8/31/2018 – Bozeman, West Yellowstone

Picked Nancy up at the Bozeman Airport at 1pm and headed to downtown Bozeman. I quickly determined that the town I thought was Bozeman from my motorcycle trip 20 years ago was someplace other than Bozeman.  The town I recalled Steve and I visiting while traveling across Montana was very small…..you could pretty much see the whole town from the highway we were traveling on. It was perched up on a hill with the mountains as a backdrop. Oh well, I guess my memory failed me in this case.

Bozeman is now a fairly large city with a bustling downtown. Based on all of the newer buildings, it’s obvious there has been a lot of growth over the past few years. We went into a few shops and had a great lunch at Starkey’s Authentic Americana…..they claim to have the best Rueben sandwiches in Montana. I had a pastrami rueben and it was delicious! Nancy had chicken salad.

We then headed back to West Yellowstone. It was gorgeous sunny day. The smoke is gone now and the mountain backdrops are much clearer. It’s about a 1 3/4 hour drive so it was nice to be driving in such great scenery. The Gallatin River runs along the road for most of the drive, and there are quite a few “Montana postcard” ranches nestled in the river valley between the mountains.  The whole western Montana area is spectacularly beautiful.

We got back about 5pm. It was a long day for both of us, but especially for Nancy. It was good to get back and relax.

The pic below is Ted’s Montana Grill in downtown Bozeman. This chain of restaurants was started by Ted Turner, the Chairman of Turner Enterprises (CNN, TBS, etc.) and a Cincinnati native,  and George McKerrow, the founder of Longhorn Steakhouses and a Ohio State alumnus. The featured item is buffalo steaks, but there is regular beef on the menu as well. The first restaurant opened in Columbus Ohio in 2002. The chain now includes 45 restaurants. Ted also owns a 590,823 acre ranch (roughly 923 square miles!) in northeastern New Mexico and southern CO. It is the biggest piece of land in his overall portfolio of 16 ranches covering over 2M acres (3125 sq miles!) in the US.

The drive back to Yellowstone