Montana

DAY ONE

John and I finally were heading out on a trip that we had longed to take for several years. John and I went to Yellowstone 6 years ago when Josh was hired at Idaho State. Josh had to start work immediately so John and I drove his car out to Salt Lake City. Josh met us there and turned in his rental car, we picked up a rental car, and after the trip to Pocatello, Idaho to move Josh in.....oh, you all would have been so proud to call us family and friends if you could have seen "The Beverly Hillbillies" driving cross country......yes, we did have his futon on the top of the car......we headed to Yellowstone.

 

Our 1st Yellowstone trip was only a few days but we were hooked. Let me say here.....I had been to Yellowstone 3 times when I was living at home but.......the "John Earl" version of sightseeing was driving by as you rolled down the window and pointed! John Earl did stop and get out at Old Faithful so that is really my only memory from my 6 - 10 year old memories......so, this was really like seeing it the 1st time and it was John's 1st trip to Yellowstone.

 

After that trip we immediately started talking about what we would do when we went back. We have
Yellowstone web cams in our FAVS on our computer and check it regularly. We read everything that came our way about Yellowstone and often talked out loud about the "someday" trip. Well, after I made the big Grand Canyon Ranch plans (I wrote about on the blog in June) for John's birthday and they fell through because of the fact that I was not able to walk at the time......we sort of started mentioning Yellowstone. You may also remember me deciding that I had made a big mistake when I said......let's skip the Alabama trip to Texas for the first game......I was really sad. So.....Big John said.......Let's see if we can work it out to go to Yellowstone during RUT!

 

Well, it all fell into place like it was meant to be!

 

We planned this trip in a month!

 

So, the next several blog posts will be our journey on a trip that was a "just us" trip. What I mean is that there are many things that John and I love to do but this kind of trip had everything we both love to do.....it was just US!

 

We left from BHM at 2:30 and changed planes in Denver. We reboarded a little late at the Denver airport because of Ann Romney's plane having to make an emergency landing because of some smoke in the cabin (electrical). We left Denver and landed at the Bozeman, Montana Airport

Isn't this little airport beautiful. I have read comments on Tripadvisor about BHM being a small airport.......this airport makes BHM look big! But, oh my, it looks like a Lodge in a ski town.

Heading outside to get our rental car and drive to Big Sky.

We got to our first stop at around 8 that night. We drove about an hour out of Bozeman to spend the night in Big Sky, Montana. We needed a place that would let us stay for just one night and wasn't outrageously expensive since we would arrive late and leave early. The name of it was Buck's T-4.

I read about this place on Tripadvisor. It was fine. It is older but the place has atmosphere. The room was very simple but the beds were extremely comfortable.

They have a complimentary breakfast and it was really good. It was a real breakfast!

this cute little subdivision was right outside our window

The lobby

We did not realize that we weren't actually at the ski village until the next morning. Of course, that really didn't matter. We just needed a place to rest before we started out on our journey and thought we would see Big Sky. We were at the bottom of the mountain so....we headed up the mountain that morning to go see the ski village before we headed to Yellowstone.

 

Next up........Yellowstone!!!!