Bozeman to Billings under the Big Sky

Well, it's day six of our life on the road and I have to say that I have quietly put aside all my fears about living in a container the size of my hobby room. RVing is simply a ton of fun and not to be missed, though it's not without it's minor -- and sometimes major -- problems and inconveniences.

Like last night in Bozeman, Montana, where the RV park was achingly beautiful, our individual space wonderful and level, and the laundry room totally vacant and waiting for our load of towels. Absolutely everything about our experience there was great except their WiFi was on the fritz due, not to their equipment (I could connect to their router) but due to the local phone company's faux pas. We had fun anyway, especially when we got to tour the owner's greenhouse where they were growing absolutely prize-winning tomatoes.

We've found the some things just don't go your way no matter how prepared you are. Like today when I attempted to park on a quiet city street in Bozeman so I could dash around the corner and buy a circular polarizer filter for my SLR. Little did I know that the pool of water next to the curb hid a park bench-sized hole that, when the motor home's tires to dropped into it a good six inches, the coach tilted crazily and brought the refrigerator's rooftop evaporative cooling coil's plastic housing in fatal contact with a century old tree planted in the parkway. The result was one largely destroyed cover. That kind of fun stuff.

On the other side of the coin, the things you get to see and the people you get to meet make you quickly forget the pain and suffering and make you realize that things just don't get much better in life than when you can cruise the highways of America searching for adventure and literally find it around every corner.

Today Concetta and I make an absolutely amazing find in Bozeman in the form of an attraction called, "The Museum of the Rockies." Wow! What a place! We wandered the halls for at least a couple of hours looking at everything from Dinosaur skeletons to plains Indian crafts, from horse-drawn wagons to natural history exhibits. It was all so well done that we just hated to leave. When lunch time came and our stomachs told us we needed nourishment we headed for the RV to have lunch. But before we'd gone far we discovered that next door to the museum they were hosting a full-fledged Chautauqua surrounding a nineteenth century farmhouse. There were exhibits on period gardening, vintage firearms, weaving, kitchen chores, music and singing, antique machinery, and, well, you name it. It was all so colorful and exiting looking, we determined to go have lunch and then come back and take in the fun. All this meant that we didn't hit the road until 2:30 in the afternoon. Still, we made our next port of call, Billings, Montana. From here I think it's a short jaunt to the Custer Battlefield park.

Just a word on Bozeman itself. It is one of the nicest, cleanest, most historic looking towns we've seen in many years, certainly the most attractive place we've seen on this trip. Since we were intent on both finding a photo store for the purchase of my filter and finding the Museum of the Rockies that had been advertised on the freeway, we did a considerable amount of roving around. Here can be found block after block of vintage homes, all well kept, and a main street which boasts several blocks of well tended commercial buildings. I know there must be the inevitable ugly parts somewhere, but we never saw them. Santa Fe, New Mexico used to be my favorite "other place" I might see myself living if I had to leave Carson City, but I think I'm going to move Bozeman, Montana into the front-runner spot for future re-location. It's just that charming. Concetta, for her part, liked my buddy Charley seims' neighborhood near Portland, Oregon. Granted, Portland is mighty pretty owing to the fact that everything is so green. Unfortunately it gets that way because the rain falls steadily for months at a time. Everything turns green -- your lawn, your foliage, your roof, the cover on your boat. You get the picture.

Our route this trip involved us driving north from Carson City, Nevada, as far as Washington State just south of Seattle. At that point we started East with an intended destination of somewhere on the east coast -- Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, or somewhere further south. Along the way we intend to visit a couple of days in Connie's girlhood state of Ohio. Other than Ohio, the only places that we wanted to make sure we saw were The Custer Battlefield and Mount Rushmore. Now, with our arrival in Billings, we are close to the site of General Custer's defeat and we hope to be able to take that in tomorrow.

Of course there are lots and lots of other places we'd like to see, especially a couple of Civil War battlefields such as Gettysburg and or Antietam, some nautical areas such as Mystic Seaport or New Bedford, and some great New England covered bridges and century farms. We're pretty much winging this whole trip based on what looks interesting on the map. Yes, I know we're missing tons of interesting things which will have to wait for another trip, but we prefer not to plan so tightly that no time is left for stumbling over something interesting like we did today in Bozeman.

One of the things we've been doing is listening to books on tape as we travel the more mundane stretches of interstate. Naturally, we try and avoid the interstates as much as possible. But, as we experienced in Helena yesterday, sometimes you can't get here from there unless you include a bit of divided highway. There ARE roads from Helena to Billings that don't involve interstate driving but had we taken those particular roads I'd still be driving instead of sitting here typing.

Anyway, our book on tape for the last several days is really THREE books on tape by Bill Bryson. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Bill: "William McGuire 'Bill' Bryson, OBE, (born December 8, 1951) is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of North Yorkshire for most of his professional life before moving back to the US in 1995. In 2003 Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham, Norfolk, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University

Bill is just the wittiest, most marvelously well spoken writer I've come across in a long, long time. I've read many of his books, most recently "A Walk in the Woods," which I thought was wonderful. Bill has a way of stringing together the same old words we all use in such new and inventive ways that he has me pounding the steering wheel with laughter every time we listen. Give Bill a try. I think you'll like him.

Well, Concetta just poked her head out of the bedroom and asked if I planned to come to bed sometime soon. I guess that means it's getting late. Actually, I'd like to get a little reading in before lights out, so for now I'll say, Ciao.