Day 40: Montana's Dinosaurs and Big Sky Country

 Friday, June 21 and the longest day of the year

We got up at 7:00 and were on the road by 7:30, heading north from Gardiner MT on 89N. Taking 90W we headed to Bozeman MT, where we toured the Museum of the Rockies, a very eclectic museum. They had a room for mythical creatures (which Jessica really enjoyed), another for MT houses and transportation to get there, another on Yellowstone Native American cultures, and then the gem for me—rooms full of dinosaur fossils including Big Mike the T. rex. Many dinosaur fossils were found in nearby Hell’s Creek Canyon, including several T. rex and many Triceratops. There was very interesting info with fossils and casts of fossils on how the jaws and horns of these two dinosaurs varied with age. T. rex only lived to 25 yrs old. Imagine how fast it must have grown! They also had fossils of dinosaur egg clutches of various sizes and even one of an embryo! And in one T. rex femur that broke open, they found soft tissue and were able to extract some DNA and proteins, to show how closely dinosaurs and birds are related. 

After the museum, we found a Jiffy Lube in Bozeman and had the oil changed, while Jessica went to CVS and then got us lunch at Chipotle while we waited. We then went across the street to Safeway to grocery shop. We drove on for 5 hrs or more north to Helena, where we gassed up. Then we were detoured due to construction and witnessed a thunderstorm in the area of Choteau where we were headed that reportedly had golf ball sized hail. We could see Montana’s big sky huge cumulus clouds in the distance and then the black dark storm clouds as we got closer and the heavy rain on the horizon. We missed the storm by about 30 min and only had mild rain and saw some hail on the side of the road as the sun came out. We continued on 89N to Browning MT and then 2W to St Mary and the east side of Glacier NP. We stayed at Divide Creek campground, site 8, a primitive campground with outdoor HW shower for $5 extra per person. Tomorrow, we will explore the east side of the park since the Going-to-the-Sun Road is closed in the mountains due to snow and will not open until mid-July!