Steamship — rock?

Gunther behaves like a dog.

December 4, 2018

Years ago I heard about someplace north of town called “Steamboat” or something like that, a cool place to visit on a dry and sunny day in December.  We had a wild hair so we headed up through the heights of Billings to highway 312, then we took the road through Shepherd, then to Ah Nei.  It is on BLM land, divided into a large portion open to OHVs (we had an argument about what that stands for.  I think it is Off Highway Vehicles.)  We passed the huge parking lot (empty) and maybe five miles north we came to another parking lot with picnic tables and an outhouse.  This portion of Ah Nei was signed to allow for horses, hikers, and bicycles, but not for motorized vehicles.  We immediately ate our lunch.  At one of the picnic tables.  We turned toward the sunshine and away from the wind.  It was, like, 34 degrees.  Gunther drank a little from a new water bottle we bought him.

Gunther’s water bottle, the “Gulper,” is ingeniously made to allow us to dispense a drink of water into a sort of fold-out basin.  Today, Gunther did not gulp.  In fact, he didn’t drink very much at all of the few drops of water we squeezed into the Gulp’s reservoir.  Afterward, Gunther hung around my feet, hoping some of my Sriracha chicken Pita Pit would fall near him.  In fact, some of the wrap did fall.  I noted jalapeños fell, but I don’t think Gunther scarfed.

P. and I walked the perimeter of the area east of the road, then followed a pair of ruts on the larger west side.  We saw some prairie dogs (we think.   I used to shoot at gophers, and maybe the varmints we saw were gophers?)  Anyway, Gunther didn’t chase the varmints.

After Ah Nei we drove north to highway 12.  Our check tire pressure light went on, so we drove to Roundup, then back to Billings.  I’ll check out our tires tomorrow.