We extended our long labor day weekend into a long week and we took our camper out to Montana to visit Bruce's brothers in 2008. To change up the scenery, on the way out we went through North Dakota and on the way back we changed things up and went through South Dakota.

We knew we would be spending a lot of time in the truck, so to make things interesting, we gave ourselves a mission... We decided that we would try to find any and all "larger than life" things that we could find. We were fairly successful at finding things - we found the "world's largest prairie chicken" in Rothsay, MN and the "world's largest buffalo" in Jamestown, ND. We missed the "world's largest cow" in New Salem, but we'll try to get that next time we head through there. We also saw a big bear, a larger than life sized indian and a huge chair to name a few. Wall Drug had a quite a few larger than life things that we could check off our list.

Once we got to Montana, we looked up Bruce's brother Doug and his wife Debbie first. They live in Big Sky. While we were staying with them, Doug took us to Yellowstone Park. We saw geysers, hot springs, fumerols and mud pots. It was a bit on the chilly side that day, so it was kind of nice to be near all of that "natural heat" - even with the sulfur smell that accompanied it...

After staying with Doug and Debbie for a couple of days, we headed west to Philipsburg, MT to visit Bruce's other brother Fred, his wife Jenny and their daughter Katie for a couple of days. They just opened a new gallery there, so we checked that out and did some other shopping in town. Katie even took us to the Sweet Palace! I don't think that I have ever seen so much candy in one place! It may not be the largest, but I would think that having that much candy in one place would keep the local dentists busy. Once we were shopped out, Fred took us for a drive to show us around the area.

Unfortunately we could only stay in Philipsburg for a couple of days as well, so we headed for home. We went a different way than we came, heading back through the Black Hills and south Dakota. While we were there we stayed at the Palmer Gulch KOA Campground. We liked it so much that we are planning to go back there for a whole week next year.