Gallatin Forest Day Trips

We've taken side trips the last two days into the Gallatin National Forest. Yesterday's goal was to visit the Crazy Mountains, and today we went to the Natural Bridge and Falls on the Boulder River.

All up and down the Rocky Mountains, if you look on a map, there are named "ranges," and clumps of mountains named the X-and-Such Mountains. The Crazy Mountains are just north of Big Timber, they are a small cluster of mountains on their own, on the eastern edge of the Rockies. The tallest one, Crazy Peak, is over 11,000ft tall, which is pretty tall by Rockies standards. According to Wikipedia, the original Crow Indian name for the mountains was the Crazy Woman Mountains, and referred to a woman whose family was killed in the westward settlement movement, and she went insane and lived in the mountains.

The forest service has primitive campgrounds and hiking trails throughout the national forest areas. Montana seems to scoff at pavement, a lot of the rural roads are dirt or gravel roads. On the map it looked like one of these campgrounds was right up in the Crazies, and we wanted to get a closer look at them. So we hopped in the truck and started jolting across the countryside toward the mountains.


One of the things I find interesting about the countryside is that it is like a multi-level floor plan. One area is at one level, then there's a large step up and another large flat area is some twenty feet higher than the first.

This drive went through quite a bit of private land, with rustic old wooden cabins. There were a lot of beautiful horses. In one place we had to stop the truck to let a herd of them pass on the road. (At first I thought they wanted to come see if we had any treats for them, then we realized they just wanted to get by us.)


The road to the campground led us through a canyon into the Crazies, next to Crazy Peak's next door neighbor. We took pictures of wildflowers and pine trees and horses.



Today's trip took us south of Big Timber along the Boulder River to the Natural Bridge and Falls. This is an area where the water has worn an underground path through the rock. During the high water in the spring, the water goes over and down a high falls, but during lower water it goes under the rock and comes out below. There was a natural limestone bridge over the falls, but it collapsed in 1988. The falls area and the canyon around it was lovely.

I apologize for the drunken quality of these photos--I seem to have difficulty seeing whether things are level when I'm looking at the camera. The first photo is the rapids above the falls, before the water goes "underground." The second one is looking over the top of the high falls. The third one is opposite the falls. The high falls at the top are dry, and the water is coming out of the underground channel.

Day Trip to Yellowstone

We all climbed in the truck (Tom and I, mom and dad, and the two dogs--it was cozy) and took the great circle route from Big Timber to Red Lodge to the Yellowstone entrance by Cooke City, through the park, back out the North Entrance at Mammoth, up to Livingston and back to Big Timber.

Last night we discussed how long this would take and when we needed to get up. So we decided to aim for 7:30am, thinking it was going to take 12 hours. Major sacrifice by Tom and I to be ready to go anywhere at 7:30am, ameliorated slightly by the fact that we are still on Minnesota time which made it feel more like 8:30. But I decided that the only way I would be ready to go anywhere at that time would be to skip the whole shower-do-hair thing, so I can truly say I've been camping now having spent a day with no shower.

The initial question was the weather. We could not get any straight sort of weather prediction for the coming day. (Or, should I say, we got every sort of weather prediction for the coming day.) So we decided to get up, look at the sky, and see whether we would take the trip today or wait until Wednesday or Thursday. When I took the dogs out this morning at about 6:15 for the morning outlet the sky was completely clear. So we made the sandwiches, packed the water, and went. (The day turned out to be beautiful until late afternoon--pretty good I'd say.)

The first milestone was to be scones in Red Lodge. Red Lodge is a really cute town, and we spent quite a bit of time walking around it, but the place that made the scones was out of business. We found a bakery to buy apple turnovers and "schnecken" (I googled those, they go by about five different names) so all was not lost.

From Red Lodge to the Yellowstone entrance is a mountain pass road over the Beartooth Mountains. What a beautiful drive! Mountains, meadows covered in wildflowers, streams, rocks, winding climbing hairpin-turned roads. Here is a shot of us at a scenic overlook near the top.


To me this looked like a pretty big trip, so I was ready to just dip into Yellowstone on the north road, see Mammoth Hot Springs and head back out. But once we got into the park we wound up driving the upper loop--stopping at Tower Falls, taking the North Rim Road and looking down on the Lower Falls and Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, then wrapping around the loop back to Mammoth Hot Springs. Here's an obligatory shot of the canyon, which is so beautiful the photo is pretty much required. Also a shot of the four of us on the North Rim.


We had very good luck with wildlife. On the northern road after entering the park we saw several large herds of bison, including a rather flirtatious couple just off the roadside. On our way out we saw a gaggle of big-horned sheep just up the hillside from the road. There was at least one rumored bear that was just out of sight (there are always one or two of those).

I was pretty excited to go to Mammoth, because I have visited the park only once before, and we did not get up to Mammoth, and the pictures of it look so cool. Having been there I can confirm, it is really really cool. Alien and otherworldly. Water loaded with calcium and minerals gets squeezed out of the ground, heated by the underlying volcano magma, and the minerals harden as the water runs off, leaving these glacier-like rock formations. We have a number of great photos of this, but I'll show this one.


We ran into all sorts of road construction, of the sort where one direction holds up and waits while the traffic from the other side uses the one available lane. Except with the added twist that everybody gets to wait awhile while the men working work with no traffic at all. At one we sat for about 20 minutes, while the bikers ahead of us swatted mosquitos off their faces and necks and got basically eaten alive. (At one hold-up Tom got out of the truck to wander off taking wildflower pictures, at another in the town of Cooke City he ran into a drugstore for batteries.) So that ate up quite a bit of time, and in Livingston we spent about a half hour trying to get some pizza from the Pizza Hut, so all in all it was 13 hours door-to-door. But a day of simply stunning mountain scenery. Just beautiful.

Arriving at Big Timber

This morning we headed west out of Glendive across eastern Montana. What beautiful country! Interstate 94 follows the Yellowstone River all through this part of the state, along with the railroad. A lot of the area is undeveloped, although we did see some farmland and some horses. More huge fields, some beautiful expanses of golden wheat, and quite a few cornfields, irrigated and improbably bright green against the buff yellow of the surrounding hills. We saw a brightly painted red and white building touting their red angus beef, but unfortunately we did not see any of the cattle. We did pass a couple livestock yards, and numerous gargantuan grain storage facilities that were probably the size of several city blocks, but in the vast openness it's hard to appreciate their size. In one area, all the hilltops were dotted with pine trees. Some areas had considerable trees, and others were open prairie. Everything is so big it defies photography.

It seemed like we were climbing an elongated staircase going from Glendive to Billings, but it turns out that we climbed just as much from from Billings to Big Timber, and even further from Minneapolis to Glendive. We started out at 830 feet and are now at 4091. When we go home next weekend we'll be able to coast half the way!

We are camped along the Boulder River, which is pretty full and rushes by with a bit of a roar. I am looking forward to sleeping to the sound of it, and with "good sleeping weather"--temps maybe below 60! When we stopped for gas today in Billings it was 98, so I could go for some cool. Snuggling under the blankets, as opposed to being clammy and thinking "get 'em off me!" at four in the morning. Does make it a little more difficult to pry oneself out in the morning to let out the dogs, however.

Trek Across North Dakota

It's Sunday morning and we have left Glendive, Montana on our way to Big Timber. We had a nice day yesterday driving across North Dakota--much nicer than I expected. At first we were heading straight into a stiff northwest wind which meant bad gas mileage and stopping frequently. Since our daughter went to college in Moorhead, we've made the drive up 94 to Fargo many times and knew that that was not a particularly interesting trip. (Tom used to refuse to go up there just because of the four hours of boring drive there and back.)

Once we turned westward the wind was not right in our face, and as the day wore on it eventually died down. I was expecting North Dakota to be flat. Much of Minnesota is flat, except for the parts that are near rivers. North Dakota had what I would describe as rolling hills, although the hills had interesting "shape features". It looked as though it had been a huge desert once, with sand dunes and piles of sand heaped up to points, and then one day it all froze into rock.

Most of it was cultivated into enormous fields, with occasional batches of cows (including lots of cute baby cows). There was that huge sense of space you get out in the
countryside when there are not a lot of trees and you can see for miles and miles. The road wound around just enough that you didn't get that feeling of one long straight stretch of boredom you get in some parts of the country. Unfortunately I did not have the presence of mind to have the camera at hand, so I will have to try to capture some of it on the trip back. (Then I can get a shot of the exit sign for the town named Home on the Range.)

We stopped for gas in Dickinson, and just west of that you come to the "painted canyon", and Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There was a rest stop with a scenic overlook, and we saw just enough prior to that to know we needed to stop and see it. Here's a representative picture:


We were pretty tired puppies by the time we got things set up in Glendive. The campground there was quite nice, and we had a pull-through spot which makes it extra easy. Our spot was at the edge of the campground, looking out toward the sunset and more buttes. I was googling our directions to Big Timber this morning, and I have a feeling we'll have a beautiful drive today and wind up in a completely different kind of setting than we just left.

Amish Furniture

Here is a picture of the new table and chairs--they look lovely! And they arrived in a normal truck, with no horses. The whole family came up for a trip to the cities however, including a young son who was very frightened of dogs (my house with three excited pooches was not the best place to be visiting). They were vying to see who could bark/yell the loudest.

Cassius Spaniel

I've decided that Butterscotch floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. The floating is quite something--I wish I had a video! :-) She must have expended so much energy crying today that she is pretty quiet tonight. She and Tucker spent quite a bit of time catching toys, but otherwise pretty low key.

In other news, a dinette set we ordered from an Amish furniture maker over Memorial Day is arriving tomorrow morning. So I'm going to work from home in the morning, which makes life easier for dogs. (The Amish are networked. The family we talked to doesn't make tables and chairs, so some Amish from Indiana made them.) I'm assuming there won't be horses in the driveway--I guess we'll see! I'm not sure I want to know how long it takes horses to get here from Harmony. The bad news: I have to clean off the kitchen table.

Some Pictures

First, here is a raspberry-picking picture from Saturday--aww, how pastoral:

Next a couple pictures of our canine guest, Butterscotch, one with resident dogs included. It is very difficult to find B. sitting still enough for a picture, and even more difficult to get any of them together. Maybe better ones on Friday, stay posted.

The five of us went for a walk together tonight, and I'm not sure who was the most tired when we got home. I thought we would all be lying around panting, but Butterscotch didn't really wind down until after another hour of chasing the other two dogs around the family room. Right now everyone is chilling and thinking about bedtime.