I took this about 9 PM on a clear Fall evening in Bangkok. I’m pleased with the way it turned out… I recommend the Large on Black version.

The Blue Moon Bakery is in the middle of Big Sky in the Westfork Meadow Village. This place has amazingly good food and amazingly bad art.

The best thing about this place, besides the homemande pizzas are these “wonder bars” seen below. These are sort of like 7-layer bars, but they have a very robust inside layer of chocolate. When these things are heated for 20 seconds in the microwave, they hover in new state of matter somewhere between plasma and liquid. I think the state is technically considered LCD.

I decided to start featuring more of the world’s best desserts on here along with my rating scale. I give the Blue Moon wonder bar a rating of 8.8. This is a very high rating. Here is my scale:

Rating 0: A dessert that I will tolerate and perhaps eat if it is in front of me on a plane and I am starving. Example: sickly-looking lemon flan wrapped in plastic

Rating 5: A dessert that I decide to eat because there is nothing better on the menu and I feel like I deserve dessert. Example: homemade vanilla ice cream

Rating 10: A dessert that is so good that it causes instantaneous death and nirvana simultaneously. Example: unknown, unfortunately.

Throughout the Blue Moon there is some really bad art. I strongly suspect it was made by some angry, man-hating vagabond that skulks around Big Sky with a nihilist attitude and comfortable shoes. Here is one of them:

I found some more Rams in Big Sky and snapped this pic of them eating together.

We ate at Buck’s T-4 in Big Sky for dinner. The restaurant is inside a Best Western, so I was rather suspicious of the “fine dining” claims, but I was wrong to be suspicious… this place is great. It is basically a steak place that specializes in wild game.

The placemat had all the brands of the local Montana ranches. I even espied Martha Johnson’s brand, and I thought about the time she took us to By Word of Mouth for dinner and a bar fight broke out right in front of Gustaf, knocking over his chair. Martha had just finished telling us how everyone in Montana is so nice and tranquil.

I ordered the New Zealand Red Deer because it sounded exotic and because it sounded like deer. It was kind of chewy, but it reminded me of Lord of the Rings so I ate it anyway.

And then Ethan borrowed my camera because he wanted me to perform a Jedi force move on him.

Kids learning how to ski is always cute, even if they are not your own. Here is a little video of Ethan’s first time ever to ski. I think the zombie-pose is cool.

This second week in Big Sky we decided to stay down at the Rainbow Ranch for a change of pace. The Rainbow Ranch is down off the main highway and the property straddles the Gallatin River, also known as the river that starred, but never won an Oscar, in A River Runs Through It.

The Rainbow Ranch is great - and we really had a blast!

Before coming, I worked with a nice lady named Turi Heatherington (which I still think is a made-up name) and she decided my family would be best suited for the 4-bedroom Bald Eagle cabin which sits right beside the river. It did end up being the perfect size. The room we used most was the common living room which had a huge couch and a ponderous fireplace that one normally finds in a medieval castle.

They have a lot of other room-types here for big parties or just couples. I went on an ill-advised run/hike through the property and the other cabins and whatnot I saw were very nice as well.

When we checked in, there was a very nice heavily-bearded fellow named Mike that set us up. There is another girl that works at the front desk named Binka that is way prettier than Mike so I will post her picture instead.

By the way, producers and directors that read my blog, Binka is currently seeking an acting job and she has various skills that include dance and polish sausage-making. A lot of famous people end up coming here to the Rainbow Ranch for dinner, and I suggested she have a pile of 8×10 glossies ready to hand out. She thought this was a dumb idea but was nice enough to laugh anyway.

Here are a few pictures of the cabin:

And here is my mom teaching my son how to play poker and gamble hard. He picked it up very quickly and busted in the door to the bathroom while I was busy and said, “Dad Grammy just got a full house!”

And here is one of the frozen Gallatin right beside our cabin.

On Valentines day, we had a very nice dinner up in the restaurant. This is considered one of the best restaurants in the area, and now we see why. I had the seared ahi tuna, but I almost got about ten other things that sounded great. They also have an impressive wine selection… Not that I would really know since I don’t drink, but I had several serious-looking people that worked there tell me how amazing their wine cellar was.

Here is a shot of the fireplace in the lodge. This is where I would hang out and surf on their wi-fi connection while a super-nice bartender attended to my every need except for a back rub.

Here is a really bad picture of the outside of the Bald Eagle cabin. The light level was low and the temperature was a balmy negative 12, so the lens naturally de-saturated everything.

Anyway, to sum up, we had a great time at Rainbow Ranch, Indians know “corn” as “maize”, and the South shall rise again. The property is probably best in the summer and ideal for fly-fishing. It’s great for families in the winter too that do no need ski-in ski-out amenities. I found the prices quite reasonable and the management was extremely friendly and willing to help. We will most likely visit the Rainbow Ranch again one of these summers…

It’s hard to imagine the summer now. I’m stuck in Belgrade and the windchill is 37F below zero. Ouch!

Ahh cool I figured out how to upload to Google Video some little videos I have here… this is one of BJ after he spent 5 minutes walking over to my stuck snowmobile from a previous entry. You can see how drained he was, and this was BEFORE he spent an hour helping me dig out my snowmobile from a drift!

Julie was nice enough to invite us BACK to the Big EZ for one more meal - this time for dinner. The property is located waaaay up in the mountains about 15 minutes from the Westfork Meadow Village area of Big Sky. The road there was caked with white snow and made for many nervous moments and comments from Hyacinth Bouquet (aka my mom).

Here is a view of the property as we were pulling in around sunset.

Once inside, we were greeted with drinks and hard liquor, which the women in our group immediately absorbed like salt through a slug. It was a very pretty view from the balcony and from within the foyer, so we relaxed a bit before Julie came to take me on a little tour of the rooms there.

The Big EZ has a few guest rooms that are very nicely appointed with all the first-class accomodations one could desire. They have huge media rooms, common meeting rooms, massage rooms, and even a vomitorium to visit between courses. Well, the last one was still under construction in the hedonist wing, but we could have used it after our meal, which I will get to in a moment.

Who is Julie? There she is, emerging from the bathroom of one of their guest rooms with a curious guilty smile.

Julie then took us outside to show us the huge hot tub that was surrounded by heated stamped concrete pathways that ensured a snow-free walk. I don’t know why they bothered with that, because when the weather is 10 below zero and you are in your bathing suit, does it really matter if you are walking on snow?

We were served a four course dinner with a unique salad, wild boar, pecan-encrusted walleye, and chocolate mousse with homemade vanilla ice cream. Our matri’d Keith could NOT HAVE BEEN NICER. He spent about 15 minutes talking to Ethan to find out his favorite food in the world, and they made it up special in the kitchen - chicken strips with steamed broccoli and ranch dip. Yes, he is a weird kid, but the broccoli-reverse-psychology-trick is one of my best Jedi mind tricks ever.

The dining room, as you can see below, was very nice, and this is the way guests eat there every night. Everything was very professional and they can prepare anywhere from just a few to eleven course dinners.

And to finish, here is a picture of me with the mousse and a crazy santa wearing brokeback montana gear.

Our cabin here at Rainbow Ranch backs onto the river and we had a tiny snowstorm last night that froze over most of the river. Here is a pic I grabbed this evening right before sunset where part of the ice has melted to show the river beneath.

Today I went on a jog / intense hike up into the mountains while listening to my iPod. I’ve been jamming out to a lot of Hans Zimmer lately, listening to the Batman Begins and Gladiator soundtracks… they are great exercise music if you are looking for a new twist and tired of gangsta rap.

Here is a Big Horn Sheep I saw, just before he turned at me and made a few agressive moves, after which I ran in place like a cartoon character before finally getting a grip and hiding behind some trees.

I went a bit deeper into off the trails after I saw these signs, which looked like an open invitation to adventure… I found another Big Horn Sheep later and I got a cool shot of him in full stride.

There is a select group of readers that like to see family pictures… and I know some of you girls in Korea have been asking to see Isabella, so I will start with a rather interesting picture of her. I am glad I am not with you to hear the noises you will make:

And here is Ethan with an Ice Sword that is +1 to Freeze that I plucked from the front of the cabin this morning.

And here is the family together complete with Ethan and his ever-present DS running Mario Kart.

Here are a few other pictures from the Big Sky trip… Will and Gustaf are about to leave, so I am curled up in the fetal position crying… but I will always have these images to remind me of their greatness.

Family is coming in this week, so things will be toned down a *little*… I expect to get more reading done and have less life-threatening activities, which is not a bad thing by any objective standard.

Being the default designated driver generally sucks, but it occasionally provides for some good entertainment value. I don’t drink at all… never have… so it is always up to me to drive these yahoos around when they decide they want to drink.

There is nothing I hate more than bars. That is not true - actually I generally overhate people that are really into bars and have evolved their conversation-making-abiility just beyond that of a trilobite. My friends tell me that these bars are actually more fun if I were to actually drink, but this is a suggestion that is totally lost on me. It’s like me giving Will a horrible video game to play or bad book to read and I say, well it is MUCH more fun if you are drunk.

So these guys decided to go to The Black Bear, a local bar in the Mountain Village that caters to a select class of people I have termed “drunken idiots”.

I am pretty sure the most recent census in Montana showed that there are 9 black people in the entire state, and they managed to dig them up to perform as a reggae band at the bar. I also hate reggae music, and I am suspicious of people that are really into it. The music is just really not good, by any objective interpretation, and it is even worse in the environs of a place like this. If you look at the picture below, you will probably not mistake it for the local Montana chapter MENSA meeting.

I was so completely bored in there, and the only thing that kept me around was the occasional humorous moment that occurred when two drunken people would collide. I felt a bit like a scientist watching a particle accelerator to see what happened when electrons collide. But this entertainment value was very low, and I pulled up my hood and generally scowled at everyone so they would stay away from me.

And then we finally decided to leave so I went to get the car and Will got in the front seat. I think he was pretty much as drained as I was, and we just wanted to go home. We swung around the front of the bar to pick up Gustaf, then all the sudden EIGHT people got in the back of the Explorer. All these people were staying at Moonlight Basin near us and they were all totally blasted. There were four girls and four guys, half in the back seat and the other half in the trunk area.

It was like a perfect storm of drunken idiots. Will and I were cracking up at the insane behavior and lunacy coming from the back seat. First of all, this guy in the very middle had a voice and delivery identical to Sam Kennison. He was completely wasted, spilling beer all over the car while screaming in a low-grovelly octave the following non-sequiturs:

“EL DIABLO!”
“I just spilled beer on my crotch OH MY GOD!”
“Those aren’t pillows!”
“Why is this car going backwards!”
“EL DIABLO!”

Whenever the dynamic back seat conversation would die down, this guy would scream out “EL DIABLO!” to get things going again. It was a bit like having a debate moderated by William F. Buckley, sort of.

And when we finally dropped off this crop of moronic youth, the guy was totally wasted and he said to Will, “Let me give you some money, dude!” Will just rolled up his window as this guy slid around on the ice in the parking lot fumbling with his wallet. He kept sliding around until he came into my side and jammed money into my hand. It was a hundred dollar bill - Slayer!

I went to fill up the car last night about 11 PM and the temperature was dropping fast. The car was almost empty from shuttling drunk people around Big Sky, and I wanted to fill it up before the temp was supposed to dip to 24 below. It was so cold at the gas station that I seriously considered staying in the warm car and driving off after the tank was full, hoping the release mechanism would spring the pump free.

We were invited up to the Big EZ Lodge today for lunch. The Big EZ is a very interesting operation that owns a huge chunk of real estate in Big Sky. They have about a dozen different rooms at the lodge where guests can stay, but the real appeal of the Big EZ are the thousands of acres they own and have subdivided for resale.

I’ve been around to the Yellowstone Club and Moonlight Basin, which are two of the other main areas that sell real estate around here, and you really can’t go wrong with the views anywhere. Lone Peak and the Spanish Peaks are pretty much in every view cone from every property with a few slight tweaks. The Big EZ does have some of the best panorama views, however.

Here is a view from the lodge:

We had a very nice lunch and some good conversation… we met with two real estate agents - Pat and Martha, and they were interested to hear about “virtual real estate” sales in online games. I think they were kinda confused, but we are used to getting those looks, so we absorbed them with reckless aplomb.

This lodge and property was built by Steve Hicks, and his wife did a lot of the decoration that you can see in the pictures below.

Then Pat took us down to Steve’s place, the Lone Star Suite, which had some very pretty views. It’s tough to take pictures from the inside that also show the view, but here are a few anyway.

After that, we went out to look at some property. They have 20-acre lots and 160-acre lots. This is the view from one of the 160 acre lots we visited.

And lastly, here is Will in his Muslim Prayer Cap:

Here is a picture of the Lodge at Moonlight Basin from the slope. We have visited most of the lodges around here and this one seems to be the nicest. I have not been over to the new Yellowstone Club one yet - but maybe later in the trip I can check that out.

We spent the second half of the day at the Big EZ Lodge for a nice lunch and a tour of the property - I will post those pictures a bit later.

And here are a few more pictures from the slopes and ski lifts and the like.