Montana

We are going to be in Montana for quite a while. We have already been here for a week and have enjoyed every day. The fall colors are beautiful. We have changed rivers now - we are now on the Bitterroot River. Our campsite facing the river with a nice little sandy beach. The Bitterroot mountains surrounded us. It is a bigger town that we had imagine but the people here are little friendlier than those in Idaho. California tourist are actually buying property and moving here so it has areas that are little yuppie looking.

Our first day here we played golf at a beautiful golf course, visited a beautiful mansion (plantation like). We drove up to the Skalkaho waterfall actually hoping to see wildlife (we saw lots of beautiful birds). We drove to a small town - Stevensville and visited Fort Owen and St Mary's.

We drove to Big Hole Battlefield - walked the trail to the Nez Perez Indian camp. They have rebuilt the tipee's so that you can get a visual of what the village was like the day the military
charged the village. We then drove to a ghost town - Brannack - it has 50 buildings that they still maintain and most of them you can go in for a closer view of how things were built and the people lived. Along this drive we encountered two bears (chubby bears) one ran across the road in front of us - the other was trying to get under/over a fence along the road. Herds of antelopes, an elk drinking from a creek, deer, turkey's and another herd of cattle moving up the road.

We took one day just for hanging out at camp - sunning, reading and fishing. We went for a bike ride past horses, old barns and beautiful fall colors and of course the river running through.

We are now going to head towards Butte, Montana our first night will be in Deer Lodge - according to the tour books this is a very old historic ranching town. By this I can see we are leaving Lewis and Clark and the Nez Perez Indian tribe behind us and going into the western history.

After seeing all these beautiful colors I don't think I will need to take the Fall Foliage Cruise.
Thanks Carolyn for all the good advice on sightseeing. Gary you and Kathy would love all the birds that we have been seeing. Marilyn and Gary the surroundings are so much like Twin Lakes and the Virigina's that you are in our thoughts daily there just aren't as many fish during this season with the rivers so low.

The abundance of wildlife is amazing and yesterday Dick was pointing out more deer and antelope and I told him I am on wildlife overload. The day we visited Big Hole and the ghost town was overwhelming trying to put so much information in my brain that I was on history overload.