Day 7: Buffalo, WY to Billings, MT

Day 7: Buffalo, WY – Billings, MT

It’s Saturday, October 24th and we woke to drizzling rain and very, very cold temperatures. We could see the grey snowy skies in the Big Horn Mountains which is the Eastern range of the Rocky Mountains. Our plans were to cross the Big Horn Mountains through a southern pass that summits at 9,666 feet… sounds like a bad omen. Buffalo’s elevation is 4,600 feet. This pass was the easier and safer pass then the road to the North. If it’s raining here in Buffalo then we know it’s snowing over the Powder River Pass where the Big Horn Ski Area is located. The forecast now is for blowing snow with winds gusts to 40mph. We waited until 12:30 in hopes that the weather would clear but it just got darker and stormier over the Big Horn’s. So at this point we can’t waste anymore time so we had to abandon our hopes of going to Yellowstone National Park and we will drive North on I-90 to Montana… a much flatter road and better driving… so we thought!!!

We loaded up and started driving North on I-90 towards the Montana border… getting closer and closer. With the stormy Big Horn Mountains now to our left the wind began to increase. It became extremely gusty and it became very hard for Drew to drive the motorhome. The wind was blowing out of the east towards the Mountains and Drew was trying to lean into the passenger seat to keep the RV on the road… like that was going to help. He kept slowing down trying to keep the motorhome in the right lane with 18 wheelers passing on our left. It started blowing so hard that even with steering into the wind, the motorhome was blown into the left lane. It scared the ba-jesus out of Drew. It was too uncontrollable to continue driving so we pulled off the next exit to wait out the wind… oh and wait for Drew’s hands to stop shaking and the blood to go back to his knuckles.

We were able to get weather and the radar from the internet… the wind had begun to die down. Driving very slowly we proceeded towards Montana, testing the cross winds. It was still gusty but better then before… so we continued, determined to make it at least to Billings.

The weather began to clear and we crossed the Crow Indian Reservation where instead of teepees and mud huts, there were junky trailers and casinos. We also drove by the location of the Little Big Horn Battlefield and Custer’s Last Stand. Not our best day, but we still drove 181 miles to Billings, Montana which is a very industrial western town with big name oil refineries and cattle processing plants… lots of pick up trucks with real cowboys. We stayed at a very nice RV park with very few trailers that sat near the Yellowstone River. There was a large grassy area near the river where we could walk to the dogs. We saw deer near the river. It was still raining a bit and the temperatures were now in the high 30’s.

Sorry no photos of this portion of the trip… we were lucky to survive!