One of the first things we came across when looking for things to do in Billings was visiting the Pictograph State Park.
Because it had been blistering hot the few days before we decided to hit the park up first thing in the morning. We pulled in at just after 8:00 in the morning and it was already 21 degrees.
The best part was that since it was so early no one was there, so we paid our park admission and headed up on the short 2 km walk around the park.
It was a bit steep at part so that made the calls of "uppy daddy?" happen more and more frequent.
The our oldest read a sign 'Danger rock fall area, beware' she started to become a bit twitchy.
When we were almost at the first cave she read the next sigh 'Watch for rattlesnakes', which wasn't complete without a large picture of a coiled up rattlesnake!
Welllllll, the hike was a bit more interesting after that.
"Uppy daddy?", "I don't like snakes!!!!", "Uppy daddy?", "Hey kids look at those cave paintings.", "If I saw a snake a would throw him down the hill!", "I DON'T LIKE SNAKES, CAN WE GO HOME!", "Uppy mommy?"
You would think that would be enough to make this hike epic in every sense of the word, but on our way to the last cave, called Ghost Cave of course, the park ranger fella walked up and said;
"You all should keep your kids close I just just pulled a rattler off the path down there."
As he said this he held up his long snake grabber and opened and close the grabber part over and over again.
Now Mom and I were getting a bit worried, bit what the hell we couldn't shreak and run like hell. So we conintued on with the kids in the middle and both of us booked ending the hiking party.
At the bottom in the interpretive centre reading about the caves, the excavations, and the people that lived there between 200 and 9000 years before modern times was really amazing.
Next we might wait a bit later in the day when there were more people around and the rangers had already completed their rattler clearing duties.
