July 3, 2012 -- Lost Moose Bend Road, Whitehall, Montana

July 3, 2012 ~~~ Drove through beautiful Montana WEST BOUND today!  Well ... we did drive a little north first and made a 2 hour stop at the Little Bighorn National Monument.  I "saw" this when I was about 13 years old (quite a LONG time ago!)... and it's very very different now!  Lots of parking, lots of "interpretive" stuff, ranger guided tours, museum, and a 5 mile drive through the battlefield, which includes story boards, cell phone audio, and now has red granite markers for the Indians who died there as well as the soldiers white granite markers.  Very impressive.

Every marker at Little Bighorn battlefield is placed where a soldier or an Indian died. 

They had trails out through the markers, but this is why I didn't want to walk out there:

And so on we went across Montana toward WHITEHALL.  Got out of the smokey stuff finally.  In Billings it was 102 degrees.... but then it started to rain.  This is what rain looks like when it falls out of the Montana sky ... with blue sky on one side, and black rain clouds on the other -- a torrential DUMP!

Montana mountains... where we lost the 102 degrees and got into more reasonable temperatures... at one point down to 68 degrees!

And FINALLY arrived at Tuffy & Merlin's house about 4:30 pm!  Went out and had a lovely dinner at Sparky's Garage then back to the house for root beer or orange floats and watched an episode of Deadliest Catch.  Great evening!

Here's Merlin and EvaGeneva..... 

And here's Uncle Tuffy... he loves having company and welcomed us with open arms....

;-)