A quick drive over the Gardner River (not sure that’s what it was actually called..maybe it was the Madison) out of the Northern Yellowstone Entrance and we were officially in Montana. We had a couple of errands to run and needed to find a place for Murphy to burn off some steam. Side note: almost all national parks allow dogs in campgrounds, picnic areas, and anywhere cars can go, but not on hiking trails due to wildlife, so we have to be creative about where Murph can go with us and we have been finding places outside of the parks, downtown areas, and in national forests where he can roam freely. And pretty much everywhere we go, peeps adore him and stop to ask us about him. Murph has made way more friends than we have. Acadia in Maine, Shenandoah in Virginia, and Cuyahoga in Ohio allow dogs everywhere. When we go out on hikes in parks that don’t allow dogs on trails, we’ve been going when the temperatures are coolest and Murph can be comfortable snoozing in the Shasta.
We stopped at REI in Bozeman first, aka Derek’s favorite store. I am renowned for under-packing or packing all the wrong things. In this case, I did a bit of both, and brought lots of tank tops and shorts, and decided to keep all of my cold-weather gear packed away for our next winter in Massachusetts. I didn’t think about how the 80 degree sunny days in Wyoming, Montana, and Pacific Northwest would turn to 40 degree nights and mornings. So we stopped at REI for a couple necessities and a friendly REI employee/local Bozemanite named Dakota tipped us off to a great place called Snowfill Park, an old trash dump turned off-leash dog heaven with great views of the mountains all around, that also happened to be next door to the Map Brewery, which had even better views, great beers and food, and super friendly people. 
Back on the road, we made a pitstop at a bakery in Three Forks, MT after driving by miles and miles of wheat fields to sample the world’s largest cinnamon rolls (#whatwouldpatdugando).
While in Teton, fellow campers, Fred and Judy, recommended this bakery — Fred had lived and worked at Glacier NP for 4 years and has been part of the National Park Service for 40 years, so he had a wealth of information/travel tips to share with us – this bakery was one of them. He also kindly gave us many maps and basically mapped out our entire trip for us, and gave us their address and phone number if we needed any help or a place to stay when we get to Nevada. We then kept driving north (Montana is super scenic, whether it’s rivers, lakes, mountains, everywhere you look on the drive north is incredible), making our way around the Flathead Lake region, and ultimately spending night #2 in a Walmart parking lot in Kalispell, so we could stock up on some groceries in the morning and get to Glacier bright and early the next day.
withoutwhatifs 