A trip in the country

Today, we went on a bit of an adventure!

First, we went to the dog park.

Then we headed into the country and the Missouri Headwaters State Park.

Just a bit north and east of the town of Three Forks.

Here is the Madison River (Left) and the Jefferson River (Center)
joining to become the Missouri River.  The Gallatin River joins the Missouri a bit further on.
This is not the actual beginnings of the river system but the place Lewis and Clark first called it the Missouri.  (You can read more about the rivers here.)
The Same Missouri River that flows past Kansas City.
The same Missouri River I cross when I go to Columbia.
After watching a beaver swim about in the water for a while-fun-we decided to take the adventure further afield and went to Madison Buffalo Jump State Park.

 This is the actual cliff they used to force the bison off -to their death.  It is quite high.
There is a path up to the top but we didn't go-Quinn and I are lazy, maybe.

This is the view of the Madison Valley from the Buffalo Jump.
 The cliffs in the distance are the Madison River.
I decided that rather than going back the way we had come we would go on-the map showed a junction with a highway that would take us back to Bozeman.
Even if that proved wrong, this was an amazing valley.  Lots of Hay!
Gravel road, pretty rough in places but I could tell the valley was getting narrower and narrower as we traveled south until we went around a curve and there was the river!

Back on pavement we headed east for Bozeman.
More hay. No livestock here so they must sell it.
-I finally Googled Hay production for the US.  In 2015 there were 140,000 thousand TONS of hay produced in this country!  Down from the early 2000's as we aren't sending as much abroad. Texas produces the most, followed by Missouri, Kansas comes in 3rd and Montana 7th.  A large round bale weughs between 500 and 3000 pounds depending on the hay, how tightly it's baled etc but usually they say 1000 lbs.  A ton in 2000 lbs so that's two bales to the ton-about 700,000,000 bales (if my math was right.)  No wonder I see so much hay!
So much for my endless need to know about things!

Back in Bozeman we, you guessed it, hit the dog park!
Then the trailer.