Big Sky Country

On Thursday, we left Sturgis, SD and headed west. We clipped a small corner of Wyoming (about 20 miles) and then headed into Montana. We spent most of the day driving through Montana, with some continued beautiful scenery along the way. The west is a place of wide-open spaces, and the highways stretch out forever. The speed limit is usually 80 mph, but there are construction zones where you have to slow down to 65. 

One of the towns we passed through in Montana is called Broadus. There were signs that billed itself as "The Wavingest Town in the West." I wonder how they came up with that one. Did they drive all around the country and noticed that no one else waved, so they would claim the title? Or maybe they checked the Guinness Book of Records, and discovered that Wavingest Town was still available. At any rate, we did not see anyone wave as we passed through. In fact, we didn't see anyone as we passed through. Most of the towns we drove through in Montana today were so small that if you blinked, you'd miss not only the town, but possibly a friendly wave. The highway we traveled on was very desolate with only a few isolated small towns along the way.

The scenery is definitely western, with lots of fields, hay bales, cattle, and sheep. There are grasslands with some low conical hills, buttes and mesas, conifer forests, and some limestone cliffs. The farther west we got, the grasslands turned into sagebrush. We crossed quite a few creeks or streams, and most of them were either dry river beds or a trickle of water. Quite a contrast to all the flooding we saw farther east. 



We began driving into the foothills of the northern Rocky Mountains and again, had some beautiful scenery along the way.








The weather is marvelous, with total sunshine - mostly not a cloud in the sky. They call Montana "Big Sky Country" and they are right - the sky is very big here. (I wonder if they checked the Guinness Book of Records for sky size!) The temperature is great. Even though it is in the upper 80s we still weren't running the air conditioner because the dry air was just so pleasant.

We traveled as far as White Sulphur Springs, MT, which is about 75 miles east of Helena, the capital of Montana. We camped at a lovely campground called Conestoga Campground (yep, we really are in the west), with the mountains as a backdrop, as we watched a beautiful sunset.







Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 19, 2024 at 5:02 PM

    I loved ‘Big Sky country’ especially when the antelope are running on the plains. Denise😎

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJuly 20, 2024 at 6:03 PM

    I bet the moon is bigger under that Montana sky! Looks like beautiful country! Makes me feel like writing a poem! Lol enjoy the view!
    Ellen Hebert Hutchinson

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 23, 2024 at 8:44 AM

    Funny the construction zone speed limit is still higher than the regular speed limit on 28
    -Becca

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kay BurkotJuly 23, 2024 at 8:01 PM

      I know. I couldn't believe the construction zone speed limit was 65!

      Delete

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