After 5 days in Yellowstone we were ready to move on again, this time the destination was Billings, Montana, which is a city just under 4 hours drive away.

Before we left we decided to head to Running Bear Pancake House for some breakfast. Again, this is a place we’d read about online and got great reviews, therefore it wasn’t a surprise when we had to wait 20 minutes for a table. It was worth it though as the pancakes were lush. I had a banana and chocolate buttermilk pancake, whilst Si had the special Cinnamon Roll pancakes with meat and eggs…think that’s an acquired taste (see pic below!). That is 1 pancake by the way and there were people on nearby tables with literally a stack of them…

Like I said, the drive was just under 4 hours and the only stop we made was at a gas station half way to swop drivers. As always the scenery, particularly as we left Yellowstone, was lovely so the drive wasn’t arduous at all.

Our home in Billings

When we arrived in Billings our Airbnb host was there to greet us outside and show us around. They have basically converted their double garage into a really nice and homely apartment. The couple did all the work on it themselves about 5 years ago and they are now reaping the rewards. Check out the cool bathroom sink which was I thought was pretty unique! There was a small patio area out the back too (with a hammock) but we didn’t spend too much time out there as there were a few hornets and wasps around…thanks to the black grape plants that were growing out there.

We were going to have a quiet evening in when we arrived but when our host told us that the town was only a 30 minute walk we decided to have a wander as the sun was out and we’d spent most of the day in the car. And, in what has become the norm for us, we found a brewery and had a few drinks whilst doing some crosswords. We passed some amazing houses on the walk down too…

On our first day in Billings we went to the local mall and had lunch in a place we’d seen feature on the TV show Man V Food which do amazing sandwiches. It’s called the Staggering Ox and they do these unique cylindrical “Club Foot” sandwiches, the design supposedly is like it is to avoid losing toppings out the side. I ordered a more regular ‘Flat Foot’ and we shared.

We also visited this huge sports/western store…it was so big there was actually a Ferris wheel and a fish tank inside!

We then when out for dinner at a local steak house. It was the first time we’d actually been out for a proper sit down meal which made a nice change.

Montana Zoo

On day 2 we decided to go to the local zoo which was only 15 minutes down the road. It was a quite a small zoo, with some nice gardens, so we were able to do a few of loops. We knew they had Red Pandas and Tigers so definitely worth the trip to see them and fortunately they were ‘active’ when we got there. The pandas in particular were running about which was cool to see.

There were also a lot of birds but some of them seemed to be housed in cages without a top so we couldn’t work out what prevented them from flying away…

I’d also read about some blue bottle tarantula named Bluey, but when we got to his cage we saw a sign that said he’d had to be moved as he was super sensitive to movement and didn’t like the vibrations from all the construction work they had going on in that area.

There were also a fair few snakes too but Dad told me he’d never read the blog again if any photos of these appeared so we went for the safer options of bear and Koi pics!

We tried another couple of breweries in the evening which were nice. The great thing we found in Billings is that they have lots of happy hours with really cheap drinks ($4/pint = about £3). Hopefully this continues in our next few places.

That’s it from us in Billings, it was a short but restful few days, which was very much needed after all the hiking.

We are moving onto Rapid City today so more from us soon.

Lucy