We had a great day in Glacier. It rained on and off, but we still saw a lot of things. Mike and Si saw a Black Bear pretty close to the road, and later saw a mama Grizzly and 2 cubs - there are some great pics, but I'll wait til we're sharing Mike's pictures. We saw some beautiful waterfalls, too. It's really lovely with all the mountains and fields and wildlife.



When we left Glacier we drove Southeast through Montana and made our way slowly through the state. We found some cool roadside historical markers from Lewis and Clark's expedition, and we passed a lot of ranches. This is really amazing country! We've seen so many pronghorn antelope and mule deer that we barely even mention them anymore!



We winded our way down to Bozeman, Montana. Montana Univ. has the Museum of the Rockies, curated by Jack Horner, and we wanted to see what dinos they had there. This pic was taken out front. The steel cast was made from the fossil named Big Mike, one of the most complete T Rexes ever found or something. We saw the real fossils inside. They also had a great exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci's machines with life-size models made of wood that you could (often) touch and work. It was very cool!

Outside of Bozeman is National Bridge State Monument, which we visited. The water was running so strong and fast it was nearly deafening! You can see the river disappear underground and then come pouring back out. Cool!





This park was really well designed, too, because the whole area was wheelchair accessible, which made it easily walkable even for someone like me with bad joints, etc.






Bozeman is really small town, but they do have a really nice restaurant! The Grand Hotel had excellent food, including buffalo steaks and elk. We all had an truly delicious meal (even if I did eat too much!)

We left Bozeman and drove about 1.5 more hours to Columbus, MT to spend the night.


After spending the night in a cheap place along the road, we went to Little Bighorn National Battlefield. This ranger was a great storyteller and told the riveting story of how the battle went down, and he pointed out exactly where everything happened. Very interesting. We drove around a bit to see the smaller markers where the soldiers and native warriors fell, and then we moved on. Tonight we are in Sundance, WY. The rain has come in full force since about 1, so we're going to bed early and hoping for some breaks in the bad weather over the next couple of days so we can get some good pics in the Black Hills around the monuments!

Ta-ta for now!

I wanted to add a few more comments about yesterday before we move on. Since Si is still sleeping and Mike is in the shower, I have a few stolen moments. Drumheller is in a long narrow valley of the badlands. Just like in Appalachia, there are side valleys (hollers down in our hills, coulees up here). It was really neat going down the coulee last night to the Last Chance Saloon. The road we were on was also known as The 11 Bridges Road. The Saloon was between bridges 9 and 10.

The history of the saloon says that when this was a mining town, the only access they had was by the train!

Drumheller seems to be capitolizing on the Dino theme. There are cheezy dinosaur statues in varying states of authenticity all over town. One, billed as "The largest Dinosaur on earth" is at the tourist information center. We pulled in there after dinner and had a bit of fun. I love posing with statues!
Mike likes being silly, too.










Simon declined to be silly, but he did pose with a claw so you can see how big this dino is! It's even got an observation deck inside. Don't be surprised if we go back when it's open!