DAY 1
Ever since we came through here when I was a teenager, I've always thought of Butte as kind of a dumpy mining town. We discovered on this trip that it's actually a pretty intriguing mining town with a lot of character. The old Butte shown here has all the mining equipment and buildings. The rest of Butte is like any other city.
This is the open-pit copper mine with the city in the background.
The mines here started underground in the late 1800s, thus all the headframes.
A couple of shovels dig the ore and dump it into 240-ton trucks.
These 240-ton trucks (480 times bigger than a standard pickup truck) carry ore to a conveyor belt.
Going back for a load.
The open-pit mine is on the right. Old Butte is on the knoll on the left.
A lot of the homes in old Butte are built on steep hills.
This looks like a nice house.
This was a popular brothel in Butte's heyday.
Here's Chieko with a welded miner statue in the window.
The Hotel Finlen was a fine place where presidents like John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon stayed. Also movie stars like John Wayne. It's still in operation today.
On the mountain above Butte is a statue of Mary.
This hound on top of this house looks like he spends a lot of time up here watching over the neighborhood.
DAY 2
We walked along a boardwalk through a cedar grove. This is the roots of a tipped-over tree.
If you're looking at these pictures and wondering why we're wearing masks, this was in 2020, when the COVID-19 virus was rampant around the world, and everyone was encouraged to wear masks and stay six feet away from other people. You'll notice that very few people in this park (and other parks) are actually wearing masks, thus the virus is especially rampant in the United States.
Cedar tree.
Black cottonwood tree.
Pacific yew tree.
This little waterfall is on the cedar tree walk.
I think this is Haystack Creek. It flows into Lake McDonald.
On the Going to the Sun drive.
Notice the canyon is U shaped, which is indicative of a glacial canyon.
A hiker on the mountain next to here called 911 for help. These rangers plan to rescue the person but can't see him or her, so they're waiting for a helicopter.
Here's the helicopter. I took this picture on our way down the road, so this is about an hour after the previous picture with the rangers.
We never found out whether the hiker was rescued, but the rangers were gone the next day, so we assume they were successful.
The helicopter hovered in this spot for quite a while, so we thought it had spotted the hiker. But then the helicopter circled above us and seem to come back to search again.
DAY 3
Michael at Conrad Mansion in Kalispell
Huckleberry ice cream from Eddie's in Apgar Village. Very good.
Lake McDonald
Michael at Logan Pass on the Hidden Lake trail
Hidden Lake
View from Hidden Lake
Mama mountain goat at Hidden Lake
Mama mountain goat with baby in the background
Hidden Lake trail above Logan Pass
DAY 4
Jackson Glacier
Chieko with Jackson Glacier behind her
Wild Goose Island in St Mary Lake
A rock chuck, also called a marmot, at Baring Falls. We couldn't remember "Baring," so we just called this Rock Chuck Falls. It's on the hike to St Mary Falls.
This mama black bear was foraging on an island in the stream just below St Mary Falls. Watch the video to see St Mary Falls.
St Mary Falls
St Mary Lake
Rocks in St Mary Lake
A daring caterpillar crossing the hiking trail
DAY 5
Who would have guessed that we'd find delicious ramen in Bozeman, Montana?
A scientist is cleaning fossils at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. It houses the largest collection of dinosaur bones in the United States next to the Smithsonian, and all the specimens were found in Montana.
This is the actual fossilized head (not a replica as in most museums) of the largest T-Rex ever discovered.
This is the largest T-Rex. The head in the previous photo belongs to this dinosaur but is not attached (this head is a replica). You can see the head along with some others in the background of this picture.
Triceratops. The brown parts are actually fossil. The light areas are manmade.
The museum had a reptile exhibit when we were there. This chameleon just sat there rolling his eye. See the video.
When we exited the museum, we discovered a fire burning on the mountain across the freeway from our hotel.
DAY 6
This is part of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. This photo represents what the entire battlefield area looks like.
I won’t go into the history other than to say that Lieutenant Colonel George Custer (also called General Custer, because he held that temporary title during the Civil War) and his 216 soldiers from the 7th Cavalry attacked an Indian encampment on the other side of this hill (behind us) in some trees next to a stream of water. He wasn’t aware that thousands of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe warriors under the leadership of Sitting Bull were waiting and subsequently killed all the soldiers over 36 hours on June 25 and 26, 1876. Two days later, other soldiers from the 7th Cavalry buried each solder where he died. These white headstones mark where each solder died and was initially buried. The solders were later reburied under a monument at the top of the hill near where Custer died.
Custer’s headstone is the one with black. Notice that he was surrounded by several of his men when he died.
These are not wild horses. The national monument passes through a piece of private property, and these horses belong to the owner of that land.
I tried to squeeze through the horses as they walked down the road, but they decided to race me.
Coming back to Bozeman from Billings, the sky turned to smoke due to the fire on the mountain across the freeway from our hotel (the “Bozeman Foothills Fire,” I think) that we thought had been put out.
Looking at the fire from our hotel
DAY 7
This is the drive from Bozeman to the North Entrance of Yellowstone at Gardiner. Notice how smoky it is.
Smoky Yellowstone just south of Mammoth going toward Tower.
I think the entire Yellowstone herd of bison was in the Lamar Valley, stretching from one of the valley to the other.
Bison rule wherever they are.
The Lamar Valley was also very smoky. The entire park was smoky.
A pronghorn crossed the highway.
If you take the short hike to Waith Falls, do it in the spring. There is essentially no water by September. The main part of that whitish rock is not water. The waterfall is just that little ribbon on the right.
Chieko at Sheep Cliff, where we stopped to eat lunch. The cliff got that name because the Indians used to live on bighorn sheep in this area.
We couldn’t believe how many people were in Yellowstone. These cars are parked on the highway about a mile in either direction from the road that goes to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Norris Geyser Basin was similar. We didn't go to Old Faithful or any of the hot springs on the west side of the park, but I assume they were also way overcrowded.
I was looking for a particular grove of trees across from Jackson Lake when suddenly I saw this grizzly bear staring at me from the bushes next to the road. It was probably 10 feet from the car.
The bear was eating the branches of whatever bush grows there. We had turned around, and Chieko took these pictures out her window. She was a bit nervous being so close to the bear.
This picture shows how close the bear is to the road and cars.
Another fire was burning south of Old Faithful, which had the road between West Thumb and Old Faithful closed the day before we came here. The road from Fishing Bridge to the East Entrance was also closed that day due to a gasoline spill. And the road from Canyon to Tower is closed all summer due to construction. What a mess, especially with all the Labor Day weekend tourists. The Tetons were hard to see today due to the smoke from the Old Faithful fire.
DAY 8
The Snake River Gorge near Twin Falls, Idaho
Shoshone Falls with a rainbow
