As we left Yellowstone to head to Montana, there were a few more sights we wanted to see, so we stopped amidst snow flurries to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and Yellowstone Falls. Both were beautiful sights, through sun, snow and wind! I have included a few of these pictures even though technically they should have been in the Wyoming post and not Montana. That can happen when I’m trying to be efficient and post too early!

After seeing these sights we headed to Bozeman, Montana where we were going to get an overnight visit with our nephew Kirk and his family. A big thank you to the Daniels family as we had a great time playing games with the boys, having a home cooked meal, visiting, and even going to the World Museum of Mining in Butte! This tour included going down 100 feet into the Orphan Girl Mine.

Butte is an old mining town, with over 100 mines, some of which have been preserved, which is great for learning the history. Copper was what was mined the most, but some silver, gold, manganese and zinc were mined there as well. We also went on a Kawasaki Mule tour of the biggest mines and historic neighborhoods. The last underground mine shut down in the 1980’s, in favor of much safer above ground open pit mining, which is still being done in Butte.

As mentioned above, first a few Yellowstone pictures…