Hot times in Billings

We left Great Falls, MT this morning with a full morning of driving ahead of us.  Our destination was Billings to visit the zoo there.  As we drove through miles and miles of flat grasslands, we saw handfuls of pronghorn antelope grazing in the distance.  The temps were heating up when we reached the city...mid 80s!  My sister and I had a very tasty Thai lunch, then headed over to ZooMontana. This relatively small zoo is the only one in the state of Montana, but it had some nice animals.  The pair of bald eagles were rehabilitated after injury, and became permanent residents there.  It was a similar situation for one of the two grizzly bears.  Ozzy was a nuisance bear at Yellowstone National Park, but was given a second chance at life at the zoo.

There was a sole bighorn ram, but he turned his back on me.  The Amur tigers showed great interest in the children/prey looking excitedly at the red panda. 

Zoos are a great place for local, native animals to hang out, due to the abundance of trees and plants...and convenient alternate food sources.  I saw a red squirrel digging for who knows what.  And, my sister spotted a great horned owl sleeping high up in a tree.

The zoo had a couple of grey wolves with white coats lounging in the shade.  After checking out the river otters, we circled back to find one of the wolves eating grass.  Shortly after, the wolf barfed up the grass.  I guess like house cats, wolves also eat grass when they have upset tummies.  We ended our zoo visit by checking out the koi fish.  For a quarter, we got handfuls of food pellets that sent the fish into a feeding frenzy. 

Tomorrow will be another history day as we travel from Montana to Wyoming and onward to South Dakota.  After dealing with a high of 87 degrees today, it will be nice to cool down a bit, at least for one day.  On a side note, I suffered a major setback today as my primary camera decided to go kaput.  Thankfully, I have a backup camera, but alas, I won't be taking any nice closeups or panoramic shots.  The first thing I'll be doing for sure when I get home is buy a new camera.