saturday in the park

Today we had a nice outing to Red Lodge. It's about an hour away from Billings at the base of the Beartooth Mountains. It's located on highway 212 also known as the beartooth highway, which has been called the most scenic highway in the country. This site has some nice pictures and descriptions of the surrounding area. The scenic part must start after Red Lodge. The highway does goes into Yellowstone, so we hope to take that route to the park sometime in the future and discover all the scenery it has to offer. Red Lodge has a quaint downtown area with an eclectic array of shops, but nothing that really caught our eye. We ate lunch at the Red Boxcar which, surprisingly, is housed in an old red boxcar. It's situated on Rock Creek which we checked out while waiting for our food.

Collecting leaves in the water. She's been on a big collecting kick lately

Having fun in the water with daddy

Mommy and Emma

After lunch we tried to find the ski area, Red Lodge Mountain, to see what the lodge is like before deciding to make the trek with all our ski gear, but we missed the turn. I'm sure we'll hit the slops at least once this winter. I can't wait! On our way back into town after trying to find the ski area, traffic was backed up because of a cattle round-up. Only in Montana.

After returning to Red Lodge, we found a great public park and played for awhile with Emma. I just have to share all these pictures because she was so cute today and so excited by the park.

Playing the "organ" which needed some tunning

Playing the giant xylophone

Trying out the rings. Unfortunately she blew the dismount

Crawling through the tunnel

Halfway through

The tunnel journey is complete

Swinging on the tire swing as viewed from the top

Going down the slide. She loved this!

What a cutie!

After the park, we drove to Cooney Dam State Park to meet my grandma, Aunt Janie, and her daughter Haley for dinner. The park is on the way back to Billings and my grandma is the park ranger there. We had a nice visit and Emma proved again how unafraid of the water she is. We neglected to bring her swim suit, but that didn't deter her. Had it not been for the rocky beach, she would have walked into the lake fully clothed. I did have swimmer diapers for her so I put those on, left her top and bottomless, slathered her with sunscreen and walked her into the water. She had a tight grip on my fingers the whole time, but consistently led me into deeper water (up to her mid-chest!) and then, with huge eyes and drawn in breath, she would turn around and head for shallow waters until she regained her composure and tried it again. She really is a water baby. Watch out Phelps! Thanks again for dinner Gramma/Gigima!