Western Executive Inn Billings

I have picked up some kind of tropical disease, because that's what happens to adventurers - just ask Indiana Jones. It's a very clever disease. it's disguising itself as a common cold, but with a slight twist; and here's the masterstroke - I have a very painful earache with it. I have tried getting whatever's hurting in there out with a stick that i found on the ground but that just made it worse. See, I told you it ...

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.

... was a nice small airport
and it took no time to find my bag.




Having never met Bart before, and being
a bit too sleep depraved at this point to fully recall his facebook
profile pic, I did the only thing possible: look at all the men
waiting with a quizzical expression and hope one would return it.
Nope. Just some equally puzzled 'stop-staring-at-me' looks, and one
that might have ...

We traveled to billings , because we wanted to get new tires on the truck, the little wear indicators were almost smowing so we thought it would be best to be safe  rather than sorry. Because Montana doesnt have any sales tax , its a good state to make big purchases. We researched on the net and it appears that  Costco is ...

... Bette Wrestler was being very opionated in the services and using the word 'ASS' quite a bit, causing a stir.. (the only stir really being that people were watching- she WAS entertaining!), but as we were all getting back on board, she was stopped by the police who wouldnt allow her back on as she was 'bein obnoxious and cursing infront of young kids'.. she suddenly became like that loud brash girl in class who when confronted,had NO idea what she had done wrong... They ...

Helen, Danny and I decided that we'd covered most of the Black Hills so we packed up our rig and headed out for Billings. We traveled I-90 until we were in Wyoming, near Devils Tower.
Just in case you don't remember, Devil's Tower was the mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and was the first national monument. We spent a short time at the monument listening to a talk about the geological formation of the tower given by a park ranger and ...

... Yellowstone National Park. Within 5 minutes into it, there were the first deer on the side of the road, having brunch. And that was the scene a few times on our way to the Old Faithful Geyser. I don't care for these tourist areas but everybody said it was a must-see so I went with the masses. Of course we missed the eruption by 10 minutes so it would be about 1 hour and 15 minutes for the next one. And I wasn't planning on staying around for that. I took some pics from Johannah ...

... behind, the landscape opened up before us. Back on a main road, which once again swept into the distance, we made our way to Billings. You probably think we're mad as this is actually north of where we've been, but we're heading for South Dakota to make one last stop before we high tail it south. In fact as the temperature was higher by about 20degrees F it was quite a good decision!

We began our day in Worthington Minnesota, and made our way to the Badlands of South Dakota. Driving through these magnificent black hills and acres and acres of colorfully eroded pinnacles . . . my jaw dropped. It was like nothing I've ever seen before - completely surreal and alien to the land that surrounds them. Robert had said, "Be prepared to be underwhelmed by Mount Rushmore." In actuality, I was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed by the multi-lane highways leading to and from ...

... a number of years ago presenting American history through the eyes of minorities, or those without the power and it gives a much different view than our textbooks give us. Anyway, enough of that, it was just interesting to get to see a place like that, something like Mount Rushmore but on the opposite end of the spectrum.
It was a beautiful day and after spending a couple of hours there I went on north and had a cheeseburger deluxe at the Schwarzwald ...