Thursday, when we actually leave Montana for good.

I hadn't expected to love Montana.  But it was beautiful.  The combination of mountains, wilderness, farms, high plains, and endless sky was poetic.  I can see why Montanans love their state.  It's definitely on my "go back to"list.  The drives were long, but the scenery was compelling.  I thought I might regret  bringing so few books for me, but I didn't.  Looking out the window, watching the clouds roll in and the sky light up at sunset filled the hours.  Some of my favorite photos from our time in Montana are the   snapshots I took out the window as we drove just to remember a sense of the place.

When we lived in Minnesota we had lots of friends who were raised in the West and talked about missing the mountains.  I didn't understand that at the time, never having lived near mountains.  After nearly 9 years in Seattle, I get it.  I understand that some places have an almost magnetic pull.  The place, the geography, is such a part of living there.  I think Montana is like this too.  It feels different than other places and I'd guess that native Montanans who move away feel like they leave a part of themselves behind.  On the other hand, maybe I'd feel differently if we'd been there in the winter.  :)

Thursday morning we left Yellowstone to head across southern Montana and spend the night in Wyoming.  Thursday's stop was Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  It commemorates one of the battles between the Sioux and General Custer.  The history is so sad - the promises made and broken by our country, the loss of a traditional way of life that respected the earth, the disease introduced, the lives lost in battle on both sides.  Little Bighorn is especially interesting because many of the details are lost to history.

The site is a hot, windswept hill.  There were a surprising number of other visitors there.  And it was totally worth the stop.  We debated driving through northern Wyoming instead of southern Montana.  It would have given us a chance to see Cody and some Wild West stuff, but we didn't want to miss Little Bighorn.  I'm glad we didn't.

Sunset in Wyoming