Chief Joseph Scenic Highway

This is the highway we took on our return home to Billings. There were a couple of beautiful canyons on this route. The first one we were able to hike around. The picture below is of that gorge, it was taken by John while he stood on a ledge over-hanging the canyon ( he did give me a scare while he was doing that because he was standing beyond the fenced-off area).

Sunlight Creek, a tributary of the Yellowstone River, could be seen running through the bottom of this canyon. The other canyon we saw only from a distance at Dead Indian Summit.The gorge can be seen in the middle of the picture below.Chief Joseph Highway is almost as scenic as the Beartooth Highway which we had been on earlier in the day. The summit is of historical importance because of a Nez Pierce battle there with the United States Army in 1877.

On the last few miles of our return home we drove through the town of Belfry. We passed their high school which had a sign in front of it announcing that it was "home of the bats".  I sure wondered how the students of that school feel about having the bat as their mascot. Maybe someone put that up as a joke! One last picture here. I took that picture at a drive-in where we stopped for supper. It is the creation of artist David Masters.

 We certainly had spent a long day touring around but it had been very enjoyable. And on our way home, just outside of Billings, we saw a coyote capturing his prey out in a harvested wheat field. That certainly added to the pleasures of the day!