Day 66-July 30, 2016-Livingston, MT
Hot today, 98, everybody’s complaining about the heat. But it’s not too humid and when the wind comes in about 5PM everything cools down.
We spent the morning making more reservations. It’s getting really difficult to find campgrounds. Gas is relatively low, it’s the 100th anniversary of the federal parks, there’s either a fair going on, a construction crew or just more campers on the road that’s filling up the campgrounds. But we managed to find some places that fit our itinerary.
Livingston is in Paradise Valley with lush green grass so there’s a lot of farms and ranches. Calamity Jane was born and raised here. There’swimming, boating and rafting in the rivers. Fly fishing is huge, “A River Runs through It” is based on fly fishing on the Blackfoot River and some parts were filmed here. Also some of “Horse Whisperer”, “Rancho Deluxe” in 1975 and in 2016 “Certain Women”. There’s also a film festival held here in September. The residential area is kept up well, nice little old homes with pretty gardens. Some alphabet streets, A, B, C, etc. some numbered streets and of course “Lewis St.” and Clark St.”. Downtown they call “the poor man’s Jackson Hole”, lots of shops but not too expensive. Beautiful old buildings still standing from the late 1800s. There are three museums in town, the International Fly Fishing Federation, the Yellowstone Gateway and the Train Depot. We went to the Train Depot. It’s a restored 1902 depot and was the best way to get to Yellowstone back in the day. Nice museum, their logo is the yin-yang symbol that is on the beautiful terra cotta building, on their lawn and all through town. A lot of the buildings in town are the original structures and they give the town an old west vibe. Nice murals on the sides of buildings, fish sculptures and on the side of the mountain in the distance an outline of a trout so you can’t forget where you are and that a river truly does run through this town. The railroad and fly fishing dominate this town, even the campground has signs offering free fly fishing casting lessons. Beautiful architecture and nice quaint shops, an old book store, restaurants, hotels, fly fishing shops, quilt shops and a couple of breweries. The one we stopped in to quench our thirst this hot day was Katabatic, the whole front of which was open to the street. They had good, cold beer and nice people inside. We then went to one of the boat launches on the Yellowstone River. It was flowing quite quickly but I was surprised that not many people were on it, no fly fishermen, just a couple of rafters. Got the car washed, filled up with gas and headed back to the campground. There is a field across the street from the campground with four horses grazing in it. I went to visit with them and they’re friendly enough until they realize you didn’t bring any food and then they just go back to grazing. The wind really picked up tonight, blowing our chairs over and bringing some branches down. Really cooled it off, too. The sky got dark in the distance for a while and we thought maybe we’d get some rain but it never happened. There was a nice rainbow over the mountain though so I guess it did rain somewhere. And then, as quickly as it started, the wind stopped.