Session IV Start - Days 1-5

Wow Session IV got off to such a fast start we haven't had time to blog.
As you can see the kids are all having a great time!
Greetings from the KOA Billings, Montana (our first Camp Site).

Pictograph CaveState Park
In Billings, Montana along the continuation of asandstone cliff line that forms an impressive natural boundary and characterizesthe valley. Two of the three caves that define the site complex contain evidenceof habitation dating back over 4500 years ago. The pictographs that give thepark its name date from over 2200 years ago.

Pompeys Pillar National Monument
is one of the most famous sandstone buttes inAmerica. It bears the only remaining physical evidence of the Lewis andClark Expedition, which appears on the trail today as it did 200 yearsago. On the face of the 150-foot butte, Captain William Clark carvedhis name on July 25, 1806, during his return to the United Statesthrough the beautiful Yellowstone Valley.

Captain Clark named the pillar "Pompeys Tower" in honor ofSacagawea's son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, whom he had nicknamed"Pomp." Nicholas Biddle, first editor of Lewis and Clark's journals,changed the name to "Pompeys Pillar."

Little Bighorn National Monument
This area memorializes one of the last armed efforts of the NorthernPlains Indians to preserve their way of life. Here in 1876, 263soldiers and attached personnel of the U.S. Army, including Lt. Col.George A. Custer, met death at the hands of several thousand Lakota andCheyenne warriors.

Custer's stone marking the place he died in battle. He was later moved to West Point.

Trail End Historic Site
was home to the John B. Kendrick family. One of Wyoming's most successful rancher/politicians, Kendrick was a self-educated Texan who began his career as a penniless cowboy and ended it as a United States Senator. In between, he was a rancher, banker, land developer, entrepreneur and Wyoming Governor.

Although Trail End is not Wyoming's only historic house museum, it is by far the largest and most authentically furnished. Nearly everything on exhibit at Trail End is original to the home or the Kendrick family, and our four-acre grounds contain many of the same trees planted by the Kendrick family when the original landscaping was done in 1914.

The Sheridan Inn
was built across from the old train station and was mark as, The Sheridan Inn called itself "The Finest Hotel between Chicago and San Francisco." The Sheridan Inn had one infamous owner--Colonel William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. He was known to frequent the Inn and audition acts for his Wild West Shows in the Inn's front yard.

On top of the Bighorn Mountains

Sledding in August!

The 192 foot Porcupine Falls drops in a horsetail in three or four steps (depending upon the flow) into a large pool at the head of Diablo Canyon.