Montana

   We started the day with a new passanger; our hotel placed a cute stuffed wolf in our room, and let us take him along for the rest of our trip. We left Jackson Hole around 9:30 and headed west along the Snake River and through the mountains. In Idaho Falls we picked up Interstate 15 and took it from eastern Idaho all the way up through Montana.

   The interstate was a 75 mph divided highway with hardly anyone on it but us. It was quiet almost all the way to Butte, where we stopped for lunch and gas. Butte was an important mining city in the 1800's but we could tell by driving around that it's not doing well these days.

   One negative on the road; it was full of bugs but we still had a few spaces on the windshield to peek through by the time we stopped for gas. Some of the bugs were big and we could see them coming, but I tried to avoid eye contact before they hit.

   Near Helena, we passed the headwaters of the Missouri River which begins just east of the Continental Divide and flows over 2,300 miles until it meets the Mississippi in St Louis.

   We finished today's drive in the metropolis of Cut Bank, Montana. It's about 30 miles from the Canada border near the eastern entrance to Glacier National Park. We had a quick dinner (and beer) and checked into our luxury hotel for the night. One of it's claims to fame is that it's a stop on the Amtrak's passanger train service between Chicago and Seattle.

   Tomorrow is Big Sky country.