Bozeman

Saturday, 13 July 2013

We had breakfast at Stella’s, next door to the motel. Good, but more than enough, as is standard in all of these places. On the road for a short drive to Bozeman.

The road goes along the Yellowstone river for quite a distance, a beautiful river valley. The distant terrain is mountain and grassland, but near the river, water is cheap and there are irrigation monsters.

Arrived in Bozeman midmorning, dropped off our luggage at the Lewis & Clark motel. We need to drop off the rental car before noon to avoid a $$$$ delta, but we had time to walk around the town. Nice place, and at 4000 feet, considerably cooler than Billings and other such lowland places.

Stopped at an outdoors store where we learned that bikes can be rented, complete with helmets and locks, and that there are lots of trails around here. We’ll see.

It was fast to drop off the car at the airport, but it took quite a while to get our ride back into town sorted out. Pat picked us up, and many thanks to Andrea for also offering to. We went back to Pat’s place to meet Gary and have a bit of lunch.

Then we four drove to the Sourdough canyon trailhead, where we walked an old railroad or logging road, now a recreational trail. Pretty popular, pedestrians, dogs, mountain bikes. Nice walk along a stream, and where there is a seepage near the road, we get incredible colonies of butterflies.

We saw several of these big black and white butterflies, one of which was romantically attracted to the pattern on my shoe.

Back to Pat’s, where she fixed really good chicken fajitas. Andrea and Jeremy came over with baby Bentley, and no one went away hungry.

We got a ride back to our motel, went out to wander the street for a few minutes. Stopped at Copper whiskey bar and grill, where we tried bourbon stout. Interesting, but not an instant favourite. The sky was pretty dark by the time we left, and a block before the motel, it began to rain. Of course: the one time I didn’t have a plastic rain bag in my pocket to protect the camera. Tucked it into my shirt and ran for the motel.

Nice day, nice town.

Tags: Bozeman