Visiting the Schraer Greats

– Sunday -

On our way to Billings, we made a few important stops…

Of course we had to have dinner at Pickle Barrrel as we drove through Bozeman. This is the real deal, the original and it was delicious. You can’t understand unless you’ve had a sandwich from this place. It is almost worth driving 12 hours just to get one. I wish we had a close up picture of just the sandwich so you could get the idea. They are huge and delicious. This place is highly recommended if you make it to Montana. I order the “Ken’s Special” and Mike gets the “Bobcat Special”.

This sandwich shop is right by the MSU campus, so we took a stroll to show the girls our old stomping ground. It was fun to see it all again. This is where we met…and we ate a lot of Pickel Barrel sandwiches back then. Oh the memories!

We made it to Billings on Sunday evening. The weather was cool and stormy looking, but didn’t really bother us. The girls made their way right to the park across the street. I had forgotten that park, but my siblings, cousins and I loved that park when we were kids. At least all the play equipment is now updated. The adults all sat on my grandparents’ front porch watching them play.

- Monday -

On Monday we woke up slowly and got up to enjoy pancakes. The girls wanted to play at the park all day, but eventually we tore them away to go to my aunt’s consignment shop. (It used to be my gramma’s). We found a few outfits while Mike took Grampa over to Cabella’s to find some fly tying materials.

That afternoon (after some more time at the park), we sat the girls down to watch a movie so Mike and I could go get a coffee and use the high-speed internet at the coffee shop. We aren’t used to having only dial-up available! It has been weird to be off the internet so much.

(Aren’t we ridiculous? Here I am sitting in a rustic campsite, in my tent trailer with the light on and using my laptop to type this blog post!)

That evening my aunt Linda and uncle Bob brought tasty homemade bbq chicken and dessert over to feed the whole family. We got to see my aunt Patty too and a few various cousins. I can’t believe how old we all are, though I’m the only one with kids. It was nice to see everyone and just hang for awhile like the old days.

After we got the girls down to bed, Mike and I listened to my Grampa tell his fish stories and show us some old pictures. I just love to hear all that history. I wish I could capture it all.

- Tuesday -

In the morning we went to get a donut. I told my grampa that was one of my greatest memories from being a kid. When I spent the night at their house he often took me over to the “Donut Hole”. He always met some buddies there and had coffee. I guess the Donut Hole is gone now, and so are a lot of his buddies, but we still took the girls and found a bakery and some tasty donuts.

After that we packed up all our stuff again to head off. We left about noon and went back toward Bozeman. We stopped there and found a geocache before going up on campus to check out the Student Union building and the MSU bookstore…I love to buy new pens…for some reason it just brings me great joy! Mike got me a MSU sweatshirt and the girls a MSU basketball, so we are all decked out as alumni! Mike and I even played a game of air hockey like the old days…and I almost won!

From Bozeman we went south toward Yellowtone Park. That area was Mike’s old stomping grounds when he was at school. He loved to go fishing and hiking with his friends. We found an old favorite campground on Swan Creek that is beautiful! He and Kelby got to fishing right away and found lots of big fish in this little stream. Mike caught them and Kelby took pictures for him!

It was a little chilly and rained a little, but nothing the heater in the tent trailer couldn’t handle! We packed up in the morning and then we were off to Yellowstone.