Latest Update: June 23, 2001 by Ben Marcus

NOON SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2001 THE HEADWATERS RESTAURANT, THREE FORKS, MONTANA

ODOMETER: TRIP METER:

MONEY
Water, pot scrubber, dish soap, kitty litter, two cans pineapple, Montana Living Magazine: $26.00
Greycliffs campground: $ 5.00
Lunch at the Headwaters Restaurant: $14.25

Nice. The Headwaters Restaurant is a little island of culture and gourmet cooking in the middle of cattle and river country. I just ordered the salmon-cake sandwich with a side of Cowboy Beans. I had the Cowboy Beans last night, but it's an experience worth repeating.

The Headwaters. A diamond in the dust.

There is no one else in the restaurant except for the three waitresses, including one younger gal who must be the prettiest girl in this county, whatever county this is. She could turn heads in Huntington Beach, no problem. There are nice photos on the walls and ceiling fans spinning. It's about 80 degrees outside and I'm wearing my formal (non-dusty) black velour shirt, so I'm sitting inside, with the AC.

Last night I sat outside, in the cool Big Sky evening, right near the guitar player; one person taking up a four-person table and feeling a little self-conscious. As scruffy as I was, I was still over-dressed. I looked in the phone book for Fred Van Dyke because Karen told me he lived around here. Found the name and number, but it was the wrong number. Wonder where he is?

I was sorely tempted to order the chicken-fried New York steak, because I thought it would be a gourmet chicken fried steak, but I chickened out and ordered the baked halibut, chunky vegetable soup, and sides of Cowboy Beans and baked potatoes.

Holy shit. One of the best dinners I've ever had. Everything was great, starting with the chunky vegetable soup, which was Soup Nazi quality (Stuart is maybe a bit of a cross between the Soup Nazi and the Adam character on Northern Exposure. He does it right). I can understand why people would want to steal soup recipes. It was that good.

The halibut was fresh and baked with a crust in a puree of onions and olives and I don't know what else. It was Five-Star fare in a one-horse town (good subtitle), and you'd have to see how rural this area is to appreciate it. It's as if there was a gourmet restaurant in King City, but even more rural than that. I was stuffed after all that, but they offered desert and I wanted to try it, even though I didn't really want to try it. I had a "turtle" which was a kind of pecan pie without crust. It all cost $31 and I tipped $6 for the waitresses and $5 for the guitar player.

I had another experience like this when I was at SURFER. When we did that trip to Tonga there was another gourmet restaurant in the middle of nowhere, run by a German guy who turned the local lobster and mahi into Five Star dinner. The French Onion soup was one of the best things I'd ever tried.

Executive Chef Stuart and assistant.

Anyway. I just had a chat with Stuart the Executive Chef and asked if his place ever been written up anywhere. They had an article in the Spokane newspaper, but that's it. I asked if it would be okay if I could pitch the story to the Montana Magazines and maybe Gourmet. He said no problem and I asked a few question. He attended the Culinary Institute in New York and worked in Vail and Jackson before coming here. He's been open three years, and it's working. The people coming in here are wearing muscle shirts and cowboy hats but they are liking the food.

Below are the notes I took from the chef.

406- 285-4511
Stuart Martin and partner Michelle Vernon.
Went to Culinary Institute of America.
exechef@mcn.net
Been here three years. Vail and Jackson Hole.

I think I could get a story out of this, and maybe they'll send George Nikitin here to take photos and we can fish the Madison this fall. I would like to see Montana in the fall. It must be off the scale.

I fished the Madison briefly this morning, walking about eight paces away from my campsite with Ike following me. There was a nice little stretch of river at the Greycliffs Campsite, which seems to be for fishermen only. It cost $10 without a Montana license and only $5 with a valid Montana fishing license.

I ended up there on the road less traveled. After stuffing myself at dinner I found a nice campground at Headwater's State Park. But I saw some fishing access signs and pushed on. Fourteen miles down a dusty road I found the Greycliff Fishing Access and campground. Ike was itching to get out, so after paying up I found a spot and let him run. I read more of Undaunted Courage last night. Meriwhether Lewis wasn't the first choice to lead the expedition into the unexplored area between the Mississippi and the Pacific coast. A Frenchman started off, but when Jefferson found out he was a spy, looking to rally a resistance against the Spanish, Jefferson insisted he be recalled.

Oops, just had another conversation with Stuart. He had a lot to say, but there was a little nugget about Jane Fonda and Ted Turner that was pretty interesting. Apparently there is a famous restaurant called Sir Scott's Steakhouse in Manhattan, Montana, near one of Ted Turner's ranches. The owner is a Vietnam Vet, and he refused to let Jane Fonda into the restaurant. "I'll serve you, but she has to wait in the car."

Holy smokes. Imagine that little scene.

Stuart came up with a better subtitle: "Diamond in the Dust."

Anywhere, here are the raw notes from my second conversation.

6000 in the 70s then the railroad pulled out and down to 600 then it's bouncing back. Talcum plant cement plant block plant/ Kanta plant. Paving stones and cinder blocks. Little businesses. Home businesses due to the internet. Tourist related canoes and horseback riding and farming and ranching. .30 Sir Scotts Steakhouse in Manhattan, Montana. Wouldn't serve here and made her wait in the car. Glad we got here when we did. Big city. From Kansas City, Missouri. Only lived in small communities. Sunday, June 10, 2001. Spokane Spokesman-Review.com Headwater's Haven. Been a restaurant since 1908. Stools are original. Butcher shop in the back butcher their own meat. Right in house. Headwater's CafÚ. A couple of local people. Bill and Sue Foreman. Catering. Birthday parties and . Three/quarters on premise. Christmas Parties. Dog Clubs. Trials at the Headwaters Park. 50 in and 50 out. See-through plastic tarps. 75 in the winter. Diamond in the Dust.

So now it's 13:05 and I'm still picking away at my Cowboy Beans. One waitress just refilled my lemonade. I'm going to pitch this story to Gourmet and the Montana Magazine and whoever else, and see what happens.

Wow. The co-owner/waitress just snapped at a customer who didn't like the menu. "Hope you can find something down the street to eat," she snapped at the lady as her husband walked out behind her. Now she just said to Stuart, "I'll bet they have chicken strips down there." I like Montana.

I gotta git. Gotta head for Yellowstone and then to Ketchum.

This has been fun. Hope I can sell a story.

As for Ike. He's in the van right now yowling up a storm because it's a little warm in there. He is black, after all. I want to let him out, but I can't. This morning he was fine, following me down to the river and staying close to the van when he should have been running through the grass. As soon as I put him in the van he kept wriggling about and yowling. I let him out when I went to buy groceries and he took off, in the middle of town, with cars all around. I had to chase him down in the van. Weird cat. Stupid cat.

The waitress just asked if I want desert. I'll pass.

(Note to self:) Remember the strange woman in the grocery store, and that they didn't take ATM cards.

14:11 P.S. Now I'm on one knee in the back of the restaurant, tapped into a phone line. I just checked e-mail. Chuck Gallagher sent me a great quote from Laird Hamilton, with updates on the Memorial Paddle Out tomorrow. Lots of news, including an e-mail from Tony Hussein Hinde in the Maldives. He said the dive guy who found Jay should have sent me an e-mail by now, but he hasn't.

22:46 PST SUNDAY, JUNE 24, 2001 BOX CANYON CAMPGROUND, NEAR LAST CHANCE, IDAHO

ODOMETER: 55496
TRIP METER: 1419.3

MONEY

CREDIT
Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yosemite:
Assortment of flies
Pair of felt-bottomed wading sandals
.4 gram split shot $ 91.52

Gas in Bozeman $ 50.00???? Money won paying Montana Mania at the Oasis + $5.00
Cash from ATM in Bozeman $200.00
$205.00

CASH
Soda water at the Oasis: $ 1.00
Water and atomic fireballs in Bozeman $ 3.00
Fireworks stand between W. Yosemite and Last Chance
Pack of 400 Black Cats
Box of eight aerial M-80s
Air Raid (25 shot): $ 23.00
Dinner at bar in Last Chance $ 6.00
$ 33.00

Should be ($205 Ü 33) $172.00
Cash remaining: $173.00

Wow, that was quite a day. Hard to believe it all happened in one day. Hard to believe I was hacking away for hours in the back of the Headwaters Restaurant until 14:00 in the afternoon, and that everything that happened after, happened after.

I've given up on fishing and I'm going to start hunting now. Fishing is dull. You throw a bunch of expensive equipment out there, and with for some invisble, minuscule fish to maybe bite it. And then, maybe, you'll catch it. And then after you catch it, you have to put it back and watch it swim away. I mean, for this I'm spending hundreds of dollars and breaking equipment and alienating friends?

Naw, hunting is where it's at. I've got my 12 gauge and I'm going to trade all my fishing gear for a .270. And then tomorrow I'm going to hunt forƒ Yvon Chouinard. That's right, tomorrow I'm going to prowl around Great Last Chance, Idaho for the founder of Patagonia. And when I find him, I'm going toƒ say hello.

Turns out I'm in the same neck of the woods as Yvon Chouinard, and I'm going to track him down tomorrow to say hello, and see if he got that copy of Cadillac Desert I sent him. If he isn't too busy. I'm going to show him my 1943 U.S. Navy map of Kamchatka and ask him to point out the fishing spots and potential surf spots.

I found out Yvon was around when I stopped to look around the Blue Ribbon Fly Store in West Yellowstone. I pulled into West Yosemite in the evening after a long drive from Three Forks, a quick stop in Manhattan, a gas stop in Bozeman and then a pretty spectacular drive through the Gallatin River Valley. The Blue Ribbon Fly Shop is just about the best fly store I have ever seen. This place if for serious fly fishermen, and it is stock to the rafters with the very best gear. The owner uses the same retail theory as Mike Locatelli, which I call the Feeding Frenzy Theory of Retail: Mike stocks his O'Neill shops with so much gear, when you walk in you act as crazy as a pod of brown trout in the middle of a salmon fly swarm: You just have to buy something.

I bought a bunch of different flies, picking maybe 10 out of an assortment of maybe 200. I picked some streamers, following the recommendation of a guy from Michigan who was fishing the upper Gallatin. I bought an assortment of salmon fly patterns and some cool-looking stone flys that ought to make the trout go as crazy as a guy in a fly-fishingƒ.

Anyway, I was shooting the breeze with the owner of the store, talking about this and that. I noticed he sold Patagonia gear and asked if Yvon was ever in the store.

"He was in here a couple of hours," the owner said, and I slapped my thigh. Apparently Yvon is around Yellowstone working on a conservation project with a local fly-fisherman and author named Craig Matthews. On Monday Yvon will be in Last Chance, Idaho-near the Henry's Fork of the Snake River-meeting with a bunch of Patagonia retailer and dealer.

With nowhere else to go, I headed that way, and here I am. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Man, I can snarl paragraphs and chronology and structure as well as I snarl fly lines.

I stayed at the Headwaters for quite a while; so long that I asked if I could bring Ike in from the van, which was overheating. Stuart said no problem, he was a cat person, and when I brought in Ike, the first thing Stuart said was, "He looks like Sylvester."

In the back room of the Headwaters, with people coming back and forth, I sent some story pitches to three Montana magazines and one fly-fishing magazine.

Here was the cover e-mail for the Montana magazines:

Amity K. Moore
Editor in Chief-Montana Living

Beverley R. Magley
Editor-Montana Magazine

Michelle Stevens Orton
Editor-Big Sky Journal

June 24, 2001

To whomever might take an interest,

I am a former editor of SURFER Magazine who got tired of living in Southern California and writing about surfing, and am now meandering around the Pacific Northwest and parts east, having adventures and looking for things to write about.

I have been in Montana for about a week, and am pleased to find a place that lives up to everything I've heard or read about it; from The Journals of Lewis and Clark to A River Runs Through It to the dying words of the Russian naval officer character played by Sam Neill in The Hunt for Red October: "I should have liked to have seen Montana."

He's right. He's missing out. He may have gone to heaven, but he never got to see God's Country.

While traveling I have been writing a daily journal and sending the words and digital photos to two friends in California, who have been posting them on a website called www.sacklunch.com and www.surfpulse.com

I'm doing that for fun. For money I work for a surfing website called swell.com, and I also do work for Surfing Magazine and The Surfer's Journal. I've got a 32-page whopper coming out in the latest Surfer's Journal which is going to make a lot of people angry, which is part of the reason I am in Montana.

I am currently trying to finish a 2500-word memorial for a kid named Jay Moriarity, a famous big-wave surfer who drowned in a diving accident in the Maldives.

I have had two articles published in Islands Magazine, so I can write about things other than surfing.

I would like to submit two story ideas to a Montana-based magazine, and join that distinguished list of writers who have drooled over the place.

I have attached the raw Sacklunch notes for two adventures I had that I would like to turn into proper, well-written Montana stories, as seen from an outsider.

The first happened while learning to properly fly-fish at the Sportsman Hole on the Big Hole River on June 20. I was nymphing with due diligence and catching only whitefish, when an 11-year-old kid walked up with his spinning rod and a Panther Martin and pulled a beautiful six-pound brown trout from under my nose. Apparently he comes from a semi-infamous family of hunters and fishermen. His grandpa didn't talk too well, but he could sing and yodel like a house on fire. It was hilarious and a fun introduction to Montana.

The other story has to do with the Headwaters Restaurant in Three Forks. I came through here last night looking for a famous surfer named Fred Van Dyke who had retired somewhere around Three Forks. I didn't find him, but I did have an exceptional meal of baked halibut, chunky vegetable soup, cowboy beans and baked potatoes. It was a Five Star meal in a Two Horse Town, and thought it would make a good story.

I just had lunch of salmon cakes and am now in the back room of the restaurant, using the owners' phone line to send e-mails.

I am attaching the two journal entries that have to do with the little kid fishing incident, and the Headwaters' Restaurant. I am also including JPEGs of photos I took with my digital camera.

I am sending this pitch e-mail en masse because the AOL connection here isn't too quick, and I don't want them to miss any reservation phone calls. I think it's great that a high-quality restaurant is so appreciated and can thrive here. It really is good food, and I've been a few places in my day.

Let me know if any of you are interested in any of these ideas. They would be written less roughly and more eloquently than in the daily journals.

Thank you for your time.

Ben Marcus

TheBenM@AOL.com

360-582-0061

Maybe that will work, maybe it won't. It would be nice to generate money from all this traveling. I'm running out, and my creditors are harassing me. Here are e-mails from my doting mother and disgusted ex-wife, with responses by me in ALL CAPS.

Dear Ben,

I'm at Dan and Jane's , writing on Jane's computer. I think you just received an Email from me with only a subject. I haven't become accustomed to this Email program yet, and I keep doing that. Today, I couldn't get the tab to work.

I haven't written to you in the last few days because Dan forwarded the Emails between you and Galbraith, which you had sent him but not me. I was so upset about you making such fancy-pants fishing plans, when you have very little money left, that I didn't want to write to you.

THEY ARENT THAT FANCY PANTS. I ALREADY DID THE FANCY PANTS FISHING, THIS IS JUST GOING TO BE STREAM FISHING. NO DRIFTING. CAMPING., YOU WORRY TOO MUCH.

I have several important questions that I need to know the answers to: how much money do you have left?

ABOUT $2500 WITH WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH COMING. SURFERS JOURNAL MIGHT GIVE ME SOME MORE FOR THAT BIG ARTICLE. EVAN IS SENDING ME $200. JAPAN IS SENDING SOME. I'LL GET SOME FOR THIS JAY MORIARITY PIECE, PROBABLY $1500.

I'm going to add up what you owe me and get the total to you as soon as I get back to Sequim (sorry I haven't gotten to it already). Will you be able to pay me back?

DEPENDS ON HOW MUCH I OWE YOU.

What is happening about the Kamchatka trip?

I DON'T KNOW. THE GUY I WANTED TO GO JUST DROWNED.

Are you taking the pills, and how close are you to running out?

EVERY DAY. I HAVE ABOUT 14 LEFT.

(I can send you enough to keep you going until the order arrives from Canada.)

OKAY.

What are your plans after fishing at Sun Valley?

HEAD FOR ALASKA, I GUESS. I GO DAY TO DAY, PRETTY MUCH.

Please respond right away. No checks had arrived before I left for here, but if any come, I'll send them to you. Also pills. T

HANK YOU. LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU SEND AND WHEN. THANKS. Love,

M.

IT SOUNDS LIKE LOVE TO ME.

That was from mom. This one is from Joanne.

Just to let you know, Ben, I will not bail you out with AOL this time for all of your 800 number charges.

YOU WON'T HAVE TO. EVAN WILL PAY FOR IT AND IT'S HUNDREDS, NOT THOUSANDS. I'M NOT PLAYING CARD GAMES AT ALL OR STAYING IN HOTELS.

YOU AND MY MOM WORRY TOO MUCH.

I didn't download the file from a couple of days ago. At 1 meg, I got tired of waiting the 15 minutes it was going to take.

YOUR LOSS, TOOTS.

You should leave Ike at your mom's when you go on these trips. It's not fair to a cat to be a nomad.

HE'S DOING OKAY, I THINK., ALTHOUGH HE'S BURNING UP IN THE CAR RIGHT NOW.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be, I guess.

I left the Headwater's Restaurant around 15:00. Stuart gave me a Headwater's hat and showed me a scrapbook of the house he and his partner built in the hills. It's a two-story, 6,000 square foot house on 160 acres. He insulated with hay bales and was considering running buffalo on his land. Not to eat, just to enjoy.

At some point I suggested Stuart do a special dish of elk and trout, and call it "Field and Stream." He didn't think that was too funny, although he did like me calling him "A cross between the Soup Nazi and Adam from Northern Exposure."

Before leaving I asked where Manhattan was. I wanted to see that restaurant where Jane Fonda had gotten the big time snub. Manhattan turned out to be on the highway toward Bozeman, so I went that way.

Manhattan is a fairly typical rural Montana town, with a railroad running through and one of the three forks of the Missouri nearby. I found the Oasis, looked at the menu and played Montana Mania in the poker machine while drinking a soda water. I did pretty well on that machine, it seemed to live me. I could have walked out of the $15 up paying nickels, but I decided to play my winnings in quarters and ended up with only $5. Oh well. I didn't ask anyone in the restaurant about Jane Fonda.

After the Oasis I passed through Bozeman and remembered why I don't like American cities and why I like Montana, which is mostly free of billaboards, Wal Marts, housing developments and fast food stands. Bozeman was an exception to that, but it was all over quickly.

I bought gas in Bozeman and also some water and atomic fireballs. In the bathroom I saw a condom dispenser and that reminded me of an idea I've been trying to convince one of the wetsuit companies to use. I think it would be funny in a crass kind of way if a wetsuit company used the condom dispenser idea as an ad or a trade show device.

Here is the condom dispenser in the bathroom in Bozeman:

I think you could re-write the copy and make it apply to wetsuits in a crass but funny kind of way.

Anyway, I'm not a marketing genius. I just come up with silly ideas every once in a while. In fact, I have one I've been wanting to pitch to Yvon Chouinard, which is part of the reason I'm going to track him down tomorrow. I think Patagonia should do an ad campaign which looks back into history for incidents and actions in which a lot of people suffered and froze their asses off for lack of good equipment: The Donner Party, the Battle of the Bulge, the Yukon Gold Rush of 1896, the Siege of Stalingrad, the men of Endurance who survived in the Antarctic and Lewis and Clark.

How would Patagonia have equipped these people?

I think it would be a clever and historical way to sell some modern equipment.

Just an idea.

Anyway, I turned south (I think) in Bozeman and made a choice to drive down Highway 191, through the Gallatin River valley. Good choice. Montana did one of those terrain changes that was so extreme, if it were a human behaving that way, he;d have a mother constantly worrying about his pills.

The area from Three Forks to Bozeman was hot and dry and dusty. But a few miles from Bozeman, passing through the Gateway to the Gallatin, Montana became green and lush and granitey and forested again, and I was in a different world.

The Gallatin is the Third Fork of the Missouri, named for Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of Powdered Wigs or something like that. It looked like the Big Hole Valley, but even higher and greener. Along the way I passed two kayakers hitching for a ride, so I turned around when I could and picked up a girl. She and her friend had kayaked a good chunk of the lower Gallatin, which looked like a fun ride. We talked about this and that, and I brought up Ted Turner. She did not spit on the ground when I mentioned his name. I think the younger generation of Montanans are all for Ted Turner and what he is doing to conserve large chunks of the best parts of the state. This gal had heard Ted Turner make a keynote speech in Yellowstone a few weeks ago, and found him to be charming and erudite. He even cracked a Jane Fonda joke.

Women love Ike, by the way. All women. Some men, but all women. He is a good-looking cat with very sleek, black fur and a white face. I wonder where he is right now, by the way. He bolted on me twice today, and attempted to bolt about a dozen times. He's prowling around in the dark in another area of unknown predators.

After dropping off the kayaker girl I continued along the Gallatin, topping at a meadow with one of those historical signs. There was a guy and a girl there getting ready to go fishing. We chatted about this and that, including Ted Turner, until the guy told me there was a salmon fly hatch going on up the river neat Big Sky. That got me going in a hurry. I drove about six miles, hoping to drive right into a choking plague of giant salmon flies, with the water absolutely bubbling with crazed trout.

But it didn't work out that way. There were a few big bugs twittering around as I got close to Big Sky and a few of them breathed their last before hitting my windshield. I stopped at one bridge to check the water and found a nice patch of still water, after a rapid, with a little island where Ike could run around and maybe not take off.

I got all my gear and Ike down there, but he took immediately, scaring me a little because he was running right alongside the highway.

I fished for a while, but the only action I got was a couple of little trout hitting my green strike indicator. I had a salmon fly on with a nymph behind that, but there wasn't much happening;

Ike showed up at exactly the right time, and I carried him up the hill and got out of there, still hoping to see that huge cloud of salmon flies.

I passed though Big Sky, where there is a ski resort, and kept an eye on the left side of the road, where the Gallatin was getting smaller and smaller, with lots of inviting patches of water. There were some nice ranches along here, but also a lot more development than in the Big Hole Valley. I was getting close to Yellowstone, after all, and there are a lot of people in Bozeman.

The Upper Gallatin gets smaller and smaller and runs through some classic pasture land. There were some nice stretches of river along the road, and I stopped at one to through in a few flies. Actually I stopped to chat with a guy walking along the road with a fly rod. He was from Michigan and looked ot be pretty knowledgeable about the whole fly fishing gig. He had gotten only a couple of rainbows in a day of fishing, so I guess the Gallatin isn't as prolific as the Big Hole. He backed up things Mike and Rich had said about the Beaverhead and the Henry's Fork, and he was jealous that I was being paid to go to Kamchatka, if I do.

Hey, Boo Boo.

I pushed on and passed an official Yellowstone National Park sign. The Gallatin got smaller and smaller, and pretty soon I was in area of burned trees that went for a long time. I remember hearing that Yellowstone was ravaged by fire last year, and the evidence was right there along the road. Must have been an experience to fight those fires.

Eventually I pulled into West Yellowstone, and stopped at the fly shop. After a bit of yakking, that set me off down Highway 20, toward Last Chance.

Along the way I saw some fireworks going off in the distance. Turned out there was a fireworks stand, so I stopped to check it out. Wow. This place was ready for war. They had EVERYTHING, fireworks you couldn't buy in a million years in California. There were huge circles of fire-crackers more than a foot in diameter for $175. They had big time mortars and fireworks I didn't think you could buy off the side of the road.

A pyro's delight.

That reminded me of Fourth of Julys in Santa Cruz when I was a kid. There was a guy from Wyoming who would come to Santa Cruz every year with at least $10,000 worth of fireworks. He would set up down on the beach at the end of Fourth Avenue and go nuts.

The guy who ran this fireworks stand said he got all his fireworks in Wyoming. "It's too dry there to worry about burning anything."

I ended up buying one pack of 400 Black Cat fire-crackers, eight M-80s that exploded in air, and some other contraption that fires 25 shots in a row. I was going to try one of the aerial M-80s in their designated area, but a guy with a horse trailer full of spooky animals showed up and ruined my fun.

Last Chance kind of reminds me of Tok in Alaska. It's just a few shops and hotels and gas stations on the road to Idaho Falls. I stopped in a bar with a lot of cars out front, thinking it would be all the Patagonia guys. It was just a bunch of semi-rowdy fishermen, most of whom had probably been on the Henry's Fork, which Rich and Mike call "The Super Bowl of Trout Fishing."

I ate some chili and had a Pepsi and watched ESPN sports. Giants lost and Barry Bonds went 0 for 4.

Now I'm in a very dark campground with lots of bugs flying around. It's 1:50 in the morning local time, and time to hit the hay. Need to get Ike in and call it a night.