Day 7 - 7/30/12 West Yellowstone, MT to Hardin, MT

West Yellowstone to Hardin, MT - 271 Miles

In doing some research I realize that the trip we had planned for today would have been entirely too long for our little peanut. We had initially planned to travel from West Yellowstone to Sheridan Wyoming. Because it is really slow going through the park the best route to get to interstate 90 is to head north into Montana and then back down into Wyoming bypassing the park. Once we actually mapped that out we decided we needed to stop earlier. We chose to stop in the beautiful oasis that is Hardin, MT. We did not know what a poor choice this was until we arrived…

It’s time to hit the road and we leave the Lovely Grizzly RV Park, of course we take advantage of the photo opportunity with the life size grizzly in the RV park. I wanted one of Katelyn on the bear, because if we are going to do this we might as well do it right, but the bear had been manufactured out of some sort of metal or plastic that after 2 minutes in the sun was 4000 degrees. We settled for standing in front of it. The flag was a nice touch too, must be a patriotic bear. It is so funny to me that the closer people get to actually living near wildlife, the more faux wildlife they like to display in their yards, places of business, McDonald’s etc. I am sure there are more carved wood bears in the town of West Yellowstone than there are actual bears in the park. We snap our grizzly picture and load up. Nothing says Christmas card picture like one of your kid in front of a ferocious fake grizzly and Old Glory!

Traveling north towards Bozeman, Montana we go through some really pretty areas, for a period of time we are actually still in the park. One spot we went through, named Big Sky, was just gorgeous. Just a small town that in a narrow valley along the river. Should have snapped a picture, you will just have to take my word for it. We weren’t lucky enough to have any other wildlife sightings, a bunch of ravens; those things are like pigeons around here. I don’t think we even saw a redtail hawk. We are traveling northeast towards Billings, Montana where we decide to stop and grab some lunch. I had an intense craving for a delicious crisp chicken burrito and decided to google Taco Time locations in Montana. Jackpot! The eagle has landed! Eureka! Taco Time, located in Billings Montana… By far this was the highlight of the day. I am dead serious about that, there was really not much else that exciting about today’s trip. I indulge in my delicious lunch, of course while feeding Katelyn some completely organic and possibly even homemade meal; I shovel a fried burrito into my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten in a month.

Just lovely...

Not much to do in Hardin but
play with beer boxes 

Our neighbor,
we made sure our doors were locked.

Time to hit the road and head towards Hardin, the route gets a bit less scenic. Katelyn is taking her afternoon nap as we pull into the Grandview RV Park in Hardin. More like Grandspew. This place was a no frills, bare bones, RV parking lot or as I immediately called it, a dump. The internet is never a true gauge of how these places can be. They managed to get the one tree on the property in every picture on their website. It’s a thousand degrees outside and the one spot with a tree was already occupied. Scott heads into the office to check us in, he described his encounter to me – It smelled like cat pee, the gal was rude and they have an ice cream social every night at 7pm. But don’t forget to bring cash because it’s $2.50 for a scoop of ice cream, though she assured him it is a generous scoop. I would rather get a 50 cent soft serve from the log cabin McDonald’s. Plus we might all spontaneously combust in the heat on the walk over and then who would they rip off with their $2.50 ice cream? We head to our area of gravel, they called it a pull-through spot but we may have side swiped the meth den trailer that was behind our spot, so we decided to back in. They do have spotty internet service and offered cable TV so we head into the trailer and decided we were in for the night. Save your ice cream, Grandspew.

Filthy, gypsy baby.

Katelyn harassing Oliver.