Wednesday & Thursday, July 3 & 4, 2013 (White Sulphur Springs, MT)

Wednesday was a pretty low key day.  It was pretty hot out, so we pretty much stayed inside our nice air conditioned fiver for most of the day.  We did run into town in the truck to check out a "General Mercantile/Antique store, but it was nothing exciting and was very high priced for the quality of items it carried.  We did get this photo of a hay sled that we walk/jog past in the mornings.  If you look close, kind of toward the left of center, you can see a little calf under the sled, it was probably trying to find some shade.  Our RV park is in the background.  The mountains in the back are called the Castle Mountains. 


In the evening we went to the park's ice cream social which they do on Wednesday & Saturday evenings.  It's a chance to meet other guests and ask the park owners questions about the area and of course, eat wonderful local ice cream.  My favorite is the Wild Huckleberry....yummy.

Thursday - Happy 4th of July

Today we got up early and went to the hot springs again.  It was a very relaxing way to start the day.  When we got there, there were just a few folks enjoying the water

This is the small pool and the temp runs around 102 degrees. 

This is the big pool and they keep it at around 96 degrees - this was my favorite pool



This is the hot pool and is located inside, the water temp is around 105 degrees or sometimes a little hotter, like this morning it was around 106 degrees - too hot for me. 

After our morning soak, we went back to the fiver and got changed and headed into town for the annual 4th of July parade.  This is small town America - it was great.  The parade went down main street, turned around and came back down the street again, and everyone stayed to watch it the second time. 

This is main street - notice there are no stop lights.  The nearest stop light is in Helena, 73 miles away

Start of the parade at one end of town

The motel in the background is where the hot springs are located

Two cuties (the local hospital is in the background, it's very small)

Antique cars

Antique tractor

one of the two floats in the parade

If you look you can see the beginning of the parade in the distance and Smokey Bear was the end of the parade. 

Love that little wave - she was precious. 

Local kids with their candy bags - love the black cowboy hat. 

Look at those faces - just gotta love it, especially the pink archery bow

After the parade, we went back to the 5er and had lunch and dropped Gracie off and headed back out on our bikes to the Ranchers Rodeo.  Apparently the local ranchers get together and have their own special brand of rodeo events that mimic what they do on the ranch.  Here is my attempt at describing the events:  

• calf branding (with paint),
• team penning (a team of four cowboys/girls had to separate out three calfs and herd them down to a pen while keeping the rest of the herd in one spot,
• pasture doctoring (a team of four had to pick a cow out of the herd, rope it and get it down on the ground and put green chalk on it's forehead),
• wild cow milking (this one was fun to watch - they had a team of four and they had to rope a cow and hold it still while someone milked into a pop bottle, then they had to get the rope off the cow and run to the judge with the pop bottle and the only requirement was that when the pop bottle was turned upside down, that some milk came out)
• and cattle counting (again a team of four had to herd an unknown amount of cows between two barrels and count them and see if they came up with the correct number.   

It was fun to watch, we didn't take a lot of pictures at the rodeo, but here are a few. 

 I just have to say, I've never been to a more patriotic rodeo event.  The rodeo started out with the National Anthem, and a ways into the rodeo they stopped and read a poem about "Old Glory", then a while later we said the Pledge of Allegiance and then at the end they stopped again and read President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and this little girl rode her horse around the arena with the flag during each one. 

  

Calf branding

More calf branding

And more calf branding

After the rodeo we rode our bikes back home to the 5er and relaxed with our books until dinner time.  It was a very pleasant day.  Tonight they have fireworks display that we can see from the park, I'm not sure what to expect but we'll see.  I'll close with another beautiful sunset picture.  We are so blessed to live in a country where we have the freedom we enjoy, may you all have a safe and wonderful 4th of July.