States & Provinces visited on this segment: Montana and North Dakota
Dates: Monday June 25th to Saturday June 30th
Miles driven: 1006 (2220 total to date)
Summary: We left St. Mary Montana on Monday morning and headed southeast to Great Falls. We spent Monday afternoon at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive center. Karen and I had been at the interpretive center in 1998 when it was new, but this was the first time the kids had been there. The center is awesome, and I think it is the best informative center on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The center sits on the banks of the Missouri river in Great Falls where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent 18 days portaging around the falls in the summer of 1805. The kids had a great time and completed their junior ranger badges by attending an interpretive talk given by a park ranger and finding the answers to several series of questions based on reading the displays throughout the center.
Originally we had planned to head due east across Montana to North Dakota after Great Falls. We had wanted to visit Karen’s uncle in Billings, but be was going to be gone on a fishing trip during the time we thought we would be in the vicinity. However, since we got delayed in Glacier it turned out he was coming home the same day we left Great Falls. So, we gave Allen and Joyce a call and then decided to head southeast to Billings to visit with them. We spent two days at their house in Billings. On the way to Billings we stopped in Harlowton which is where Karen’s father grew up. We also wanted to see Karen’s other uncle who works on a cattle ranch outside of Harlowton in Two Dot. However, Uncle Gary was up in a remote area of the mountains when we passed through so we were not able to visit with him. While in Billings we visited with Karen’s Uncle Allen and Aunt Joyce. The kids loved their dog Annie. On Wednesday we drove to Pompey’s Pillar National Monument. This is the only place on their route where you can see physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark expedition. William Clark carved his name into this ~150’ high sandstone pillar on July 25, 1806. There is a new interpretive center at the site, and the kids completed the junior ranger activities. While in Billings we also went down to Riverfront Park, which has a lot of nice walking/biking trails along the Yellowstone River in Billings. While at the park we saw some beavers, a turtle, and lots of fish in the water, plus a bunch of rabbits and a raccoon on land, and lots of ducks and geese in the water and on shore.
We left Billings on Thursday the 28th, and headed southeast to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. We spent most of the afternoon there, exploring the battlefield and the visitor center. The kids completed their junior ranger badges (have you noticed a pattern yet?) which helped them to learn more about this battle in 1876 between the US army led by George Custer and members of several plains Indian tribes led by chiefs Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse among others. It was hot at Little Bighorn, close to 100 deg F, with no shade. After leaving the battlefield we drove north to connect with I94 at Custer, MT. We stopped for a break in Custer and took some pictures of the school in Custer where both of Karen’s parents taught school. Karen’s parents lived in Custer when she was born and she lived there for 7 months before her parents moved to Oregon. After a short stop in Custer we continued on to Miles City for the night. We tried out the air conditioning on our trailer for the first time and were glad to have it.
On Friday the 29th we went the rest of the way across Montana on I94 and into North Dakota. We spent two nights in Medora, ND. Medora only has ~100 permanent residents, and much of the town is old restored buildings, along with some new buildings constructed to look like they would fit in with the Old West style of the town when it was founded in the 1880s. These buildings house various businesses, museums, and performances catering to tourists. We went to the Medora Musical on Friday night which I would highly recommend to anyone passing through the area. The performance takes place in an outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Badlands of North Dakota. The variety show blends old and new style western music and song and dance routines in a tribute to Theodore Roosevelt who owned a ranch in this area as a young man. In addition, there was a special performance by the Mapapa acrobats, a troupe from Kenya. Medora is also the entrance to the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We went through the South Unit visitor center which includes Roosevelt’s first cabin that he had built at his Maltese Cross Ranch. We also went to the Painted Canyon visitor center which is ~10 miles east of Medora as well as driving through the park. While driving through the park we saw several bands of wild horses, a lot of bison (including one herd of 200+ animals), plus countless prairie dogs. Karen and the kids also took a 2 hour horseback ride in the park and observed bison while on their trail ride.
Next up: Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Elizabeth’s notes: To be added
Matthew's notes: To be added
Other notes: It has taken a while to get these next parts done and posted. They have been written for a while, but hadn't had time to sort through all the pictures and get them to a reasonable number w/captions added so I postponed uploading them until I had photos to go along with the text. Also I have had issues getting things to be formatted the way I want and have basically given up trying to make the blog look nice. Blogger is definitely not WYSIWYG like advertised. It adds additional blank lines where you don't want them and refuses to put blank lines some places where you want them. Everything looks fine when you edit it and preview the blog, but when you post it extra lines get added and some blank lines get deleted. While Blogger may be easy to use if you just want to type in unformated text, it is a pain if you want to format your blog to make it look reasonable. Putting in photos is an even bigger pain in Blogger so I am just putting the map at the top and putting a link to all the rest of the photos.
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