Trip to Montana

Today my dad and I left on a trip to Montana for my great grandmother's 100th birthday. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to finish getting things ready before my parents picked me up at 6:00. Our first leg was a flight from Nashville to Denver. Denver recieved about 22 inches of snow yesterday, but the rain today was melting much of it. I found out from my dad that Denver has heated runways that point in every direction so that they can always have flights coming in and out. Unfortunately the airport is a little ways out of town and the roads aren't always cleared. So even if your destination is Denver, you may not be able to get to town right away!

The airport was very crowded, and our flight was delayed a bit. I decided to do a boot camp workout video last night which left my legs pretty sore! We changed gates, but soon were on our way. We arrived in Billings, MT at around 2:30. The airport had some neat art pieces on the two baggage claims. They also had some really amazing kites hanging from the ceiling.

After grabbing a quick lunch, we started the drive to Chinook, MT where we will be staying for this trip. My great grandmother, Granner, lives in Harlem, but there aren't any hotels in Harlem. The drive was very nice, mostly plains with scattered mountains. Along the drive we saw deer, hawks, red-winged blackbirds, and my favorite western U.S. animal, pronghorn.

Pronghorn (mistakenly called goats and antelope by the Lewis & Clark expedition) are the only animal in the family Antilocapra. There is no other animal closely related to them. They can run as fast as 60 mph, and can maintain speeds of 30 mph for miles. It is thought that the proghorn developed this speed in order to evade the American cheetah, long extinct. The only animal faster than the pronghorn is the cheetah, but they cannot maintain their speed over distances.

We arrived in Chinook in the evening and looked around for a place to eat dinner. The only restaurant in Chinook is Pizza Pro. We walked down the street to the restaurant. On the way back, we stopped at the only grocery store. We also passed by an old hotel that looks like the Bates motel from the movie "Psycho." Luckily, that is not where we are staying! We called it an early night since we were exhausted.