Still in Montana...!

We certainly had no desire to hang around this morning at the nasty campground we were at in Big Timber last night and were out and on our way by 9:00 AM -- very early for us!

We were definitely in cattle country today, though we did see a few flocks of sheep. Most of the cropland we saw was alfalfa or grass and we saw lots of bales being hauled.

The countryside was more rugged then we had seen the last few days --

And we started to see rows and rows of snow fence, designed to keep that white stuff from drifting across the highway --

There continues to be a great deal of hazy smoke in the air -- it's hard to even see the mountains ahead --

The median between the freeway lanes is full of bright yellow sunflowers --

We were at 6363 feet when we crossed the Continental Divide.  Lots of ups and downs today.

Always there is road construction! I don't know that we've driven a single day without running into it somewhere along the way. It's a good thing.

I love this part of the drive. The upthrusting rocks are spectacular. (Actually for many of them, the soil around them has eroded away, leaving them behind...)

In some areas, the trees do not look very healthy and there were a lot of dead ones. I suppose this is the result of the pine beetle that we've been hearing about...

The big copper mine pit in Butte. The air was so smokey you could hardly see it!

In contrast to our reception last night, our arrival here at the Deer Lodge KOA was delightful. The staffer acted glad to see us and made sure we liked our site, offering to change it immediately if we could not get satellite reception. The park is right along the bank of the Clark Fork River and on the edge of town. The sites are extremely clean with NO paper or cigarette butts lying about. The electrical and water hook-ups are in good repair. So nice!

Because of our quick start, we arrived here quite early this afternoon. It was very warm, but the wind was too gusty to put out the awning, so we ended up running both air conditioners in order to keep the inside down in the eighties. It has cooled off enough by 8:30 that I am going to be able to go take a walk along the river bank before I finish watching the baseball game.