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!

Today was amazing! We stayed in a nicer place last night that had a pool. We can't remember the name of it at this moment, but I'll add that in later. LOL We're all getting a little tired and road-weary!

After waking, breakfasting at the hotel and packing the van, we hit the road by 8 am and headed northwest again. I just have to say that Saskatchewan is REALLY FLAT. I'm talking miles and miles of no hills, barely even a tree. We saw some more antelope, and lots of farmland. We also saw lots of little ground squirrels keeping active colonies along the roadsides. They are really cute!

After finally leaving SK, we entered Alberta, drove through Medicine Hat, and arrived at the Dinosaur Provincial Park. This is in the heart of the Canadian Badlands, and is a hotbed of fossil discoveries. Many, many famous discoveries have been made here, and I imagine many more are still to come. We had a great time driving around, imagining what life was like during the Cretaceous Period and taking pictures. Si was so excited he was bouncing!

After that taste of Paleontology, we just had to climb back into the car and hurry on to Drumheller, home of the Royal Tyrell Museum! We checked into our hotel (and staying here 2 nights!) and we asked the clerk if she could recommend a local eatery. We were informed that, being Sunday night, many places were closed. Seriously. The Last Chance Saloon, though, would allow kids in on Sunday, and they reportedly have great steaks. Yum. We headed out, way into the boonies, and found the place to be delightful! The people were friendly, the steaks were, indeed, delicious (and grill-your-own!), and my chicken pie was yummers, too. It was a great find! It reminded Mike and I a lot of Appalachia, an old coal mining town that used to boast a few thousand in population and now has 27.

There were some shenanigans in town after dinner, but we're all pooped and we need our rest so we can do 12 hours in the Royal Tyrell tomorrow!

First Day!

We are all so happy we were able to start a day early! Today we woke up to pack, finish grocery shopping, etc. We got on the road around 11 am. Even with the late start we were able to travel roughly 570 miles today, and are staying the night in Wisconsin. Fun! All are feeling well.




A highlight of the day was passing by Fithian, Illinois. It would have been fun to stop, but we were making such good time we all wanted to just keep driving.

We had lunch at a Rest Area out of our coolers, and we had dinner at a local diner in Illinois. The diner, named Delaney's is in Oglesby. It was a delightful surprise where Si and Mike both got great steaks and I had some yummy tacos.




We're listening to Neil Gaiman's American Gods on CD. We've been doing so much chattering, though, that we've only managed to make it to disc 3 today.