Day 17: Dillon to Bozman, MT
Only about 160 miles driving today as we drove sort of back roads MT 41, MT 287, US 287 and finally MT 84 & 85 into Belgrade where our hotel is. Belgrade is a sort of suburb of Bozman. Of course the metro population of Bozman is just over 100,000, and no metro area in Montana is over 200,000, so suburb might be a stretch. The drive today was rural, and in favorite trout fishing areas. Again lots of tourist out on the roads. We stopped at a great brewery (again!) and visited another ghost town. Bozeman for a great dinner. Still hot and dry. Little rain around here.
A note on Yellowstone National Park, which has been the elephant in the room for days. Since we don’t plan each day ahead, and because of the tourist crunch this summer, we didn’t make any reservations or plans to go to Yellowstone. This kept bugging us since we knew we’d be very close. Any time we thought - “maybe??” we or others talked us back into our senses. I can sit in traffic on I-610 in Houston when I get back - I don’t need to do it here. So no Yellowstone. We’ll plan it right another time.
Twin Rivers, MT was a fly fishing hub. Outfitters, etc. here. You can see Lewis & Clark again - they passed through this area with the Corps of Discovery.
Ruby Valley Brew was a great brewery in Sheridan, MT. They didn’t serve food but were connected to the pizza/bakery next door with a window, so we had a great lunch. The beer was good. We started collecting some local beers to take home, but they were out of cans here.
In addition to great beer, the Ruby Valley Brew had the best graphics. I didn’t get the story clearly, but apparently Ralph was in his last days, and bought beer for a bunch of friends here.
I wish I had a better image of this poster, but it still gives some local color to the area.
Typical view of the area. Chick’s in Alder, MT. Notice the bikes. We did not see a lot of motorcycles on the road.
Virginia City is a “ghost town” in an area that had a brief, but big gold rush in the mid 1800s. There are a lot of great old buildings. Not always clear when a building was built and not clear if it was as it was, or re-built to look like it did originally. It felt a bit touristy here, but was fun to walk the town. If I had come here as a ten year old, it would have been a wonderful place. Lots of kids were here getting that experience.
View from the road today. Lots of RVs around here. Today we were mostly driving in valleys and not mountains.
Lines of fireworks stands in Bozeman area, and lines of customers too on July 3rd. Today is Saturday so lot’s of celebrations going on today, even as the day before the 4th. The big show in the state is Butte. We considered going, but we needed to stay in Bozeman to keep moving east and the fireworks didn’t start in Butte until 10:30pm (just after dark). The 50 mile ride back wouldn’t work.
Rodeos are big in Montana. We saw many very nice rodeo arenas in very small towns.
Bozeman was a very nice town, with a very active downtown. Lots of restaurants and businesses and lots of people too.
Well, we didn't entirely miss the Butte fireworks show… In the hotel we decided to check out the local 10pm news (we rarely turn on the TV in our motel rooms) and when it was over, they went live to Bute for the show! On top of that we had a local fireworks show out the hotel window.