Greetings from Bozeman!

Sunday evening my flight into Bozeman, Montana, was early. We landed about 10:45 p.m. MDT, which was almost midnight to my body. My flights from Wichita to Minneapolis/St. Paul and then on to Bozeman/Big Sky/Yellowstone were uneventful. Besides spilling a large amount of water on myself at the Wichita airport and spending some quality time in front of the air hand dryer in the ladies room, there is nothing to report. The airport at Bozeman looks like a ski lodge, appropriately enough. No photos because I was too tired. Angie and Gary (my cousin and her husband of almost 25 years!) picked me up at the airport and were parked very close to the door. So I didn't have to think too much once I got to baggage claim.

Yesterday Angie and Gary tried to kill me. We had intended to do a short hike to a waterfall, but the road was closed because of a mudslide. It's been raining here for a week and the mud slid right down off that mountain and ruined our hike up there. So we improvised and they drove me through the campus of Montana State University and then downtown Bozeman. We hiked partially up a different mountain which is where they tried to kill me. My body is not as in shape as I'd like it to be and not being used to the altitude didn't help either. We didn't take the right "more vigorous" path, we took the other one, which was pretty steep, too. These pictures don't do justice to the incline. If you click on the photo to the left, you can see where we parked at the right side of the photo. The weather was windy and cold, but it was still beautiful. Here's a photo of Angie and I once we reached my breaking point. The city of Bozeman is behind us in the distance.

After we hiked we drove up to the ski lifts at Bridger Bowl. They are closed for the season, but there is still some snow up there.

Then we hit the local Wal-mart (it looks like a ski lodge, too) for some salsa fixin's and went home. Gary fixed his famous marinade (their son Matthew says he would drink it if they let him) then we soothed our tired muscles in their hot tub for a bit and watched a couple of movies before eating steaks, baked potatoes, bread and broccoli. Before bed I got introduced to games on the Nintendo Wii that Matthew bought with his savings recently. I am a decent bowler, but really stink at golf and Super Mario Bros. racing. They made Angie and I race each other and they got a good laugh out of that. We were usually vying for last place finishes.

It was a great Labor Day indeed.