Glacier, Shortest River, Yellowstone and More

Monday: Tried to go to Glacier National Park. The free shuttle only functions from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Since our RV is 22 feet, we can’t drive the Going to the Sun Road (vehicles have to be 21 feet or less). All we could do was to drive in 5 miles, and take a hike. Even that hike was cut short as dark clouds gathered, and sprinkles started falling. We got back to the RV before the real rain fell. Ah well, such is part of the adventure. What we saw was beautiful.

Tuesday: We visited Great Falls, but couldn’t go to the island because it has the same dates of operation as Glacier. We took a hike along the river, though and that was gorgeous.

After the hike we went to the Louis & Clark Interpretive Center. There was so much valuable information about what they went through we spent nearly 3 hours. Not too much to take pictures of, but enjoyed learning more details. The down side of spending so much time was that we didn’t have time to follow the historic trail by it.

Wednesday: We visited the world’s shortest river, Roe River, at 201 feet. It flows from Giant Spring, which percolates from underground spilling 150,000,000 gallons of water daily. Part of it flows directly into the Missouri, but Roe River takes its share 201 feet. The first picture is of the spring, the second where the spring dumps into the Roe River, and for the last one, I just turned around on the bridge to show the end of the river.

Thursday: We took a beautiful hike above Billings Montana in the 4 Dances Recreational Area. Not many trees, but a different kind of amazing beauty. We also visited the temple.

Friday: We visited the fascinating Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. Naturally they had a lot on him, but also a large Indian exhibit, thousands of guns, western art, and natural history.

Saturday: Yellowstone! Old Faithful will be another day; today we visited the Mud Volcano. Cracks opened up in this field in 1978. The trees that weren’t killed when the mud started bubbling up soon died because the ground around there rose to 97 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Also, we saw buffalo along the way to Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon.

We took 2 hikes in that canyon. The shorter and easier hike was for a view of the lower falls. The longest was to the Upper Falls, and the bottom of the Lower Falls. We hiked down 328 steps as well as the trail to get to the lower falls, but there was a rainbow at the end of the journey. The way up sure got our hearts pumping. This was at 8,000 feet elevation. It was worth it!