"Fox Fight" photographed in Fort Collins, Colorado by David Kingham

See more photos on the New West Images photoblog.

• FLICKR Photo Pool
• View Slideshow
• Our FLICKR Group

For the first time in a century, the mountain West has more Democratic senators, and more Democratic congress members, than Republicans.

That’s part of a shift across the region and the nation, say a pair of Stanford University professors, that has the Republican Party in crisis.

“There is no silver bullet for Republicans,” says Doug Rivers, professor of political science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. “For the short-run, the news is pretty bad.”

Eager to escape the week’s workload and to celebrate our wedding anniversary, my husband, Mark, and I pull into the long driveway that delivers us to the doorstep of Steve Gamble’s Gallatin River Lodge. A rustic fishing and hunting lodge from the outside, complete with pond, mountain views, and deer foraging in the meadow (did I hear someone yell “cue the deer?”), the Gallatin River Lodge is anything but rustic on the inside. This little luxury inn sits on 350 acres just 15 minutes from downtown Bozeman.