Leslie and Klaus traded in their family camping trailer for a nice 2-person trailer, a Little Guy Max, now that the kids are all out of the house. They took delivery of it right before the weekend so it was good to camp together in case they had some issues, and give us more time together for hikes.

We headed up to Bozeman and Montana State University with Leslie and Klaus to deliver some forgotten stuff to Tim, their youngest son who is now a freshman there at MSU. We had lunch in their amazing dining hall and then set off south of Bozeman to Hyalite Canyon for some afternoon hikes.

Our first stop was at History Rock. The sandstone rock was carved with thousands of names, which looked mostly added in the last couple of decades.

From there we made our way out to Hyalite Reservoir and had a nice hike along the lake.

Besides the reservoir, there were several smaller lakes in the woods along the hike.

It was cold in the mornings, near freezing, at the campsite because we were situated in a canyon. I noticed two mice in our fire ring that had spent the night below our campfire we had in our volcano grill. After cooking dinner and starting another campfire they reappeared from underneath the fire again. It was warm at the base of the fire ring, but not too hot so it was the perfect place to spend the night for those two.

The next day we drove further up the canyon and hiked to Rat Lake, a pretty mountain lake.

When the holiday weekend was over, Leslie and Klaus headed back north to Missoula while Pam and I headed south towards Yellowstone NP.