Billings, Montana
As seen from the Rimrocks (rock shelf at bottom of photo).
It is the city's most striking feature,
400 feet above the Yellowstone Valley,
running the length of the city and beyond.
Billings has a population
of only about 90,000 yet it is Montana's largest city.

ConocoPhillips Refinery
Billings has three oil refineries including those of ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil

Melinda, Jane and Neil
On top of the Billing's Rimrocks.

Pompey's Pillar National Monument
Pompey's Pillar is one of the most famous sandstone buttes in America. It bears the only remaining physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which appears on the trail today as it did 200 years ago. On the face of the 150-foot butte, Captain William Clark carved his name on July 25, 1806, during his return to the United States through the Yellowstone Valley.

Neil & Melinda In Buckskin
Visitors are invited to try on the Buckskin Clothing

Jane & Melinda
Signing in at Pompey's Pillar National Monument
"Pompy" was William Clark's nickname for Baptiste Charbonneau whose mother, Sacajawea, was the party's interpreter.
Pompy means "Little Chief" in Shoshone Language

Bikers at Red Lodge, MT
Hundreds of Bikers gathered Saturday.
The Sunday paper had a list of 7 or 8 bike fatalities.
Typical: "Lost control while passing on a curve"

The Grandest Canyon in The Northern Rockies
A landscape of sheer cliffs towering 1,000 feet above a ribbon of water. An area sought the world over for magnificent fishing and as a place where wild horses still run free.

Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area
Geologic forces have distorted and bowed once-level layers of rock into immense walls creating spectacular, 1000 foot cliffs that loom over the Bighorn Lake. Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area was established by an act of Congress on October 15, 1966, following the construction of the Yellowtail Dam by the Bureau of Reclamation. This dam, named after the famous Crow chairman Robert Yellowtail, harnessed the waters of the Bighorn River and turned this variable stream into a magnificent lake.

Bighorn Lake extends approximately 71 miles through Wyoming and Montana, 55 miles of which are held within spectacular Bighorn Canyon. The Recreation Area is composed of 120,000+ acres, which straddles the northern Wyoming and southern Montana borders. There are two visitor centers and other developed facilities near Lovell, Wyoming and in Fort Smith, Montana. MT

First Crossing of the Beartooth Mountains
In August 1882 General Phil Sheridan, famed Civil War veteran, moved 120 men up the Lamar River on the east side of Yellowstone River to a mining camp near Cooke City. Now he faced a three-day march down the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone River before turning back north for Billings, Montana.

An old hunter by the name of Geer approached the General. Geer claimed that he had an intimate knowledge of the Beartooth Mountains which blocked the direct route to Billings, necessitating the circuitous detour down the Clarks Fork. Much against the advice of his comrades, and maybe partly to satisfy a hankering for going where no party had gone before, Sheridan listened and resolved to follow the hunter. Two days later, despite forest fire and snow drifts 40 feet deep in craters, the group completed the first crossing of the Beartooth Mountains, landing near present-day Red Lodge, Montana.

Beartooth Forested Valley
The mountains are just northeast of Yellowstone National Park and are part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The mountains are traversed by road via the Beartooth Highway (U.S. 212) with the highest elevation at Beartooth Pass (10,947 ft).
Note the switchbacks as the highway gains altitude.

Red Butte - Ancient Geology
As we drove Neil gave us a geological travelogue
pointing out the layering of sedimentary rocks
such as limestone, sandstone, slate,
and the igneous granite and other rocks, while
relating the layers to the hundreds of millions
years of geological history.

The Actual Bear's Tooth
The name of the mountain range is attributed to a rugged peak found in the range, Beartooth Peak, that has the appearance of a bear's tooth.

A Mountain Lake
Neil is a professor of Geology and Earth Science at
Montana State University, Billings.
He takes field trips with his students
to the Beartooths and Big Horn Canyon

Alan, & Jane
Impressive Beartooth Mountains in the background

Billings at Night
  We can recommend Dos Mochos Restaurant.
Great tacos and even greater Margaritas !

We enjoyed The Rimrocks Opera's presentation of Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti and Menotti's The Telephone

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