Labor Day at Lewis & Clark Caverns

Montana is a beautiful state and we've lived here for over 15 years. But like everyone else who works for a living, we don't often get out and see all the great tourist attractions there are in "Big Sky" country.

Lee and I had to be in Bozeman Monday morning for a meeting with a doctor for one of our cases. So I suggested since it was a three day weekend maybe we could go somewhere touristy/fun down that way in TBH.

"Yeah," Lee said, "we could pack up on Saturday and leave right after church Sunday."

So our plan was to drive maybe down to Ennis, MT and check out Virginia City, site of the Gold Rush craze in the 1800's.

All best plans go astray. Grandpa had an episode of low blood sugar Saturday morning. We didn't know that was the case and took him to ER. Grandma thought he was having a seizure. Lee thought he was having a stroke. Low blood sugar was the best of all possible bad things.

Saturday night Lee finally went out to start TBH ... when it struck again!

It wouldn't start. So Lee tried to charge it over night.

It still didn't start on Sunday. He finally bought 2 new batteries.

It started.

We feverishly loaded the bus and headed out.

Sunday we stayed in Three Forks, favoring less driving as Ennis is another 50 miles south of I-90 and we would add 100 extra miles on our trip.

Monday morning Lee got out and found we had a flat tire! Of course all the trucking type repair shops were closed on Labor Day. Fortunately it was one of the tires on the "tag" axle and Lee found out we could drive with that tire up.

We invited Debbie & Andrew to go to the caverns with us, but they had other plans. So off we went looking for the Caverns.

We eventually found the Lewis and Clark state park at 2:30 pm - about 2 hours after we started out.

No, we're not idiots. There was road construction and they didn't have a sign pointing out an essential turn off the road we were traveling on!

We got to the park entrance and noticed a parking lot full of trailers and buses. The sign said "You may leave your trailers here". Apparently the park was another 3.5 mile up a windy mountain road from there. We were contemplating just going up in TBH, when a truck pulling a fifth wheel stopped to ask about driving up the road. They were 2 women on vacation. The driver was a little nervous about driving up the narrow road and offered us a ride up if Lee would drive them up and down.

Problem solved.

FYI if you're pulling a long trailer, it does have a couple of switch backs, but it's not bad! They even had a large parking lot by the Ranger station and several truck/trailers parked there. We could driven up in TBH (although it may had done something else to us in retaliation)



It's a 3/4 mile hike up to the cave entrance. This was the most walking I've done in over 2 years - my butt hurts today! On top of that I'm allergic to the Bozeman area vegetation and sneezed a million times.



With all that said, we had a nice time doing the tour! I'd do it again without all the extra little problems!



Maybe next time we can visit Virginia City....