MONTANA REDDNECK EVENING AND WE MADE IT HOME

We stopped in Malta at the dinosaur museum and had a great time there.  The Palaeontologist who runs the place was very knowledgeable, and we had many interesting conversations with her.  She has been involved in a number of finds in that area.  After Malta, we headed down 191 where it crosses the Missouri and spent the night at the Kipp Recreation area.  And that is where we had the "Montana Redneck Evening".  You make sandwiches, take some beer and chips along with lawn chairs then drive down river to the elk viewing area.  What a show.  It is the mating season of elk and they are bugling and trying to get as many cows as they can in their harem.  We spent a couple of hours there watching the show along with some locals and tourists.

Then we headed further south and west.  Stopped in Martinsdale at the Bair Family museum which should be looked at if you are ever in that area.  Spent the night just east of Townsend at a nice Forest Service campground and came on back to the Bitterroot the next day.  There had been a pretty good storm come through and the smoke has cleared out of the valley - that was a very welcome development.

A young lady working on getting the dirt away from a dinosaur bone.

This is Leonardo which is a famous find and some say the most important find in the history of Paleontology because he was all intact.  The Discovery channel did a special on this which you might have seen.

This spring the Kipp Recreation Area was flooded by the old Missouri.  They haven't got all the campsites cleaned up yet.

The floodwater silt dries and cracks up.  You could have stacked these up and made walls with them if they had been more uniform.

And this was our favorite character in the Montana Redneck Evening performance.  He was the dominate bull that is for sure.

This is only part of his harem.  I would estimate that there were at least 40 elk in this bunch and that included at least two other bulls that had 5 points on each side.  This guy had six - a "royal" head has seven on each side.  There were also spikes and what we call "rag horns" meaning they have 3 or 4 on each side and are not very big.

On our way back we came upon these Mule deer fawns who were waiting for their mother to catch up.