On the road from Missoula to West-Yellowstone

In a country like the USA distances are huge. On my first trip to the USA in 1993 we took the bus from New York to Washington and back. For six hours we saw nothing but traffic and industry.

I thought it would be the same all over the USA. It turns out I was wrong. If you use highways instead of interstates and free-ways, you pass through picturesque villages and parks. Beautiful landscapes are everywhere. Making a stop to photograph those views is easy.

Luckily, one of my travel companions knew this. Thanks to her we saw very interesting places.

The first one was the town of Darby (Montana).

We passed through Darby and decided to stop because it looked like a historic town. We Belgians always associate wooden buildings with history.  Except for the Pioneer Memorial Museum, I couldn’t find any information related to the history of the town.

Darby is located in the Bitterroot Valley, near the border with Idaho. The Bitterroot Valley is very popular for fishing, boating and hiking.

Quake lake was the next stop.

On August 17, 1959 one of the strongest earthquakes in American history shook Montana. 28 people were killed. Most of them were tourists who were visiting Hebgen Lake. An enormous landslide destroyed a camp ground in the Madison Valley killing the people sleeping in the cabins.

This landslide created an obstruction in the Madison River and thus Quake Lake was brought into being.

For more information on Quake Lake, please click here

We made some more stops on route. We saw, for instance, a group of cowboys trying to catch a calf with a lasso. One of the men explained us that they needed to administer a medicine to the calf.

This is why I prefer to travel by car: you see all kinds of unfamiliar places and customs;   you meet very interesting people when you least expect it; and last but not least, you get a lot of photo opportunities.

More photos of my road trip are available via this link.

Due to a lot of course work, I don’t have enough time to publish a blogpost every week . From now on I will post one article every two to three weeks. Hopefully I can resume my former publishing schedule in a couple of months.

Disclaimer: I own the copyright to all photos in this post.