Howard Johnson Inn Helena

Hey fans, sorry I'm writing so late. Anyway, I was right. We did move to Montana, except my Daddy is going to send me off to boarding school in NYC to make me happy (but he's giving me the choice), so I feel really bad. I live in one place, I move to another, I go on vacation to one place, I just moved to another and now I ...

... Lake lay at the very top and we got to the top at dusk. The small lake at the top by the camp site had hundreds of little fish jumping out of the water bug hunting. Amazing site to see. There were some other campers up there, so Matty asked them if we could put our food in their car so we didn't have to tie it up in a tree that night. It was about 4 degrees so we were keen on getting our tents up and into sleeping bags asap.<br><br>Still in heavy bear country, and ...

... new owners or management. So, I'm not sure if I will go out of my way in the future to come back here.<br><br>We were on the road by 0700 and had a nice cool drive for 2.5 hours to Billings and the Flying J Truck Stop. It was not as cool as yesterday morning but cool is nice. It was 65 this morning. We got fueled up and off we went down the road. When we came upon the Yellowstone River it is higher than we have ever seen it. The river ...

... in front of the dam. We feel like Lewis and Clark as we were at the falls on the exact date (June 13) that Meriwether Lewis first saw the falls. We were justt 204 years late. They were awesome falls. Lewis and Clark also found an additional four or five cataracts above the great falls. They had to portage over 18 miles around these falls, and were delayed almost a month.<br><br>We alsovisited Giant Springs, also discovered by Lewis and ...

Last night we decided that we would really like to get to Great Falls on this trip. We figured that if we could get to Helena early enough for a capitol tour this afternoon, we could spend tomorrow in Great Falls.<br><br>We managed to leave Hardin before 8:00. The drive was long, but not too difficult. We spotted our first antelope of this trip in the fields along the way. We followed the Yellowstone ...

... patrol accident in which 3 young small-town men were killed also in the business of keeping everyone else safe. It would have been nice to hike up the box canyon, but the boat did not let us out in this same area so the monument pictured is the one they placed one canyon downriver at a nearby picnic area.<br> <br> <br><br> Oh! I ...

... gaining entry to our truck after the keys got locked in. The wind there was terrible, nearly tearing the doors out of our hands. Closer to Helena, we drove through some mountains with very stratified layers of rock in colours of gray, red and green. We are hoping for a quieter night so that we can get more sleep. Between the wind and the rain the last two nights, we have slept poorly.

... seen the surroundings, but running those corners in the dark was a blast - it really got the heart pumping. Especially passing semi-trucks on the curves! The nasty part of the canyon land area was the bugs - millions of them!! Within about 5 minutes I could barely see through my visor, the windshield was totally coated, and my headlight was noticably dimmer due to the carcasses covering it! I'm not sure if ...

... Bill went skating. We decided not to venture out with them as we weren't willing to risk our first skating experience causing us an injury and it would have been too cold just watching. So we amused ourselves at home. Later we visited the Helena State Capitol Building which is where the Montana State House meets ...

Montana had varying scenery which was nice since it is such a loooooong state. Either Butte or Billings was doing a lot of new neighborhood construction and I loved loved loved the houses they were building! They weren't copy cat houses and they were very cool outdoor-sy/forest looking type houses...I'm horrible at describing these but ...