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Went to the 2008 IEEE Aerospace Conference (I was the lead author on one paper and secondary author on a second) over the first week of March. Decided to head out a couple days early to get the tourism stuff over early.

Wednesday, Feb. 27 – flying out. Late lunch in Butte at a little pizza place. Ok food, nothing special. Checked in to the Gallatin Gateway Inn. We had stayed there one night in Oct. 2001 when we last visited Yellowstone, and were looking forward to staying there again. Dinner was very nice, particularly the brownie dessert with caramel ice cream, caramel corn, and drizzled caramel on top. What, no nuts? No raspberry drizzle? No strawberries cut delicately and splayed out? PERFECT. The brownie was amazing, so amazing that we got it the second night.

Thursday, Feb. 28 – Drove down to W. Yellowstone for a snow coach tour, but first a quick breakfast of buckwheat pancakes, yum. The snow coach from Alpenguides amazing fun. We were packed in like sardines, and it was great fun. The pop-up roof was well worth it, when we came across elk and bison in the roadway folks could pop up and take photos safely and with little interruption to our trip. Much time was spent in the Old Faithful area, enough to see two eruptions and have lunch in the snow lodge, plus a visit to the castle guyser which was erupting constantly. Ride back we stopped at the mud pots, which are my favorites. Although I remember them being bigger when I was a kid…

Dinner in the evening was again at the Inn, and was very nice again. This time, I had the Sonoran-spiced chicken breast, which was perfectly cooked and nicely spiced. Another glass of the same wine as Wednesday, delish (some Paso Robles red, I don’t remember the winery or variety, but it was very good, and I like to drink wines from my alma mater’s neighborhood, particularly when I find their wines at far-away places like this.) And we split the brownie this night…I was tempted by the bananas foster but my waistline thought the better of it.

Friday, Feb. 29 – Decided to wander around town, and noticed signs pointing us towards the Museum of the Rockies. I’m a museum junkie, so what the heck. Little did I know that this museum packed an extensive, and very important, collection of dinosaur fossils. These include the largest t-rex skull, a full t-rex skeleton installed in a display in the same arrangement it was found on the hillside, and a lot of other skeletons. Very interesting. Getting hungry, we decided to grab some lunch downtown (I kinda wished there was a dining option at the museum, but no biggie). We tooled around Bozeman, what a neat downtown! Not a chain store in sight (on the main drag, the chain stores are segregated to the south/west side of town) and some unique buildings. Happened across the Cateye Cafe on a side street and we had a late lunch of comfort foods (me: turkey shephard’s pie, her: grilled cheese with bacon.) We were stuffed and happy. Note to self, though, cianti does not go with turkey and potatoes. Everything was very tasty, including the cianti, and the staff was nice and friendly.

Evening, we decided to make the jaunt back to Butte to catch The Clintons playing at The Silver Dollar Saloon. We got there a bit early, not knowing what the parking/crowd situation would be like, and we had a couple drinks and some popcorn. (Only other option for food was pork rinds.) We were so stuffed from our late lunch that we didn’t need anything substantial, and the drinks were cheap, so who am I to complain? The band started promptly at 9pm, and they rocked! The acoustics, the crowd, the band were all jamming. The show lasted ’til 1:45am (yes, almost 5 hours) with only one 10-minute break mid-show. Seeing this band with locals was so worth the trip, you can’t imagine. Folks were singing along to many of their belters… Needless to say, the show was worth the trip, and I’d recommend The Clintons to anyone wanting to see a good show. Probably the best live act I’ve ever seen, although The Slackers (who played the lamplighter in Campbell, CA, a couple years back) would be a close second.

Saturday, Mar. 1, took the wife to the airport (on the way there it was snowing fairly hard, and my favorite part was driving past a couple horses running in the snow, what a sight!) Spent a couple hours in the Museum again (this time taking some photos), then picked up a co-worker from the other airport and headed up to Big Sky. Oh, had some mediocre Chinese food in Belgrade before heading up.

Sunday, Mar. 2-Thursday, Mar. 6 – Attended the 2008 IEEE Aerospace Conference. I was not particularly impressed by the venue (confusing layout, staffed almost exclusively by college kids, expensive) but the conference was great fun. On Tuesday, a co-worker from JSC and I headed down to the Lone Mountain Ranch for a day (~5 hours) of snowshoeing. I’d never done it before, and we had a blast. It was snowing most/all of the time, but generally little wind and we were warm the whole time. Buffet lunch at the ranch house was wonderful, and quite inexpensive for what was served. A real class-act, this Ranch. Much more calm than the chaos that is Big Sky. I didn’t get a chance (nor was I particularly interested) to do some downhill skiing. Perhaps next time.

Friday, Mar. 7 – Flew back to San Jose. Little did I know that the following week was spring break for the University of Montana in Bozeman. If/when I go back to the Aerospace Conference, I’ll try to make sure to find out when spring break is and plan accordingly. (It might have been wiser to stay a couple days after the conference…Although travel was fine.)