8/3 to 8/9
We are on I 90 heading to a small town near Billings. The countryside is quite interesting and beautiful. The rolling hills are very colorful. The farmers grow crops on any areas possible, and because of little rainfall, they have to irrigate everything. So the fields are very green and the rest is many earth tone colors. There are foot hills to the north that are spotted with trees and in the distance a tall mountain range. The sky is dotted with big puffy clouds. Isn’t God good?!! Amen. Just out of Bozeman, we bare now heading into the mountains through a narrow canyon with awesome rock formations. The canyon has now widened out into a gorgeous area with crops, including corn and wheat, in the flat lands and houses dotted along the mountain side. The vehicles on this interstate highway seem to be mostly RV’s and big trucks. We are straight north of the Bear Tooth Mountain range in Wyoming which was some of our favorite rides last summer. We are staying at Laurel, MT in the city park campground. It is shady and very nice. We hope to be able to stay here a week. We want to take a side trip to Red Lodge. Also hope to get the windshield replaced while in Billings. Billings is only about 20 miles east of here.
The first day here we went to Billings to stock up on groceries and supplies at Walmart. There doesn’t seem to be much tourist places here for us to visit. Billings has a number of Horse Statues around their city. These are a fund raiser for the city as were the buffalo we saw in Great Falls. It is our understanding several cities are doing this. The city furnishes the statue and citizens paint the statue and give it an appropiate name. Then at a later date they are auctioned off to the highest bidder. We did drive south to Red Lodge. We took a few pictures on the way to Red Lodge and then some of a coal mine which was working until the 1950’s. When we got home I copied the pictures to the computer and deleted them from the camera. Then I shut down the computer program before saving it so those pictures are gone, gone, GONE. I have enclosed a wed site with info about the coal mine as well as Red Lodge. http://www.redlodge.com/visitors/categories.asp?catID=VIS02 The town, Bearcreek nearly became a ghost town after the fire but now is finding new life as a bedroom community for the growing city of Red Lodge. We did get our mail here the morning we left but we did not make contact with the insurance company soon enough to get the windshield replaced while here. Arrangements were made for us to do that while we are in Colorado Springs.