After leaving Hamilton I headed to Bozeman to pick up Nancy at the airport. I took back roads to Butte then I-90 to Bozeman.
My route headed south down the Bitterroot Valley on Highway 93 to Lost Trail Pass (Lewis and Clark got lost in the snow and spent extra days up there. The nice campground at Indian Trees was even nicer than the one at Blodgett Canyon and not snowed in as I expected. I didn't stay there. I continued from Lost Trail Pass east on Highway 43 through the Big Hole. Think of big skies, wide open spaces, high open grasslands and lots of cattle. "Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above. Don't fence me in..." They must have driven the cattle down the highway for some miles. The result was a splattering of dung on my truck. Speed limit is 80 mph. Many people go faster. I stuck to 65-70 mph. I drove through Wisdom and Wise (not being qualified to stay), and ended up in Butte for lunch. I ate carrots and tomatoes from the cooler then visited the rock museum on the campus of the Montana Mining College. Butte is known as being a mile high and a mile deep because it is at elevation 5000 feet, but the mines that permeate under the city are up to a mile deep. I also paid tribute to the Berkeley Pit open pit copper mine. The stew in the abandoned pit is so toxic that a flock of geese once landed in it and died. You can open a mine for almost nothing and leave a polluted landscape for generations to come. We do not pay enough for our metals, coal, oil, fracking and minerals.
The visitor center in Butte had exhibits of over a dozen fishing flies. They gave the history of each fly going back 100 years. They described the type of bug they were mimicing, the performance of the flies, and the person who first made them. Each exhibit showed how the fly evolved over the decades. Cool, but overwhelming for a non-fisherman.
On leaving Butte, I had a huckleberry milkshake.
I arrived in Bozeman with time to "clean up good" before Nancy's arrival. We immediately decided to drive 35 minutes east to Livingston to eat at THE BEST STEAKHOUSE IN THE WORLD, Montana Ribs and Chop House. We waited 20 minutes for a table at 7:40 on a Thursday night, but it was worth the wait since we had wanted to come back since the first time we were there 15 plus years ago. Green beans, salad, beer and 8 oz sirloin steak so tender you can cut it with a butter knife. So tasty you could come back every day (we did circle back for an early steak lunch on our way back to the airport 4 days later). We drove back to Bozeman in mixed snow and rain.
The next morning we stocked up on food at the Bozeman Co-op. Then we skedadled up to Yellowstone via the Gallatin River. At West Yellowstone there were only 2 cars in front of us at the entry gate. I used my old man's national park pass to get in free. We continued on to Old Faithful Inn with stops to stretch our legs and lunch. Lunch was sitting in the camper in the rain along the Firehole River canyon. After some geyser walks, and a stop at the visitor center we chilled out on the third floor of the Old Faithful Inn lobby. Dinner was in the camper in the parking lot of the Inn. We had steak and green pepper stirfry.
We settled into our primo room on the third floor with views overlooking the upper geyser basin. A romantic spot to say the least.
Next post will be about our stay in the Old Faithful area.
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