More mountain Xanax

Deep breaths

I basically emptied out the suitcase, washed everything, and packed it up again, getting ready to fly to London very early on Friday morning.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself until I spent half the afternoon looking for my keys. I knew they were in the apartment because I was in the apartment and couldn't have achieved that without them, but they weren’t on the counter, or in my purse, or in my pocket or on the floor. I ended up taking everything back out of the suitcase in case I had somehow managed to pack them (I hadn't) so now I have to pack again.

I'm taking deep breaths and looking at pretty pictures of mountains in Glacier National Park to calm myself down again. It's a good thing they don't administer IQ tests at border crossings or I might be out of luck right now. (I did find the keys, by the way—in the silverware drawer.)

More Glacier fauna

We thought that these nosy creatures checking us out through our windshield were mountain goats, but they are actually bighorn sheep.

We never did see a moose, but we probably were able to get a lot closer to these sheep than we ever would to a moose.

And now for something completely different

This chipmunk in Glacier National Park does not get any of the Monty Python references, and clearly isn't impressed by anything I have to say.

Sunday bird blogging

A pair of magpies at a rest stop in Montana.

Unknown soldier memorial

A closer look at the memorial. (The bright sun and shadows from the trees made it hard to read the inscriptions.)

Garryowen

Someone at the trading post recommended that we come here since we couldn't visit the park. This is a few miles down the highway from Last Stand Hill, and was the location of Sitting Bull's camp before the battle.

Wikipedia tells me that the town is privately owned, and has a population of 2 (which may explain why the GPS got so confused when we were trying to find it.) There's a small museum, and a tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which may (or may not—there is apparently some doubt about this) contain the skeleton of a cavalry soldier found in 1926 when an irrigation ditch just outside of Garryowen was being repaired.

Garryowen started as a railroad station on the Little Bighorn River, where supplies for the local forts and homesteads could be delivered. The name referred to an Irish song that was the marching song for the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

Little Bighorn

The 7th US Cavalry Memorial on Last Stand Hill, at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in southeastern Montana. This is where the Battle of the Little Bighorn ended in 1876, when Custer and the last 40 or so of his men were cornered and killed.

It's such a bad picture because the battlefield is currently only open on weekends while they build a new visitor's center, so this is as close as we could get. I was disappointed not to be able to visit the battlefield, but it was hot and the trading post up the road was air-conditioned, so I managed to get over it.

Looking out over the dreary landscape in the opposite direction. The Little Bighorn river is behind the trees.

I haven't posted many pictures of the scenery yet. After the surprisingly beautiful prairies of North Dakota, the northern route that we took across Montana to Glacier National Park was a letdown: flat fields of grass, cattle, sad little towns, and mile after mile of railroad cars along the highway.

We stayed in Missoula last night and took a more southern route heading east to Little Bighorn today. This was a much prettier drive, with mountains and grass-covered hills behind the ranchland. But this is bleak.

Sunday bird blogging

A crow in Glacier National Park.

The World's Largest Purple Spoon

We had two hours to kill this afternoon while waiting for check-in time at what was supposed to be our hotel for the night (we are sleeping elsewhere—long story) and checked Trip Advisor for the top 15 things to see in Browning, Montana. This spoon was listed, although it is actually in East Glacier Park. (If you spend more than a few minutes in Browning, you will understand why they had to extend the boundaries in order to come up with more than half a dozen things to see.)

So we sought out the giant spoon and discovered that it was across the street from the restaurant where we ate lunch, and we had somehow failed to notice it. (This might be a common problem since the sign identifying the spoon also helpfully includes an arrow pointing to it. “Oh, that giant purple spoon! I didn't see it!”)

Bunny!

We've had some really annoying and expensive but also kind of hilarious hotel problems the past few two days, so I'm going for pictures that don't require a lot of explanation. I'm too exhausted to explain much, and we're leaving at 6am again tomorrow.

So how about a bunny? Google tells me that this rabbit behind our hotel in Glendive, Montana yesterday morning is probably a desert cottontail.