Up at 7:30. Beautiful day AGAIN! Happy 4th of July!! Slept in town again. Saw a cop drive by as we were tearing down. Up to erin’s to washup.
Headed to Three Forks to checkout campsite. Shopping at Town & Country on campus for lunch and dinnerables. Out of town to find a place.
On the way there we stop at Missouri Headwaters State Park to cook some breakfast. We park just past the campground. After breakfast we’re itching to cool off in one of these rivers. The Madison River is flowing by just past the picnic area. A short walk away, the Madison and the Jefferson join on a sharp curve in the Jefferson. There’s an embankment that’s jumpable but the current is pretty strong in the Jefferson. Where the two join, there’s a eddy that curls back into the Madison so that’s where Taylor and I swim. The water is cool and refreshing and the temptation to swim out into the current of the Jefferson is almost as strong as the current but we both avoid the pull of the faster river. We pack up from lunch and drive up to Camp Three Forks.
It’s a nice, former KOA, campground with SHADE and space, unlike a lot of the KOA’s we’ve seen. After a tour around the campground looking at many of the sites, we choose one close to the road but with a large island between the campsite and he road that makes the site seem extra large. Jim and Deb leave a message that they are south of Bozeman. Told them there was a campsite right next to us. Jim says grab it, we’ll see you there later on. We open up the Eurovan and start to chill out a bit. Taylor picks the site for his tent. Tonight he’ll have a place to himself and he’s psyched! We kick back and hang out for a bit.
After lunch Erin wants to head back into town to catch the fireworks in Bozeman with Alex. Pam and I take her into town. On the way back we see some hitchhikers at the gas station with a sign for Three Forks. We pick them up and tell them we’re headed to Three Forks so we’ll take them there. Once inside the van and underway, Pam starts asking some questions and, come to find out, the two of them have been riding the rails a bit. They’re a young couple appearing to be in their twenties and they show us a video on one of their phones showing the view from a freight car as it rips along. We mess up the first time with directions but eventually we take them right to the street and address where they’re headed. They hop out and off we go back to Camp Three Forks.
Once there, we start hanging out with Jim and Deb. The night comes on and we realize we won’t have time to get back into Bozeman for the fireworks. We call Erin and tell her we’ll see her in the morning. As we finish up dinner and hang around the campsite after dark, we can see, in the distance, multiple fireworks displays that we assume to be in a few different towns, going off regularly in front of us. The fireworks last a LONG time, an hour at least, maybe more!
