Last night we were in the town of West Yellowstone and, since it was the 4th of July, they put on a fabulous fireworks show. To make it even better, the place where they launched the fireworks was very close to our RV park and the effect was terrific. Fireworks can be bought and discharged in Montana so the locals did all they could to augment the commercial show. They must be real patriots around there because the colors and racket ran on for some time. It was great.
This morning we pulled out of the Grizzly RV Park and headed north on US-191 which took us over a little pass and then descended alongside the Gallatin River to Bozeman. This is another spectacular drive through terrific scenery although the speeds along this twisty road with an RV are pretty low. There are little crosses along the highway indicating where highway fatalities occurred and there were a bunch of them on this leg of today’s trip.
We turned east near Bozeman. Unfortunately, the road through Bozeman goes right through the middle of town on narrow roads with lots of traffic signals. There are no left turn lanes in town so when somebody in front of you wants to turn left off the main drag, that means you will not make it through the signal since they can’t turn until the light goes yellow. The main street of Bozeman is quite pretty, however, with lots of gorgeous old buildings and many pedestrians who also contribute to the traffic chaos by crossing the streets everywhere, sometimes in the crosswalks. Plan on spending quite a bit of time on the road here if passing through.
From Bozeman we picked up I-90 east to Livingston where we pulled into Osen’s RV Park and Campground. It is down a short gravel road from US-89 but it is quite nice. They offer cable TV, wi-fi, hookups without sewer (but they do have a dump station), nice spaces and some shade. The desk staff is very sweet and seem to be only interested in helping the RV crowd to have a good time.
We spent the afternoon trying to make RV park reservations for our future travels but were pretty unsuccessful so we went out to eat at a pretty good burger joint called Mark’s In and Out. We love small operation places like Mark’s because the food is better than at chains and costs less, too. A regular burger, a triple bacon burger, fries, tater tots, a medium Pepsi and a large chocolate malt came to $14 and some change.
We took a few pictures coming down the Gallatin River and in Bozeman that you can see if you click here