The Montana Dinosaur Trail
The Museum of the Rockies is a very interactive museum.
It took me a while to find the time to write the continuation of my trip to Utah, but I am back with some interesting facts about Montana. We spent one night in Bozeman, so we could visit the town next morning before heading north. Bozeman is home to many important climbers and mountaineers in the USA, so it was a place I always wanted to visit. They host the famous Bozeman Ice Festival every year and many climbers from Canmore would head south to participate in this important competition.
On our way south, I grabbed a brochure called The Montana Dinosaur Trail and started making my plans when we headed north again. My son is an obsessed dinosaur fan and knows more about dinosaurs than I would ever know in my life. He reads and watches movies about it and my role here is to keep his passion alive. Bozeman is the home of Museum of the Rockies, and Dr. Jack Horner is the curator of paleontology and scientific adviser to all the Jurassic Park movies. It’s not a small feat. We knew him from the TED Talk below, one of our favourites. Go watch it while we wait for you!
“Every dead end leads to new discoveries!”
So, we went to ‘his’ museum, called by the Lonely Planet “Montana’s most entertaining museum…” The triceratops collection is fantastic and we enjoyed the interactive exhibit for kids about the science, history and wildlife of Yellowstone. Yellowstone National Park is 90 min away but most of the park was still closed for the season, so we decided to make a trip back sometime this summer to visit this volcano – my son is also fascinated by them, a passion I share with him, and I did climb some in the Andes, Kilimanjaro, in Africa, and even Elbrus, in Russia.
The author and her son enjoying the planetarium.
Many years ago, when I was still living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I did a few courses at the Planetarium to learn to identify the stars. I carry a very fond memory of these courses and my experience at the Planetarium. So, when I found out that the museum has a planetarium, I made sure my son would experience it – and he did! We watched the three movies they had on and it was probably one of the most memorable experiences of this trip. I highly recommend a trip to this museum and its planetarium.
Montana has a few other museums but it was too early in the season to catch them open, so we headed home, but before we found three very local and charming places to eat: a coffee shop called Nova, on the main street, that serves ‘a killer breakfast’, as their t-shirts and mugs announce; another one called Wild Joe’s, where I got my morning late and one more mug for my collection; and we had lunch at the charming Sola Café and Market, across the street from the museum.
We came home with our heart filled with adventures, memories that will last a lifetime and 4,200 km added to our odometer. And, like any trip does to me, a few more plans for more trips in our minds.
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