Kelly Inn - Billings

... clever.

If anyone knows of this disease, please can you let me know the cure. But please, please bear in mind that i think we are talking hours rather than days. As I write this, I grow weak. I'm not long for this world.


Thought of the Day

I must go in, the fog is rising.

For reference

I still have so much to give.
I hope men will say of me that I did duty by my country.

The Hampton was nice, new and comfortable. We woke this morning, enjoyed the hotel breakfast. We organized our bags and cleaned out the car; tossed out our cooler, food, drinks and utensils then headed for the airport. Billings is another extremely small airport. It was easy to park the rental car and walk to the gate.

Let the all day journey home begin....

We're delayed to Denver, 20 minutes.

The last flight to Billings was almost
empty so we all took the opportunity to spread out. I love night
flying, watching the stars out the window. I hoped to see the moon
too, but was soon asleep, cocooned in the gently buzzing, dark plane.



The flight only took an hour so I was
soon awake grabbing my bags and making sure I said goodbye to my seat
to make sure that I hadn't left anything ...

... cheapest around .Brent also had his eyes tested and new glasses ordered.By mid afternoon we were back on the road  heading for Bozeman and another costco, where they checked the wheel nuts and made sure we were good to go. Great service.we arrived at a little town called Ennis around 7 pm, a long day for us.

 

... in your seat was a swearword , then I verbally abused him.. somehow, sadly I dont think he got ANY of it.
I did throw some dagger looks at him when he disembarked at Butte.. but I dont think he noticed or remotely cared.
Justice was slightly done though. Just before he left the bus for his lengthy 2 more days on another bus to New York (he'd been moaning about that too) the baby he was holding peed all over him.HAHA! Good! Wish she had done more!

Billings, Montana, United States sara.a

... a climber attempt to scale the rock.

Our next destination was the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument in Montana, the sight of Custer's Last Stand. We watched a brief video about the park, toured the museum, then drove around the Battlefied reading the markers that described the battle between the troops and the Lakota Sioux and the Northern Cheyenne indian tribes.

Leaving there, we headed on to our destination the KOA in ...

... Cody spent a lot of time, and we were pushing on, in slightly gloomier (and colder) weather over some high ground and into Montana, where we finally saw some real cowboys and their dogs rounding up a heard of black angus.
Just 15 miles short of Billings, the car started to slow down and misfire again and I had to stop.  Even though it was only 5 degrees outside and no civilisation to be seen I was far more relaxed this time ...

... gravel road. Yes, on a tour bus. After arriving at the Bailey ranch, we all got out of the bus so that the weight was reduced as much as possible, while driver Eric gently negotiated the huge vehicle over a wooden bridge that straddles Rosebud Creek. We ate our box lunches in the shade of the Bailey's aspens. Mr. Bailey showed us historic and prehistoric (Clovis) arrowheads and Native American artifacts, as well as US Army ...

... top was actually many feet underground and over millions of years all the ground around has been eroded away. We'd been taking it fairly steady but then we realized it was 4pm and we were 250 miles from our next destination!! We set off along a back road to Montana 212 West - one of the most barren roads we've ever driven along. Endless East Montanan scrub land with dead straight roads with nothing on them. It took us ...

... Club off of 90. then into Billings to the KMart dealing with my own seemingly never ending problems with my van. It had been missing all day and the temperature was going way up whenever I went up a hill. I got a metal hose and tried to clean up my vacuum leaks, checked things over again and mostly scratched my head and hoped for the best. Then I turned west on 90 and stopped for the night at a rest area past Park City.
185.3 miles for the day-end day 21