Montana Fourth of July

Happy Fourth!! The celebration in Bozeman was incredible.

We drove in to Bozeman on Friday morning. Our friends, Martha and Jim, arrived from Florida late Thursday night and we picked them up at the Holiday Inn Friday morning. We spent the afternoon at some favorite bird watching sites and trails, trying to add to our list. The new one for me was the Black Headed Grosbeak which we found on a trail along Bridger Creek.


Then, after a scrumptous dinner at John Bozeman's Bistro, we headed on over to the park to watch the fireworks.

Fourth of July in Montana is huge. The whole community comes out for picnics, games, fireworks and general celebration. No wonder Barack Obama and his family chose to spend the Fourth in Montana. They were in Butte, which is only 100 miles from Bozeman - I mentioned going to the Butte celebration, but I was the only vote for this!!

The official celebration in Bozeman is at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds. We chose to stay out of the big crowd and set up our chairs in the park across the street from the fairgrounds. I think we were the only people in the park who didn't bring our own fireworks.

There was no shortage of amateur firework displays all around us, which started a full 2 hours before the official "big fireworks" at 10 pm. We have very long 16-hour days here - so dark isn't a reality until 10 pm. The official fireworks display lasted for about 20 minutes and was really beautiful.

We are indeed blessed to live in this great country!