Field Trip USA: Eastern Montana

The ship has finally sailed! We left Helena on Thursday, August 14th, and spent three days touring Eastern Montana. How can it take three days to tour half a state you ask? Remember that Montana is the fourth largest state in the Union, trailing only Alaska, Texas, and California. It is almost 800 miles to drive from Troy in the northwestern part of the state, to Ekalaka in the southeast (which is close to where we are now). That's the equivalent of driving from Boston to Cape Fear, North Carolina -- which would take you through 10 states if I counted correctly.

The first day we drove through Bozeman and showed the kids where Teressa and I went to college. We had a hard time parking on campus with the trailer, so dropped the trailer at the Museum of the Rockies and then drove to the Pickle Barrel for lunch. The cheese steak sandwiches are just as good as they were thirty years ago! From there we went to the student union building, and then over to the Engineering building (the kids were impressed to see my name on the wall after all these years).

We drove on to Billings and spent the next two nights parked in front of Teressa's niece's house. Michelle, Frank and the girls showered us with great western hospitality while we toured the area and had a couple of issues fixed with our 5th wheel trailer.

If you are ever in Billings, make sure to visit the Pictograph Cave State Park on the southeast side of town. Frank had recommended we see it, and we were really glad he did – it was the highlight of the day. There were only three cars in the parking lot when we arrived, and the park was full of rabbits. Rocky must have a greyhound somewhere in his family tree, as he explodes into motion at the sight of anything with big ears and a cotton ball tail. We are going to have to buy him a harness (we forgot his old one in Portland) or he will end up hanging himself one of these times when he hits the end of the leash line! There are three caves at the park – Pictograph Cave, Middle Cave, and Ghost Cave. While the actual pictographs aren’t as well preserved as others we have seen, the caves and the setting are spectacular. Well maintained trails lead from the parking area up to each of the caves. The state has done a nice of job of installing interpretive signs to help describe all the flora and fauna in the park -- well worth the trip.

Next we travelled south to the Custer Battlefield. It was a night and day difference from Pictograph State Park – there were busloads of tourists, mosquitoes everywhere, and the scenery is not near as spectacular! The history is definitely interesting, and we were very happy we watched the documentary the night before, but it didn’t take more than 30 minutes to elbow our way through the crowds to see everything we wanted to see.

The next day we left Billings and headed east towards Glendive. Our first stop was at Pompeys Pillar on the Yellowstone. They have a beautiful new visitor center that was built for the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition a few years back. We hiked up to the top of the pillar and looked at where William Clark signed his name on the return trip of the Voyage of Discovery (the picture of the four of us is from the top of the pillar). The site far exceeded our expectations!

Our RV park for the evening was located on the east end of Glendive, a nice facility with full hookups and showers. After a quick dinner of French dip sandwiches, we piled in the pickup and drove to Makoshika State Park to watch the sun set. Makoshika is a Lakota Indian word meaning "bad earth" or "bad lands". It is out of this world! And we couldn't have timed it any better -- as the sun set in the west, the moon appeared behind the hills to the east. We were treated to a spectacular display of light and shadows dancing across the bad lands for over two hours, with a warm breeze to keep the bugs at bay. It was some of the most striking scenery we have ever seen, and there was almost nobody there on a Saturday night!