Traveling through Montana to Wyoming

We left Yellowstone on Sunday and decided to avoid the switchbacks on the mountain passes and instead took the scenic route through Big Sky Montana. Route 191 is a beautiful road that winds through mountain passes along the river bed.

We stopped in to surprise Ann's friend from high school, Cindy. She and her husband Chuck, live in Big Sky, Montana, which is a resort town of only 1000 residents year round. People come here to enjoy the river in the summer and the mountains in the winter. Chuck said they get 400 inches of snow a year! We went to lunch at a place called Choppers where there was a motorcycle on the bar for decoration. Ann and Cindy were thrilled to see each other and catch up on life.

When we left Big Sky we followed the Gallatin River which was beautiful. In fact, this was the setting for the film, A River Runs Through It. We saw people swimming, rafting and fly fishing as we made our way to the north. 

As we drove along we got hungry for ice cream so we pulled into Custer's Last Stand (that joke was for Max). Seriously, we headed into Little Big Horn to see the battlefields just as the sky was darkening for a huge lightening storm. Scattered throughout the land were horses that grazed among the headstones.

This a view from one of ridges in the battlefield where Custer was surrounded by over 2,000 Native American warriors. It's easy to see how the people disappeared among the ridges which aided in their surprise attacks.

It soon began to rain furiously and lightening bolts arced from sky to ground but we drove to every site on a winding narrow hilltop road. We ended up here as the rain subsided. This is the site of Custer's Last Stand. He died here along with many other soldiers and Native Americans. It was a moving experience to see the sequence of events that led to this tragedy.

As we left Little Big Horn, these two cowgirls headed off into the sunset...

We reached Wyoming as the purple sky darkened and lightening lit up the sky. It was an easy decision not to camp so we looked for another place to hitch our Suburu.

The first big town we came to was Sheridan, Wyoming, home of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. This is the lobby of The Mill Inn, formerly a flour mill, where we stopped.

This  western hotel was filled with authentic photographs of the Old West and even the bedspreads depicted cowboy scenes. Tomorrow it's on to Mount Rushmore.