Sightseeing

On Thursday, Bob and I went into Bozeman, a nice little city about a half hour west of Livingston. Bozeman was surprisingly hip, featuring many trendy-looking restauraunts in the downtown area. We chose to eat at the Nova Cafe, where Bob ordered a fritatta and I enjoyed a Vietnamese salad.

I find that I'm really enjoying eating a plant based diet and am having fun trying foods that never would have been on my radar before. We walked around the area after lunch and stopped into an antique store. We were tempted by a couple of items but resisted bringing anything more into our motorhome. It sure was fun to look, though!

Today we went into Livingston to learn a little more about the town. There's a very nice museum here called the Yellowstone Gateway Museum that we wanted to see. The building itself was originally an elementary school, and inside were a lot of exhibits that piqued my interest.

You've all seen pictures of these, called High Wheel Bicycles, but you may not have known that in 1870 people paid $125 (six months' salary) to own one. The phrase "taking a header" was coined by users of this bicycle. If the front tire encountered an obstacle, the front axle rotated forward and the rider was dropped on his head.

In 1915, the Yellowstone Trail was completed, connecting Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts to Puget Sound, Washington. The first automobiles began crossing the country, ending the railway's monopoly on coast-to-coast travel. It was America's first highway, and I'd never heard of it before.

Outside in a separate building are antique vehicles such as this bright yellow surry, used by Yellowstone Park to provide horse-drawn tours to visitors in the late 1800s. There were also two fine examples of sheepwagons, considered "...a marvel of practicality and efficiency." This type was made in the 1880s-1920s and provided the sheep herder with shelter and heat, mobility and storage. Nowadays sheepwagons are still used but are more like a modernized RV.

In front of the museum stands a fine example of a train car. It was surprisingly large and airy inside.

Bob and I are watching the weather carefully. It has been rainy and cold for the last three days, so cold that I could see my breath (a sight that I had thought never to have to see again, to be honest.) There is snow in the forecast this week but hopefully the forecasters are just looking for high ratings. Those of my readers from the mid-Atlantic region of the country know how often snow is predicted that never actually appears. I'm kind of hoping it's the same here, but we'll find out. We move on to our next destination, West Yellowstone, on Tuesday.