Day 33, Independence Day 2011

Day 33 of our trip Independence Day, July 4^th , had us traveling from Spokane, Washington, through Idaho, and into Montana.  Traveling through Idaho on I- 90 you pass by Lake Coeur D’Alene.

  It is a spectacular lake surrounded by green mountains.  Continuing west on I-90 you enter Montana, one of the most beautiful states in the US and one of my favorites.

  The rivers here are at near flood stage and some have raging rapids like these Babs shot while we were driving.

Babs & I ate lunch in Deer Lodge, Montana at one of our favorite restaurants, Scharf”s.

  Their food is really great and their homemade soups and pies are to die for! Worth a stop if you are ever in the neighborhood.   Across the street is the old Montana State Prison which was built in November 1889 and in use up until the late 1970’s.

  It is now a museum tourist attraction that people can tour.

Babs need her Yellowstone “fix” so we headed down from Bozeman, Montana to West Yellowstone, Montana where we are staying tonight.  We’ve run into many delays in our travels but until now, we had never run into a traffic jam due to horses crossing the road.

  They were being herded from a Dude Ranch to their pen on the other side of the highway.

We arrived in West Yellowstone just in time to watch their Fourth of July parade.  It had Cowboys,

Unicycles,

floats,

a person dressed as a penguin on a pogo stick,

and old cars.

  The town is adorned with colorful Buffalo’s.

Tomorrow we will explore Yellowstone National Park for a while.

This is a video of the Grand Coulee Dam release that I couldn't load yesterday.

Babs Says:  Full arc double rainbows--nature's fireworks are the best. What could be better?  Maybe having your camera with you to photograph it?