Road Trip with Bruce and Louise: September 10, 11, 2016, Glendive, Makoshika Dinosours, Frontier Gateway Museum, Theodore Roosevelt NP, and Salem Sue the Cow

September 10, 11, 2016, Glendive Montana, Makoshika Dinosours, Frontier Gateway Museum, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Enchanted Highway and the Flying Geese, and Salem Sue the world largest cow

Because of our wrong turn in Yellowstone we are higher up in Montana than we planned. In fact we hadn't planned to being back in Montana, but here we are. Our plan now is to drive across Montana and then North Dakota and through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Leaving Livingston we drove across Montana to the town of Glendive on the eastern side along Interstate 94. Kind of a nice little railroad town original established by the Northern Pacific Railroad, it is also the agriculture and ranching hub of eastern Montana. We had two excellent meals at C.C. Family Cafe, best turkey dinner ever. Glendive is also ground zero for dinosaurs, Makoshika State Park is located here. It is one of the major locations in the world for finding and digging up dinosaurs fossils of all kinds. Glendive also kind of sits on the edge of the Dakota's Badlands geography and has some amazing landscape in the Makoshika park.

The Frontier Gateway Museum is also located here in Glendive. It contains an excellent collection of pioneer farm equipment. The farm equipment all looks so crude now but in their day it was the leading technology. It has been very interesting to see some of the massive farm equipment along the road or in the fields. The museum was closed for the season but a very nice lady let us in to walk around the outdoor exhibits. This is the second time we have had this happen, very cool.

As we left on Sunday we drove east passed the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, visiting the Painted Canyon area in the Southern Unit. Much of this park is also similar to the landscape of the Badlands in South Dakota. Stark and beautiful. I had never really heard of the Theodore Roosevelt NP but he had several large ranches in this area and during his administration he put something like 1/10 of the US land under federal control in parks and forests. Around 230 million acres.

One of the cool things about driving out west that I love are the huge statues you see along the road, mostly giant cows and dinosaurs, but also art. As we drove to Bismarck, ND along Interstate 94 we passed two cool ones, Geese in Flight in appreciation of the Enchanted Highway, one of the worlds largest metal sculptures, and Salem Sue the worlds largest cow.