Taking A Sunday Drive #6

"Put your hand on top of your head and say the abbreviation for Montana." "MT" Don't get it? Say it again a couple of times. "MT" "MT" "Empty" The jokester was getting you to admit you were like the Scarecrow in OZ, lacking a brain. Or perhaps comparing your brain to the wide open spaces of Montana.

Big Sky Country is one of Montana's nicknames. This is one of the pictures I took while in Montana during our big (almost three weeks) trip west in 2006. It was somewhere in the Ashland to Lame Deer area on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

We had visited the museum and gift shop at the St.Labre Indian School where I purchased this beautiful topaz bracelet. I was still in awe of my good fortune, gazing at it as we went on down the road when....

.....we had to slow down for these llamas freely wandering the highway.

The Little Bighorn National Monument was our destination. This cemetery with its large monument at the top of the hill is where Custer and his remaining troops of the 7th Cavalry made their 'last stand'.

And this is a section of the Indian Memorial dedicated in 2003 in memory of all the tribes defending their way of life at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Our last stop in Montana on this trip was at Red Lodge. The next morning we took the highway up to Bear Tooth Pass on the border between Montana and Wyoming. The road up was a long series of switch backs with hair-pin corners and long drop-offs - Bud's favorites.

By the time we reached the summit at 10,940 feet, all I wanted to do was keep going so we would get down the other side as soon as possible. But Bud said, "No. We're going to stop and get out so you can get your legs under you before we go on." I had to admit that helped. I was even able to smile for a photo.

More recently, October, 2014, we were in the western part of Montana on our way home from Oregon. I thought the holes in these formations looked like ghosts - or aliens.

Most of that Montana trip was sightseeing from the car with the exception of a side-trip and stop in the 19th Century mining town of Philipsburg, which I wrote about May 15 this year.



There are other places I wouldn't mind seeing in Montana - one of them being The Missouri Breaks. I read about that area once and it stuck in my mind. I think because it was described as being much like the moors of Scotland.

And I wouldn't mind seeing the areas of Montana Ivan Doig writes about in his books, but that might get us too close to Glacier National Park and Going to the Sun Road. Bud wouldn't be able to resist driving it. I don't know if I could handle its fifty miles and Logan Pass at the Continental Divide. There would have to be plenty of stops for me to get my legs back under me.