Nature is my church, and I keep the Sabbath holy.

After a long week with a July 4th holiday, I treated myself to a road trip and hike to the Natural Bridge Falls on the Boulder River south of Big Timber.

While the actual rushing water and gorge and forest were all natural, the trailheads and lookouts have been developed to a Tolkien Elvish pristine.  You wonder if Gandalf the wizard or a Hobbit would appear.  The paved paths were edged with stacked rocks.  A wooden bridge spanned the Boulder to the other side where the dirt path began.

The river itself crashed underneath then falls into the rock.  A short way’s farther shows the water cascading into a level basin for less than a hundred yards before the continued falling down the gorge.

The beginning dirt trail is quite gentle and easily traversed by kids.  The green foliage can make the track really narrow.  The morning air in the sunshine has a warm pine and earth smell, while the shade is appreciably cooler.

There is a Canyon Bottom Access trail to get where the river pours out of the rock, but that is the real challenge.  Have a walking stick handy.  This switchback trail is much steeper and rockier, and if a little muddy is much trickier.  A real strain on the knees.  The signs say Do Not Cut Across Switchbacks and they mean it; the slope down is steeper than 45 degrees with rocks at the long bottom.  A slip and fall will definitely hurt you.

Take your time and pick your way down carefully, and you can get to about 25 yards from the falls safely.  The roar of water fills the air.

If you can’t risk the Canyon Access trail, no loss; the overhang lookouts provide all the majesty on gentle paths and stone stairs on top of the gorge ridge.

How to Get to Natural Bridge Falls

Exit the interstate at Big Timber, cruise 1st Street to McLeod which is also Highway 289. Turn south and follow it all the way to the pavement’s end.  Do not turn off of the road at all.

289 is a narrow, winding, 2-lane road so slow down and enjoy the drive.  You will pass farms and modern homesteads in a sweeping basin of countryside.  There are a couple bumpy patches of highway with warning signs, so both hands on the wheel.

Watch for the signs that verify you are on the right road.  The Natural Falls trailhead will be to the left just before the pavement end.  If you start driving on gravel, you have gone just a bit too far.

It’s a little over an hour and a half to drive there from Billings, but it is a great expedition for the day.  Enjoy in the little Adventure.

Clifford Allen Nelson passed away at Logan Health in Chester on July 5, 2024. Cliff was born to John & Louise Nelson on 11 June 1948, in Havre. Cliff was the oldest of 8 children.

A Celebration of Life BBQ, will be Saturday July 13th at 1:00 in the Joplin Memorial Park, Joplin, Mt. Military honors, by Malmstrom AFB Honor Guard.

Cliff only made it to the 6th grade in school. He helped at home raising his siblings & doing farm chores. He later went to work for Buttery’s as a baker. This went well until they realized he wasn’t 18. In 1968, he was drafted into the Army & Viet Nam he went. He spent 18 months there. On returning, he moved to Hungry Horse, there he worked at Anaconda Aluminum plant and went into construction work & got married. This marriage produced 5 children, after a stent in Hungry Horse, they moved to Havre where he worked at the post yard and met his lifelong friend Chad. He later moved his family to Browning where he worked at the bus garage.

Cliff went to Havre & learned how to fly an airplane. It didn’t take much training. He bought his1st plane & flew back to Browning. He then moved to Great Falls, divorced, worked for DJs Mazda & started his own car body & mechanic shop. His dear friend Frank and he became involved with stock car racing, which he continued to do until a couple years ago. He raced a variety of classes in Northwest United States and Canada. Cliff moved back to Havre & went back into the construction business. He helped his good friend Chris (who was the Chief of police) with police work & hunting coyotes. They were licensed by the state to do predator control. In 1979, he met his now wife, Nancy & they had 1 child. In November of 1980, they lost their home to a fire & moved to Kremlin. Cliff got the older boys involved with boxing in Havre. Work then took him and his family to Evanston, Wyoming. There he was a top mechanic in the oil field. After a few years there, Great Falls called him home. He started his body shop up again & also back to racing!

He then ventured back to Hungry Horse, & on to Alaska. In Alaska he mainly did construction work, but also worked a gold mine, which involved the whole family.

In 1986 we moved back to Hungry Horse & started Nelson Construction. Cliff became a hunting guide for a friend & spent most of the hunting season in Spotted Bear, which he really enjoyed. Wintertime was for boxing, where he helped start a boxing club & trained & traveled all over with the boxers. Cliff became involved with the Hungry Horse Vol. Fire Dept. He later became Chief until he retired from it in 1999.

Cliff was asked to be Santa in Hungry Horse. He really loved visiting the kids & giving them gifts. He loved it so much, he started being Santa in Chester, then later in Joplin. No matter how rough he felt, being the flying Santa was always a must! He loved the children!

In 1998, an opportunity came to run the Tiber Marina. 11 years spent running the marina & Cliff still worked construction in Hungry Horse. Cliff loved being at the marina & meeting so many wonderful people. He enjoyed putting on BBQ’s & good parties! He enjoyed being back on the east, side & so we moved to Joplin.

He enjoyed fishing, & he did several tournaments with his friend Chris. They managed to win Fresno & Tiber! They did tournaments all over the state & even traveled to Canada for some.

In 2011, we purchased the Joplin Bar which he helped run until his health started to get the best of him. He was able to venture out at our last Art in the Park & Car show to see everyone.

Cliff is survived by his wife Nancy, sons Jr (Jenny) of Hungry Horse, John (Darci) of Ulm, Jay of Joplin, Josh of Hungry Horse. Daughters Janey of Kalispell, Judy (Christopher) of Harrison, & Kim of California, son Joe of Iowa. Sisters Karen, Sharon (Greg) of Kalispell, Margaret of Ashly Lake, Donna of. Missouri, Brother Leonard (Trudy) of Vaughn. 31 grandchildren & 31 great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his son Jim, his parents, his in-laws Ed & Billie Ribich, brothers Melvin & Carl, numerous other family & friends.

When Sabrina Carpenter was six, she watched Disney’s Hannah Montana and realized exactly who she wanted to be.

“I remember…watching the pilot and being like ‘I want to do that. I want to sing, and I want to act, and I want to dance. I want to do all those things,’’ she said in a 2020 interview. Three years later, Carpenter would end up getting her big break because of the show’s star Miley Cyrus, competing in the MileyWorld Superstar Contest to get a record deal. She placed third but still found her way to Disney and a music career within a few years’ time, thanks to being cast on Girl Meets World.

From 2006 to 2011, it was impossible to avoid the phenomenon that was Hannah Montana and, subsequently, Miley Cyrus. The premise was peak kid show brilliance: By day, Cyrus’ Miley Stewart was a normal high school girl with normal high school problems; by night, she’d throw on a blonde wig and turned into her superstar counterpart Hannah Montana. Montana’s rock star life was glittery pop fun, churning out some of the best Disney-associated music of its era and translating to real Top 40 hits. It also turned Cyrus into a megastar, one who seemed to be transforming into a real-life Hannah Montana right before the worlds’ eyes as she began debuting songs under her own name.

Carpenter is not the only Gen Z pop star of the moment who found their calling from watching the show. Chappell Roan has continuously pointed to her fandom of Hannah Montana as the starting point for her own ambitions. During a show in NYC back in early 2023, Roan even performed in Hannah Montana drag for a few songs. Meanwhile, videos and photos from Olivia Rodrigo’s childhood show off her pre-pubescent love for the show (and like Carpenter, she had also gotten her start on the same channel as Cyrus before mounting an even bigger singing career). The more divisive JoJo Siwa credits the show with her own origins, with her mom telling Rolling Stone years ago that she wanted her daughter “to be the next Hannah Montana.” (Siwa more recently has cited Cyrus’ Bangerz era as the primary inspiration for her more adult career pivot).

The effects of Hannah Montana’s success was immediate in many ways, spurring the careers of her then-Disney peers like Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, the Jonas Brothers and the shows and movies they each carried. But the impact of the show and Cyrus’ star power is finally being felt in full-force these days. We are now entering the Hannah Montana Generation of pop stars: young artists who are not just evoking the frilly and bold aesthetic and unapologetically sugary sweet music of the show but also the type of larger-than-life persona Montana had in comparison to “real-life” Stewart. Carpenter is the prime example of leaning into the Hannah Montana-ification of her own career and brand: in recent years, she has leaned into the high-femme styling, make-up and big blonde hair that has become her signature look when performing. It’s been translating even more into her latest string of releases, with songs like “Feather,” “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” matching that coy, pastels-and-bejeweled-hearts, girlish persona she heightens on camera.

Like Carpenter, Roan’s own music in the years leading up to recent global success has been a mix of both earnestly confessional songs and big, bold arena-worthy pop anthems. Recently viral hits like “Hot to Go!” and “Femininomenon” feel like exactly the type of songs an older Hannah Montana would make, progressing the bravado of songs like “Rock Star” mixed with the ear-worminess of “Nobody’s Perfect” or “The Best of Both Worlds.”

It’s probably no coincidence that during the era of her influence looming the most, Cyrus herself has been having a career renaissance of sorts. Her 2023 single “Flowers” became her biggest song-to-date, a feat for someone nearly 20 years into a career chock full of platinum-selling hit songs. She also took home her first Grammy Awards at this year’s ceremony, a long-overdue honor that Cyrus celebrated on-stage with a head-turning performance during the telecast. Unlike her numerous other head-turning televised performances, the focus was on her singing and stage-presence and nothing else.

This is just the beginning of the world seeing the Hannah Montana Generation take over. Carpenter and Roan have been hustling to become the type of hit-makers they are now for years respectively — and who knows how many other young kids who learned how to both make and perform a truly great pop song from Cyrus’ are still waiting in the wings for their time to shine.