We’re on another big journey on this beautiful January winter morning with the moon glowing bright in the sky. These are the views headed west out of our hometown, of Miles City.
The Hooley’s are on a 10 hour (round) road trip to Bozeman, Montana to drop off Nathan at MSU (Montana State University). His month long winter break is over.
The big full moon follows us most of the morning headed directly West passing only a couple of small rural towns before passing thru Billings, Montana (our closest city, living in the middle of nowhere).
After several hours of driving west, just past Billings, Montana we start seeing the great mountain ranges of Montana’s Rocky Mountains.
We first see the Crazy Mountains. Beautiful Mountain views with surrounding evergreen forests in every direction we look.
We pass many picturesque rural Montana cattle ranches headed towards the small towns of Big Timber and Livingston just before the mountain pass.
A little glimpse for you of our Yellowstone River that follows us from Miles City all the way to Bozeman.
Next the Mystic Mountains are coming into sight.
We’ll pass through the Bridger mountain range but Big Sky is not able to be seen from the expressway.
These are my last mountain pictures traveling to Bozeman. At Greycliff, before Big Timber and Livingston (before the Pass) we stop at a rest area and then I take over driving through the mountains and into Bozeman.
We arrive in Bozeman and these next winter wonderland photos are of the MSU campus. They’ve had a lot more snow out West during the holidays than South Eastern Montana where we live.
A quaint duck pond on campus that is a federal mallard duck sanctuary protected by our government. They enjoy a heated pond and live here year-round.
We drop Nathan off at the back entrance of his honors house he lives at called the “Quads”. He has a few best friends that are waiting to help him unload our Jeep.
Erik and I share exciting stories of being out in the Badlands and Nathan discovering the baby triceratops brow horn with eye orbit with his roommate and friends.
It’s a 10 hour round-trip and we have to get going shortly. We try to get back before sunset because of all the wildlife in Montana.
We have been on the road almost a couple hours and on the right, a south eastern view is the Beartooth mountains in the distance, located in Red Lodge, Montana.
The sun is starting to set and we are almost home.
The red Angus cattle look beautiful in the evening sunlight with the contrast of the white snow on the ground with a bit the grasslands exposed on the range.
Miles City ….next exit…woo hoo… what a wonderful day of travel and a beautiful road trip traveling across Montana.
To the right and behind this cow sign is our fairgrounds, we have several rodeos and town festivities during the year here.
We are coming into town and headed over a large bridge that is over the Yellowstone river.
These are some views from the bridge of Riverside Park, located downtown off of Main coming into town.
Up above and in the big cottonwood tree is an eagle’s nest.
It is frozen over and snow covered, but this is the Oasis, one of our summer places to swim. It cost a $1.00 to get in and a free if you’re visiting from out of town.
Scenes from Main Street of Riverside park.
On the left is the Trails Inn bar. It was the first bar we ever stopped at to have a shot and celebrate moving to Miles City 20 years ago.
The Bison bar on the right, on the corner, is our local cowboy bar.
We take a left turn onto seventh Street headed west to the formerly Airport Inn to pick up our favorite pizza. It’s too late to cook tonight..
Here is a view of the Yellowstone river we pass over coming back into town from the restaurant.
We are back on Main Street, to the left is Vintage and Rustics, it is in the old Ben Franklin building which had a soda fountain shop, but is now a repurposed resale shop.
On the left is our movie theater, the Montana, which I believe has been there for over 100 years.
The courthouse is on the right it is our county seat for the area.
Beautiful church on the corner of Main Street.
If you turn left here, our Catholic Church Sacred Heart is down on the right.
This concludes the tour of Miles City our one horse town.
Erik and I wake up the next morning to this beautiful sunrise in front of our house on Wibaux park.
We would like to wish all of our clients and family and friends from the United States to all over the world a Happy New Year! 🥳🥂🦖!
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