Montana II
Sunday, June 30
In the morning, we resorted to the Maps app to find the Lewistown Coffee Company. Every now and then, you can find a coffee shop that makes you regret you're not a local. This was one of those. So it's recommended, I guess, but regardless we could not buy a house and retire there. We hit the road.
On the way out of town, we had another laugh at the signage. This one was not as good as Thrifty White, maybe, but it does speak to how hip the owners are:
SUS Furniture
Again, the name seems out of touch in an amusing way. I'm sure they are not playing Among Us, nor are they randomly borrowing slang from their grandkids. They are not selling Boujee Cushions or a Yeet Seat. Although maybe that would be a better approach than whatever it is they are doing - it's hard for us to say, since we smiled and drove on.
Our next stop was Chico Hot Springs. This is sort of a natural, heated pool and tourist trap. It's so cheap, you would guess they siphon the water straight from Old Faithful with a really long garden hose. And that's pretty close to the truth. The water comes from the Yellowstone hot spring system. It gurgles through cheap but sturdy PVC pipes into two in-ground, concrete pools. Whatever the construction expense, the owners clearly paid it off ages ago and Chico doesn't need to charge more than a token amount. And they sell you all sorts of extra, touristy kitsch of course.
One pool is warm enough to make you feel like human soup after a minute in the microwave - not steamy at all, really, but comfortable. The other looks great but the water arrives too hot for me, It's at 'lobster pot' levels but, frankly, it's still pretty popular. Some people enjoy really hot water. Both of the pools smell like a mineral bath.
There are no water slides, no wave machines, and not even inner tubes. It's just you and whatever friends you bring along to Chico Hot Springs, chatting and listening to your skin wrinkle. Which it will. Because you'll like it and you'll stay in it. The springs are soothing in a way that's hard to describe.
Also, it may dawn on you that you're visiting Yellowstone without the crowds. This might be the best part of the park.
That night, we stayed in the town of Big Timber. Our AirBNB site was a mini-mansion. However, it was Sunday night and the rodeo had literally just left town. Everyone else had booked their rooms in the house for the duration of the rodeo. They had partied and cleaned up (well, barely). Now they were gone. We had a seven-bedroom place to ourselves.
It was beautiful. For fun, we ate dinner at a long, fancy table. But we did not grab the seats at either end of it because we wanted to be close enough to talk.
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