Melville Montana

The town of Melville was the closest town to the ranch. It was right up the paved road. Now granted it took 15 minutes once you left their house to get to the paved road ! That's right you had to go out of their driveway and on to a dirt road. Follow the dirt road 'till you reach another dirt road, turn left and follow that dirt road until you reached the "main" paved road. I just considered the public dirt road as part of the driveway. I mean at least half of it ran right through their ranch anyway ! The wonderful town of Melville consisted of 3 things. A 100,000 acre ranch, a little church which is now the school and a post office/ mini store ! The school has 16 students and 4 students. ( Great student teacher ratio ! LOL ) That's right 16 students and that was from kindergarten up to high school ! (The Fishers children go to schools in a town that is 25 miles up the paved road and consist of a whole lot more children ) The post office slash store was what you would see in a museum of an old town. In fact later on in our trip we visited an "old town " museum and went into an old original store/post office building there. We were like oh this looks like the one in Melville , we didn't need to come to a museum to see this ! In the Melville post office/store the old mail boxes are not even locked ! Kim needs to make sure she picks up her mail during store hours or she can't pick it up. Even though this might sound annoying to some of you I assure you that this way of life seems just right. It made me crave the chance to just experience life at a slower pace and truly reflect on what is important in life. Wouldn't it be nice if life could just be simpler and slower ? When you need something more then Melville there is the town of Big Timber 25 miles up the paved road. This town consist of churches, banks, 1 grocery store, a movie theatre with 1 screen playing 1 movie, a bowling alley with about 4 lanes, misc. places to eat and some other shops. No walmart though. The closest walmart is 2 hours away ! That's ok though I never really did care for walmart ! LOL

I am honestly telling you it was hard not to covet the ranchers life. I held my tears back the whole 15 minutes down the dirt road when it was time to leave. As soon as we hit the paved road they wouldn't stay held back anymore !