Morning on the Yellowstone River

Yesterday, I drove about 400 miles from Miles City to my home in Helena.  Eastern Montana is lovely right now.  Much of that part of the state has received above-average rainfall. The grass is tall and green in most places.  In a few spots, the purple echinacea is in still in bloom.

Where the landscape in Western Montana is defined by the mountain ranges, Eastern Montana is defined by the rivers that traverse through—primarily the Missouri in the north, the Musselshell in the central region, and the Yellowstone in the south.  The rivers have carved upside-down mountains across the plains.  The rivers have helped whittle the strange rock formations.  The rivers feed green into the wide, pan valleys.

I followed the Yellowstone for the first hour and then later fell in with the Musselshell. I drove through Roundup, on to Harlowton, and then into my home in the Big Belt Mountains.  I have posted photographs I captured of the Yellowstone River and the broad valley near Rosebud.

 

--Mitchell Hegman