Billings – Riveted

A Walk Along the Rimrock

Laura Domela — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:11:22 +0000

We went and walked a couple miles along the Rimrock this afternoon. There are several nice trails up there with great views of the city (Billings, Montana). The light was kinda crappy so I didn't really get any good city shots, but I did take a photo of this nice huge crack in the rock!

Reminds me about the story I read the other day somewhere in Billings news when I was researching something else about a part of the rimrock that fell onto a house a year or two ago. Eek!! Wouldn't THAT be a bummer?

Pictograph Cave State Park

Laura Domela — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:03:26 +0000

This afternoon after I finished up a bunch of work I decided I needed to get out a bit and do something, so I headed over to the Pictograph Cave State Park for a little hike.

Pictograph Cave State Park is a 93-acre park and includes three caves (Pictograph, Middle, and Ghost cave). It's only about five miles south of Billings. There's a nice trail that passes in front of the caves and winds around the base of the rock. Parts of the trail are paved, and parts are gravel, and some of the trail is quite steep (perfect for a quick afternoon hike).

Excavation of the three caves began in 1937, and there have been over 30,000 artifacts found in the caves. Some of the pictographs are over 3500 years old and are still visible in Pictograph Cave (the largest of the three caves). They are paintings of animals, warriors, and rifles that document the story of the Native Americans of the area for thousands of years.

Here's an overview of Pictograph Cave from the information display (cave wall above, pictographs outlined below):

Here's one of the pictographs (guns!) I could see pretty well from where I stood:

It's a beautiful area, worth a visit.

The bunnies and I took turns startling each other on my hike:

Looking back, from the end of the trail:

And here's a view of Billings from the Rimrocks yesterday morning:

Snow's mostly gone now and the road conditions for the pass we need to get over on our way home now say "scattered wet" and no more "areas of frost and ice." Hope it stays that way.

Yellowstone Art Museum, Downtown Billings

Laura Domela — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:56:32 +0000

We went into town yesterday to do some laundry at the Speedy Wash laundromat. So. Exciting. We waited while our stuff finished the wash cycle, then while things dried we headed around the corner to check out the Yellowstone Art Museum.

This is a relatively small museum (it is Billings, after all) but they've got a good collection of contemporary art. We were pleasantly surprised.

One of the exhibitions up now is a show entitled: Herb & Dorothy: Fifty Works for Fifty States. Herb and Dorothy Vogel were unlikely art collectors, and if you don't know about them and if you like quirky documentaries, you should check out this fabulous little film.

Late afternoon cityscape I took with my iPhone through the shade screens upstairs in the museum:

We found an Art-O-Mat downstairs in the lobby and got ourselves some $5 art.

We chose a package from our friends at Boxfotos: inside was a print, a pinhole camera (the box), and instructions, woohoo!

We decided we'd stop at a liquor store to replenish our supply of Blanton's and I'd seen this place with all its neon on our way past the other day:

We stopped, but turned out it's not a liquor store…it's a bar and grill. Oh well.

The Yellowstone River

Laura Domela — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:27:00 +0000

Yesterday afternoon while it was all snowy we went into town and saw a movie. A movie! In a theater! Haven't done that since we went to the best theater on the planet in New Orleans in the end of September. (We saw the new James Bond flick, Skyfall. Totally fun!)

When we came out of the theater the snow had stopped and we filled our empty propane tank on the way back to camp. Back at camp, we headed out for a walk down to the Yellowstone River.

Devil’s Tower to Billings, Montana

Laura Domela — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 22:32:22 +0000

We left our spot at Devil's Tower View Campground this morning and headed for Montana. I took this photo so you can get an idea of the campground proximity to the tower (not bad):

We stopped in Sheridan, Wyoming to get some gas and grab some lunch.

Many people ask us how we find the cool little restaurants we find in towns we've never been to. I'll tell you. Today Kevin was driving as we approached Sheridan so I opened the Yelp app on my iPhone and did a search for Sheridan restaurants, filtered by highest rating. I found one with great reviews called LuLu's Cafe. Great. Kevin asks if it's the kind of place where we'll find parking, so I open it up in Google maps, click on satellite view, and zoom in to see. It looks like there's plenty of good street parking around.

Sweet. So we find street parking easily and walk around the corner to LuLu's and…yellow caution tape and chains across the entrace. We could see evidence of a fire that had burned up in the diamond window above the cafe sign. Bummer.

Back to Yelp. Okay, number two on Yelp is Oliver's Bar & Grill over on Main Street. Walking distance. Backup plan, let's go. We walk a block or so over to Main Street, and in the window of Oliver's it looks like chairs on top of tables. We get to the front door to find this:

Our method only can get us so far, but overall it's a great method, don't you think? Reviews, satellite images to figure out parking (zoom in! enhance!), what's not to work? Fire, and economic downturn, apparently.

We ended up at a place called Flagstaff Cafe (a little ways down Main Street) and it was plenty good for a quick lunch.

Back on the road headed to Billings:

We'd planned to go to either the KOA (officially closed, but with discounted spots, electric-only) or another one closer into town called Billings Village or something like that (with maybe full hookups, not clear), but ended up at a place next to the KOA along the Yellowstone River (called I think "Yellowstone River Campground") in a full hookup spot with a weekly discounted rate. Looks like they have a strong Wi-Fi signal, but so far we haven't been able to get anywhere with it so we're using our Verizon datacard. Great AT&T service here as well. (There are plenty of people here, and even another Airstream. Sweet!)

Went into town and stocked up on some groceries for the next few days, and picked up a small smoked turkey from the meat market…they had two left from Thanksgiving and the gal at the counter says they're awesome. It's supposed to snow a little bit tonight and tomorrow but nothing too heavy. There's a little trail here down to the Yellowstone River that we may check out tomorrow.