We’ve had a few days recently where it has rained off and on here in Bozeman. Luckily, we were able to get the lawn mowed yesterday in between the morning programmed watering schedule and the afternoon programmed watering schedule (followed by rain and then a brief storm later in the evening). The weather forecast keeps changing, but we had some rain today and look to have more tomorrow.
Today, we headed out for Palisade Falls because we wanted to see the waterfall, but also because there is a big music and art festival in Bozeman so we wanted to avoid activities near downtown to avoid traffic, which doesn’t seem to move well here. As per usual for the past few days, the sky was overcast, but it gave us some great views of low clouds against the Gallatin Mountains.
Palisade Falls is a towering waterfall dropping more than 80 feet off a vertical rock wall at the southern base of Palisade Mountain in the Hyalite Recreation Area south of Bozeman. And we will have to take the website’s word about, as we were unable to get there, but we did end up with a beautiful drive through national forest and walked a bit by the lovely Hyalite Reservoir.
Before we left for the Palisade Falls, we had read that the road to the trailhead was currently only open on Saturday and Sunday. We didn’t know why, but I assumed this was just the most popular time to visit. That could be the reason, but they are also doing roadwork, or maybe creating a paved road from what is a dirt road now. You can see below that with the rain, the dirt had become mud, serious mud in some areas. We made it past the construction vehicles in the photo before things got even worse, and we decided that without 4-wheel drive it might be best to turn around before someone had to dig us out.
We drove back to a picnic area we had passed and walked along a paved path near the reservoir, where some brave woman (local likely) as going in for a cool dip.
Peckish Travels 