Hardin, MT

Hardin, MT

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Hardin is a small town of about 3500 people in south eastern Montana. It was incorporated in 1911 and Thomas D. Campbell operated the nation’s largest wheat farm on 95,000 acres near there while pioneering the use of industrial machinery in farming. The Holly Sugar Company also established a sugar beet–processing plant in Hardin in 1937. Interestingly, with Hardin being in the middle of nowhere, Bitcoin miner Marathon apparently has a large mining operation in Hardin today because of low cost coal fired power generation nearby. With efforts to close down the coal fired plant, solar is being built to replace the coal. So what was the draw here for us? The Little Bighorn Battlefield is about 15 miles south of Hardin.

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Livingston, MT

Livingston, MT

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After leaving West Yellowstone, we stopped in Livingston, MT for 3 nights before heading further east along Interstate 90. Paradise Valley south of Livingston where our KOA is located is gorgeous and has been the location where several movies were filmed including “A River Runs Through It”. Unfortunately, we only had a few hours one evening where the smoke from California wildfires cleared enough to see the mountains surrounding the valley.

The Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 to 1806 roughly followed what is today an Interstate highway and passed through Livingston on July 15, 1806. Livingston was also a gateway to Gardiner where the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park both during the days of steam engine trains and today as automobiles make their way down US-89 and into the park. As you might guess, there is a lot of history in the area and we hope to come back here in the future to spend more time investigating all there is to see.

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Tetonia, ID / Grand Teton National Park

Tetonia, ID / Grand Teton National Park

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We spent two weeks in the area around Grand Teton National Park. Like most people, Grand Teton was one of the must see, bucket list places on our list in the United States. Since there were no RV camping spots available for us in the national park or Jackson, WY we chose to stay in the small town of Tetonia, ID on the west side of the Teton mountain range. We took several day trips into the national park and thank goodness we did not have to pull the trailer over the 10% grade of Teton Pass and into Jackson, WY. We saw many cars not even pulling trailers on the shoulder cooling down. While here, our good friends Tammie and Peter from Texas joined us. Not knowing about the 10% grades, they pulled their rig over the pass getting to Tetonia. Although they made it just fine, they said “Never again!”

Unfortunately, with the exception of one or two days, smoke from wildfires in California blanketed the mountains and the views were not as spectacular as we had hoped they would be. In some cases we just had to imagine how beautiful the mountains would be on a nice clear blue day. In a few cases, the pictures took on a surreal look aided by the smoke.

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Tremonton, UT

Tremonton, UT

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Tremonton was a convenient place to stop along our path north through Utah. The city itself doesn’t have a lot to offer visitors but there are a lot of things to do and see nearby as you will see later. It did have a local museum and many of the exhibits were interesting but we found it to be a bit disorganized and lacking a lot of the history that brought people to the area. On the other hand there were some nice smaller stores for groceries and things like that and it never was very busy or crowded in the area. Logan, about 30 miles east was much busier and had a lot more restaurants and stores and even a couple of Super Walmarts.

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Heber City, UT

Heber City, UT

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Although it was hot in Utah during 2021, this park is one of the nicest we have stayed at and would be great for an extended stay in the summer months assuming that temperatures were more normal for the area. The town itself caters to tourists but has not gotten quite as busy and as pricy as other nearby cities like Park City. In many ways it’s still a small to medium size city with a lot of small town charm. During the summer they have a weekly food and craft market in their Main Street Park along with some good music. While we were there Tony Holiday a respected blues musician from Memphis performed free to the public. There are also plenty of restaurants and stores in the area including a Super Walmart.

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