After leaving the family reunion in Colorado we spent a day in Wyoming on our way to visit Garrett and Krystal's family in Great Falls, Montana. In Wyoming we started off our day early at Devil's Tower, which I've wanted to see since I saw "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
It was the first national monument in the United States, and it was quite a sight to see.
Kent thought this sign was funny that we saw for sale in the gift shop.
After visiting Devil's Tower, we raced across the entire state of Wyoming to get to Yellowstone National Park. Fortunately, the speed limit was 80mph.
Once we got to Yellowstone, it took us another two hours of driving within the park to get to the Old Faithful geyser. Unfortunately, it started raining right before we got to Old Faithful. But at least we only had to wait about 30 minutes after we arrived before it went off.
There was really too much steam to get a good photo of the geyser.
We also drove around to some of the other interesting sights in the park.
As we were on our way out of the park we got stuck in a buffalo traffic jam.
The buffalo weren't at all afraid of the cars and took their sweet time about moving out of the road.
We spent that night in Bozeman, Montana. The next morning we went to the Museum of the Rockies, which is on the Montana State University campus and is affiliated with the Smithsonian.
It was full of dinosaur bones that had been excavated in Montana. The skeleton below had just been returned to the museum and the display opened up just a few months before we went to see it.
Here are a few scenes we saw as we drove from Bozeman to Great Falls, where Garrett and Krystal's family lives.
We saw some really beautiful countryside.
In Great Falls one of the places we went to see was the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center. It was very interesting.
This is a picture of some of the "falls" that became the namesake of the town.
Granddad had lots of help when he was washing the cars.
We celebrated Makayla's third birthday while we were in town.
Her mom made a beautiful castle cake, and Makayla was thrilled with it.
I graduated from high school in Great Falls, so Kent and I drove out to Charles M. Russell High School and took a picture. It looked pretty much the same to me, and I graduated 38 years ago. I also visited my junior high school friend, Katrina Carpenter. Can't believe I've been friends with her for over 43 years.
Pictured below was one of the sunsets we saw from Krystal and Garrett's backyard. Montana's nickname is "Big Sky Country" after all.
As we were driving from Great Falls to Spokane, Washington, Kent and I stopped outside of Helena to go to the Gates of the Mountains, so named by Meriweather Lewis in 1805.
We took a two-hour boat cruise up the Missouri River and saw some amazing scenery, between limestone cliffs. Our guide was very interesting and told lots of history of the area.
We saw bald eagles, which is the first time I've seen them.
We took about 50 photos, but have selected just a few to give an idea of the area.
We've had such a great time seeing so many awesome and interesting sights as we drove across the United States!
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