#WhereAreTheUbryTerrells ... Leg 18: Montana

Yellowstone National Park is uniquely situated so that it spans 3 states: Wyoming (96%), Idaho (1%), and Montana (3%). So all week we were bouncing back and forth between these states!

(Fun fact: Wyoming is the 9th largest state in the U.S. in terms of land size, but the least populated of all 50 states. Montana isn't much different, ranking 4th largest in land size and 44th in population. No wonder this is Big Sky Country--there are no people or businesses or homes to block your view!)

After leaving Yellowstone through Cooke City, we took the Beartooth and Chief Joseph highways into Cody, Wyoming. I can't tell you how many people we've met in the last few months who have told us to go to Cody. No one ever said what we were supposed to do there, however, they just said to go. We found a town full of history and museums, guns and graves. And I couldn't muster up the energy for any of it. 

I sent Randy and Van off to explore while I took a nap (the benefit of having a motor home is that you can nap anywhere anytime!). It made me wonder how single parents do it--what do you do when you don't have your partner to tag-team in for you when you just can't keep your eyes open another minute?!

While we haven't been overly conscious of our spending over the past few months (we probably would have hung up our keys a long time ago if we were!), we were keenly aware that traveling with 3 is more expensive than traveling with 2. We had already run out of brothers to stay with, and we were about to run out of National Parks (which we could get in to free with our National Parks pass), so our sources of "entertainment" were going to start adding up too.

All of those reasons led to us skipping the Buffalo Bill Center of the West museum (which turns out to be the main reason people send you to Cody), to save our $20 a head. Randy and Van opted to visit the much cheaper Old Trail Town instead, and came back with pictures and stories of walking through the Wild West.

Next we headed to Thermopolis, known for its hot springs. We discovered the hot springs--a very crowded water park--and went straight to an RV park. (Were we losing our sense of adventure already???) The RV park was full for the night, but the owners offered us a spot next to the dumpster for half price. (Nope, still got it!)

Randy tagged me back in the next morning and Van and I went to the dinosaur museum while Randy went in search of coffee in the pouring down rain. The museum was actually very cool, with many of the fossils found right there in the surrounding towns.

(You may be wondering why this post is titled "Montana" when we've mostly been in Wyoming--I'm about to get to that!)

As we reconvened again as a family of 3, we realized we had "missed" a historical site that we'd really wanted to go to--Little Big Horn, Montana. Was it worth the 4 hour drive? We decided yes! So north we went.

And it was definitely worth it. We walked around the tombstones where Custer and his men were killed. We took the audio driving tour of the various battle stations. We toured the museum and were disappointed in our history teachers because there were so many names and stories of our nation's history that we had never even heard of. We felt for the native people who were forced to fight or flee from a land that was rightfully their own.

That night we went off roading in search of public land that we could park on for free. I was in charge of the map, so I took us onto a road that appeared to have campsites, and what looked to me like it belonged to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). There were cows everywhere, however, which made us think it might actually be private property, but we chanced it anyway. Parking in the middle of a field, off the main highway, with nothing but cows and mosquitoes to lull us to sleep was heavenly. It started raining early in the morning, and we didn't want to get stuck in this cow pasture, so we hit the road before sunup and headed east. (Incidentally, about a mile down the road was the campsite that I thought I had taken us to, so I guess my navigational skills aren't perfect after all!)

We headed toward South Dakota and the geologic center of the United States. But once we got there we made an about face and headed back in to Wyoming. (Okay, so maybe this post should have been titled "Wyoming, part 2, with a little bit of Montana" or "Are you lost?")

Driving back into Wyoming an hour we made our way to Devil's Tower, America's first National Monument. Devil's Tower is famous for appearing in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and we saw a few people wearing tshirts to celebrate this.

There is a Native American legend (or two) about how this tower was created. It involves children either running away from or being rescued by a bear, so you might also see images of this tower with a bear climbing up its sides. Speaking of climbing, we saw several people ascending this thing! June is a "holy month" for Native Americans, so no one is allowed to climb the sacred tower for those 30 days. But we showed up on July 1, so many people were there to celebrate the first day climbing was allowed again.

If you ever go, make sure you take the time to go see the Circle of Sacred Smoke sculpture (simply listed as "sculpture" on road markers and the park map). The sculpture is one in a series of 7 meant to symbolize world peace.

The sculptor, a man from Japan, chose the Vatican as the site of his first sculpture. Buddha's birthplace as the site of the second sculpture. And Devil's Tower as the site of the third. That says something about the sacredness of this place. We spread some of Randy's mom's ashes, knowing she would love it here as we did.