After taking a day to restock the RV in Loveland, Dan and I took the dogs, Abbey and their dog Lydia, for a hike to a place called Grey Rocks Peak (or something like that). Well, it felt like I hadn't been hiking in months. Abbey must have felt the same because she was sluggish all day, though I think part of it was from the sun and somewhat warm weather. It actually was a gorgeous day for hiking, but there wasn't much shade and her black coat gets real hot in the sun. Towards the top of the peak we had to scramble up a bunch of boulder fields. Poor Abbey was really showing her age and the fact that she was tired. I even had to carry her up a few hairy spots but we finally made it and the dogs were rewarded with a shallow lake to splash around in at the top. Lydia still had tons of energy being a puppy and she wouldn't stop climbing up the rocks and running around. The rest of us ate lunch and rested. On the way down my knees got really tight, but I think it was from the rafting trip. To keep from falling out of the boat I had jammed my feet so far under the cross tubes that my knees ached quite a bit by the end of the trip. They still hadn't quite recovered and now they were aching again. Guess I'm getting old.
Saturday morning Abbey and I finally headed out for Montana. The drive was pretty uneventful since most of it was through the middle of Wyoming. Other than the strong winds that nearly blew me off the road a number of times it was pretty dull. We arrived in Billings, MT in the evening and found a pretty nice RV park, as far as RV parks go. It was only the second one that I had been to up 'til now. I justified the extra expense and the stigma that goes along with it by taking a nice hot shower, dumping my tanks, filling up with water and doing my laundry there as well. I drove around Billings a little bit to get my bearings. From the highway it is pretty ugly '? very industrial with a few refineries on the outskirts. The Montana Women's Prison is even on one of the main thoroughfares going into town. Once you get downtown though it isn't too bad. Sunday afternoon I picked up Chris Sereduke at the airport and we headed straight to Yellowstone, about 3 hours away. I hadn't seen him in a while so we talked the whole way. We were joking later that we weren't sure how the week would go since we had never spent more than a few days together before and not in more than 20 years. Anyways, we found a decent campground at Mammoth Hot Springs and settled in for the night pretty early. We were both pretty tired.