We love Montana! Coming into it from the West you first go through the mountains – the Purcell Mountains and then as you get to the eastern part of the state it is the wide expanses of grassy plains. The air is clear; the sky is as big as “they” say it is and you see more cattle than buildings.
Our first stop was in Missoula – a favorite city of mine. We stayed at Jim and Mary’s RV Park again. It’s one of the prettiest campgrounds we’ve been in. In between the sites are beautifully groomed flowers in antique pieces. Our fellow volunteers at Kartchner Caverns, Bill and Terri, get some of the credit for this pretty RV Park since they work camp there.
Missoula has a great downtown area and this time we checked out the Montana Natural History Museum where we saw displays of wildlife taxidermy and an excellent movie on the Cataclysmic Ice Age Floods and the geological history of the prehistoric Lake Missoula. This museum was along the River Walk in Cara’s Park. We checked out the Lewis and Clark markers next to Brennan’s Wave, a small waterfall on the Clark Fork (of the Columbia River).
Brennan’s Wave
Mural in downtown Missoula
We also went to Elk Country to learn about the conservation programs that keep the elk herd healthy. We are not hunters and as long-time vegetarians and animal rights people our opinions of the “sport” of hunting seems diametrically opposite but it was good for us to learn how hunting contributes significantly to conservation and protection efforts. Elk Country has beautiful displays, great information and all the proceeds from its gift shop go towards its goal of conservation.
Inside the Elk Country museum
We followed up this attraction with a walk around downtown Missoula. We stopped in the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center and Olive Branch Fair Trade Store. Jeannette Rankin is one of my heroes. She was a force for peace and women’s rights and showed enormous courage both times she served in the Senate. It’s very comforting to stand at least for a few minutes in a place that honors peace.
Jeannette Rankin
We hung out for a while, checking out other shops, and then stopped at the Tuesday evening Farmers Market on Higgins Street, looking for huckleberries and Candy Girl melons. We loved the neat displays of local growers and picked up tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, scallions and a sweet cantaloupe. Unfortunately, no huckleberries or Candy Girl melons in sight.
After Missoula, we traveled to Bozeman, another city with a nice downtown area. Bozeman is the largest city in Montana but still seems quiet and more a typical University town. We made sure to visit the Museum of the Rockies on the University of Montana Campus – in our opinion, the best dinosaur exhibits we have ever seen. This museum is responsible for some landmark discoveries, especially in the nearby areas where geological events have exposed acres of dinosaur bones. We also went to the planetarium show on Dark Matter – giving us an all new perspective as we gaze upward.
Museum of the Rockies
One more stop in Montana – Garryowen!
Garryowen is a truly unique town with a population of 2. It has one building which is a town hall, a post office, the Custer Battlefield Museum and gift shop, and a gas station with a Subway shop. When it was put up for sale in 2012 no one bid on it, but it is somehow still thriving today.
Quite a strange name – Garryowen. It turns out that the 7th Calvary of the Civil War had a favorite marching song – the Irish ballad called “Garryowen.” One other strange fact about Garryowen is that it is the site of the skeletal remains of a Calvary soldier, who eerily has no head. They recovered buttons and bullets that document him a bit. On the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn, his body was re interred in a burying ceremony. He was buried with a hatchet peace pipe and tomahawk – hence the phrase “burying the hatchet”.
We didn’t have time to see The Center Pole, a straw bale earth lodge, on Buffalo Indian Trustland on the Crow Reservation (Crows in this area are also known as the Apsaalooke), But we did learn that a famous resident of Garryowen was Henry Real Bird – the Poet Laureate of Montana.
We stayed at 7th Ranch Campground. By climbing up a small hill near our site, you could view Little Bighorn Battlefield. At the top of this hill was a flag with painted rocks around the base. I like to paint rocks so we left one with our names to mingle with the others.
On Saturday, we went to Little Bighorn Battlefield. We had been there on our first visit to Montana, but it is a place that is certainly worth visiting more than once. The interpretive guides are impressive – with extensive knowledge combined with a sense of drama that makes for a vivid portrayal of this epic battle. On the short ride home, we stopped at the Garryowen gift store and bought some postcards.
Memorial at the Little Bighorn Battlefield
That was our last stop in Montana. Our travels brought us to All Seasons Campground where Oslen the owner stopped by to give us visitor information and help us with our stay. Oslen told us all about the war between the sheep ranchers and the cattle ranchers. And he talked about an historic gun that was part of his family heritage. This was a really small campground – instead of numbers, the sites were marked with letters and they only got part way through the alphabet. This campground was in another little town – Rozet. Wyoming. This town had a population of 25, Wyoming’s least populous town.
It was good to be in Wyoming again – the Equality State with the motto “Equal Rights”. The scenery is western wheat-grass prairie – with as big a sky as Montana. Rozet is near a much bigger city – Gillette. We had already been to Devil’s Tower so on our one day in Wyoming we checked out downtown Gillette. We had a good lunch at Las Margaritas (you can find good Mexican food anywhere in this country!) We visited the Rockpile Museum. There we spoke with the woman at the front desk. Her personal history of her work in the quarry as a young girl was amazing and gave us even more insight into the interesting historic displays.
The Rockpile Museum namesake
It was a quick stop in Wyoming this time. We left Wyoming on Wednesday to return to our home state of South Dakota.