Denhams Big Sky Adventure-Part 1

This month is escaping and I feel like I am constantly playing catch up without success. The To-Do list seems to multiple in direct correlation to the quicker and quicker pace of life. Can it really be the end of July already????

That said, here is Part 1 of our recent trip to Montana...Oh boy, did we LOVE our Big Sky Adventure over the 4th of July. The Denhams were in need of a road trip adventure. Going more than six months without a journey in the car causes us to go into withdrawal. Our destination was Emigrant, MT. Friends of Dave's from ASU have family with a ranch there. The travel time was approximately 14 hours without stops through North Dakota and Eastern and Central Montana, places neither Dave or I had ever been.

We left at the crack of dawn on July 1 (6 am)since Cole gets up before then it made it easy. Our goal was to drive 6 hours and have lunch and playtime. North of the Twin Cities is farmland, vast fields and dairy barns. We made it to the Fargo/Moorhead area in about 3 hours and saw some of the destruction the floods of this past spring had caused. The roads were awful and rutted and there were still "lakes" of water where there shouldn't have been any. Sandbags still sat in parking lots and on the side of the road. We made it just outside of Bismarck for lunch at a nearby playground. Back in the truck for another 6 hours of driving. North Dakota is pretty flat and other than farms there is not much to look at. As we headed west towards the ND/MT border, the terrain literally transitioned from neatly planted rows of corn to jutted mesas and deep canyons. It was liked we went the wrong way and ended up in Arizona. Theodore Roosevelt National Park is a mini-Grand Canyon, no joke. It was crazy how long ago the tetonic plates shifted and caused this upheaval of earth and rock. It was beautiful and so drastically different than what we had been driving through for the past 600 miles.

We soon found ourselves in the land of the cow. Bovines speckled the landscape and little baby calves wobbled behind their mommies to keep up. Around dinnertime, we stopped in Billings, MT...Cole was just about DONE with being in the car but we still had a few hours to go. So we did a lot of singing and distractions to fill the time. Once we got off the main highway in Livingston, the WOW factor caught our breaths. After hours of rolling farm lands, our jaws dropped as we headed south on Route 89. The snow capped mountains (Rocky and Teton I believe) were our vista for the next hour. The valley was lush and green from an above average rainy spring/summer. We played a little Ray Lamontagne which seemed fitting for the view. The air felt fresh and clean and pure...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

We arrived at Lion's Ledge (their ranch) at 8:30 MST. 15 hours in the car (remember the speed limit through 800/1000 miles was 75mph and who drives the speed limit so going 80 or so gets you to your destination more quickly than expected even with several pit stops and two meals)!! The welcoming committee of our friends who were in from New Mexico (Mershons) and California (Kawashiris) and Kelly's parents and brother made for rapid unpacking of the truck (yes, we brought too much but can one really ever bring too much with a 2.5 year old in tow!?)