Carl Henning

You get to the Yellowstone County Museum by going to the Billings Logan International Airport. Really. The tiny airport grew and the museum stayed put and wound up on the airport grounds. This is the TARDIS of museums – it s bigger on the inside that the outside.

Near Billings, Montana is the disappointing Pictograph Cave State Park. Disappointing because unlike petroglyphs which are chipped in the varnish coating of rocks, pictographs are painted on. Paint fades and weathers.

Bozeman, Montana, a hot bed of technology. Down the street from the Museum of the Rockies is the American Computer and Robotics Museum. I asked at the welcome desk if they had my first computer on display. They did not, but they had one in the basement.

It was not surprising to find the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana. What was surprising was that most of the area was devoted to Da Vinci. We took a quick pass through the local artifacts and dinosaurs and spent a great deal of time with the Renaissance master’s paintings and devices.

They call it a museum, but it’s really a mine plus an ersatz mining town: The World Museum of Mining in Butte Montana. They offer underground mine tours which we skipped. There is plenty to see without going underground.

We spent a lot of time paralleling rivers. Today it’s the Columbia. We passed some dams, including this one. There are 27 main generators plus two smaller ones to supply power to the powerhouse itself. From the dam overlook’s sign:…

I admit I never heard of Winthrop, Washington until I planned our return route. It is not a bad little town. There were no chain hotels so I chose the Hotel Rio Vista. A good choice.

Three hours from Seattle is North Cascades National Park. Beautiful scenery and chilly temperatures.

Small town America scores another nice museum: Baker Heritage Museum. Housed in the former Natatorium, it features items from local history.

There were two falls near here on the Snake River (north of the town). We didn’t see the one remaining falls (a dam diverted water from the other). Twin Falls, Idaho is a nice little city with some adjacent scenery. And it’s near the site where Evel Knievel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon.