Going East

What a wonderful time we are having! I love a good road trip. I’m not sure if the girls are bored, but I’m sure this will be something they’ll remember.

 

We drove all day on Thursday,  but we stopped at the Cataldo Mission in Idaho. Mike has always wanted to stop there, but we’ve always been in too much of a hurry. This time we even had time to hunt down a geocache.

 

Then we continued east until about 8:00 pm when we found a  campground just outside of Butte. We left home without a definite plan for where we were going to stay or how far we’d get each day, so we had to figure it out on the fly. I happened to find this campground and it was a risk because it was 10 miles off the freeway and we didn’t know if there would be a spot. It worked out beautifully. The forest we drove through was magnificent. There were tons of lodge pole pines that are so different from our Washington forests. Every now and then there was a vein of tall, bright white birch trees flowing down a valley. Huge boulders were sprinkled through the forest that reminded me of sleeping giants.

 

Luckily there was a place for us. We popped up the trailer, ate dinner, and went to sleep. When the sun came up the next morning, we got to appreciate the special place. It felt like a little gift from God. We enjoyed the scenery and quiet time there, then broke camp to move on to Bozeman, MT.

 

When we got to Bozeman, we had to do a little shopping. Then, we HAD to get our sandwiches from the famous Pickle Barrel. They were too huge and delicious. Next time we must not order a whole sandwich each. I think they must be 18 inches long. We each ate a half for lunch that day and the other half for dinner the next.

 

 

Then we drove to Livingston where we checked into our hotel. We had a wedding to get ready for, so we had to have a place to shower. We were able to get in a little swim too, so the girls were excited.

Then we went out to our friend’s wedding. We enjoyed the outdoor wedding at the base of the mountains south of Livingston. Merris was a friend of Mike and I back when we were Resident Advisors at MSU the year before we got married. Mike always advised her to hold out for the right guy and that he was out there somewhere. Well, now she’s found him and looks like he was worth the wait!

  

The dinner was delicious barbeque. The girls enjoyed traipsing through the tall grasses catching little moths, already looking like “little girls on the prairie”.

 

We slept at the hotel that night and enjoyed our continental breakfast the next morning before we headed out toward Billings. We got to my grandparent’s house by 11:00. We visited and had lunch. My aunt Linda was at work, so we stopped into the Shoppe to see her. “The Shoppe” used to be my Grandma’s consignment store. I grew up working there over the summers and getting all my clothes there.

 

 

Then we had lunch with Gramma and Grampa and, of course, ice cream. I even recorded my grandparents telling us a little about when they were little as we talked about our visit to Little House land. I’m so excited I thought to video them.

 

 

And then we were off…to be continued.