Billings, Montana

     We are in a beautiful campground on the Yellowstone River.  The huge cottonwood trees are rustling, the cicadas are buzzing, kids are laughing in the pool, but there is NO FREEWAY NOISE!  This claims to be the first KOA campground.  It is very spacious with nice grassy sections, big trees and pretty landscaping.  It is hot and humid.  We haven't had any humidity since we left the coast.  But the air conditioner is cooling off the trailer while we sit outside and enjoy the evening.

    We had three of the four leaf springs replaced and all the associated hardware.  They couldn't get a 4th spring in until late afternoon and it looked OK so we decided to wait until we get home to replace that one.  Now, since the wheels were taken off as part of the repair, Rick has to check the lug nuts on the tires each time we stop and give them a little crank to be sure they stay tight.  It never ends.

    We left the repair place at 8:30 so we stopped for coffee and a newspaper before looking for something to do while the RV was being worked on.  Bozeman is a nice looking town.  It is between Yellowstone, Big Sky and Bridger Bowl.  In addition, the area has become a trendy place for building huge mountain homes.  So the downtown is full of high end sports shops, coffee shops, art galleries and other fancy places.  After coffee, we went to Montana State University to the Museum of the Rockies.  Montana State does a lot of work with dinosaurs and fossils.  They had an amazing collection of dinosaur bones and skeletons.  

     In addition to the dinosaur stuff, there was a traveling exhibit of models of Leonardo DiVinci's inventions.  These were working models of forty of his inventions which were built from his drawings using materials that would have been available in his time.  It was a hands-on exhibit that was quite amazing.  On the grounds outside the museum a living history exhibit includes a farmhouse and garden as they would have been in the late 1880's.  A major focus of the exhibit is producing meals for museum staff each day using items grown and raised on the farm.   The kitchen was hot from the wood stove, but the fresh bread in the oven and succotash on the cook top smelled really good.

   By the time we had finished at the museum and had lunch the RV was ready.  It was mid afternoon, but we decided to drive a couple hours down the road which is how we ended up in this lovely place.  If the springs hold up we will have 3 more days of driving and then HOME on Saturday.  YEAH!