day two of our trip across the state of Montana get off to a slow start. I think due to the hectic week leading up to the trip, trying to wrap everything up before we left, and just the flights out there.
We stayed on the horse farm of Lisa & Jim VanCamp (NC natives) where we met up with Jessica’s dad. Since we arrived the night before and did not really see the place, we had no idea of how gorgeous it was. I have a ton of photographs that I will show at the end of the trip. After a few cups of DECAF coffee (Steve, Jessica’s dad, only drinks decaf) we loaded up the rental van and were on our way.
The plan was to take I-90 up to Hwy 93 toward Glacier National Park, while stopping along the way at various sights and scenes. We had a lot of driving to do.
Our first stop was at a nearby drive-up coffee shop, CityBrew to get some “real coffee”. The City Brew huts are everywhere, they are basically a tiny 8×8 building that you drive up to and order coffee, Convenient. The second stop was at a fading town known as Reed Point. The town is not quite a “ghost town” but getting there. Jessica and I wandered around the town and she found some cool signs like the one at the library that is only open on Wednesday afternoons. They did have a service station, and post office. The big event in Reed Point is there annual Sheep Drive, which takes place at the end of August. If you can imagine the Running of the Bulls, but replace the bulls with Montana Mountain Woolies. Sounds like a good time, but we had to leave before it would take place. At the end of the main street were these beautiful old grain elevators, which we drove strait to with smiles on our faces. This was our first taste of the “old west”. Posted a few shots from around the town, click photo to see story–>

This is the road that we took to get to our house. Awesome.. It cuts through the Bojo Valley. (this is what Steve called it). The Bojo family own a handful of a thousands acres which they produce alf alfa and hay. Everyone out here owns so much land. One guy has almost 400,000 acres. Crazy. I barely own one and it’s a chore managing it. We stayed on the edge of the town of Red Lodge. Well I say the edge but really about 30 minutes, but it is the nearest town. Red Lodge is growing in popularity and has a growing community. Primarily famous for its signature ski slopes about 9600 feet tall. We were surrounded by the snowcapped Beartooth Mountains, you can see some of them in the background. Unfortunately, the mountains were on fire when we arrived, (very common in Montana, fire is a huge problem out here in the summer) so our visibility of the range was pretty low. Anyhow, this is the close from the first night and over the next few days we are setting off to cover the state of Montana and dip into parts of Wyoming.

We took so many photos while we were in Montana. That place is truly amazing, there is a different way of life out there. Things move at a slower pace, and there are not too many distractions, it grew on me a little. Like I said we took a lot of photographs, and this will be the first of many posts. The good thing is that they will last me for a while. So when I do not have anything to write/post, I can just milk the Montana photos some more… (insert sneaky smile here) So the first photo session we came upon was an old church on the hillside. Jessica’s dad (whom was already out in Montana and we were meeting up with) had mentioned this place to us before, and had shown us a picture. I told him that we had to see this place first, before we left for Glacier. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to kick off the trip. A lot of the roads out there are dusty gravel roads that wind through the hillsides. As we are cresting a hilltop I see this tiny little steeple poking up in the sunset, and I could not stop smiling. I was driving the rental van, and immediately accelerated, leaving a huge trail of dust behind us. I was so excited about how awesome everything looked and didn’t want to miss a second of it We get close enough to the church to get a shot and I barely throw the van into park before I am off running through the field. I was like a lion chasing a zebra. We took a lot of photographs of this early 1900’s church as well of the surroundings (probably too many). It was a spectacular way to start our trip. I know we were in for a good one, if things looked half as awesome as this scene we were looking at. I have grabbed a handful of shots from the church session and posted them in a story below. Take a peek, and prepare yourself for many more photos to come : ) Click Photo to See the Story –>

I have been really behind on posting photos from the trip Jessica and I made to Montana a few months ago. Well, I processed all of the film this weekend and have been scanning it into the computer like a madman. I will be re-posting my earlier posts from the trip to this blog and then picking up right where they left off. Here is a taste of Day 2 of the road trip across Montana on our way to Glacier National Park.

The sky during a sunset few days ago.