Choosing a title for this post made me nervous, but I can’t afford a headline writer so there we go. If you found this post doing an internet search you shouldn’t have been doing, your bad. I’m writing about Butte, Montana.

The thing is, Iron Chef and I travel to Butte on a fairly regular basis because our kids are hockey players and Butte has an ice rink. So we mostly see this feature of Butte:

The Ice Rink at Butte

But now that Her Royal Highness is 17, I drop her ass off at the rink and find a little fun for myself. For you overprotective parents, that’s not selfish, that’s good planning. Which is how I found the Maud Canyon loop and put the Butte back in Butteful.

Now I get to see a Butte that looks like this:

Hey, Butte looks pretty good from up here.

Better yet, this trail teased me with a sign estimating the Continental Divide Trail — Podunk’s soft spot — was just a mere 1.5 miles away. I checked the clock on my fablet, did some quick calculations, and decided I could make it, at least to put my baby toe on the CDT.

The trail was fabulous, the aspen had turned all kinds of crazy colors, and my spirits were soaring until the Fablet communicated a text from HRH. “Come get me in like 20 minutes.” Drat!

Maud Canyon trail in Butte.

I had to break my “No Running” rule which complicated my “No Deodorant” rule, but I made it to the rink in time for Her Royal Highness to be 20 minutes late. Whew!