We'd driven past it five or six times and never once looked.
Itch-Kep-Pe Park sits right on the Yellowstone River in Columbus, Montana, half an hour from either Billings or Bozeman. It's free for ten days. It has a fire pit, a picnic table, a rope swing, and a real porcelain toilet with a real sink, which is not a thing you expect from free dispersed camping. We've been driving to Red Lodge for years, and it never once crossed our minds to stop.
This week we're in a tent instead of the camper, because we're towing a duck boat across three states for James's son. And that tent is where the trouble starts.
Four air mattresses have now failed us in a row. Four. Including the one that survived ten days in Death Valley. We ended up flat on the ground, and James woke at 2:30 with a hand he couldn't feel.
Then the second half of this one happens at night, in the truck, with both dogs, while a storm that was supposed to be a ten percent chance of a tenth of an inch throws lightning at the river.
There's a moment in there we almost cut. Cara sat down in that tent during the storm, knowing better, because she didn't want to be the person who overreacted. If you've ever talked yourself out of your own instincts to avoid looking like a lot, you already know how that sentence ends.
Note for clarity: James says metal attracts lightning. It doesn't. The National Weather Service is direct about this: metal makes no difference at all to where lightning strikes, and height, pointy shape, and isolation decide it. Which actually explains the story better than the myth does, because a tin hut on an exposed ridge above tree line is all three of those things at once. Metal does conduct electricity once a strike happens, so staying off fences and railings in a storm is still good advice. The rest of what we said holds: a hard-topped vehicle is safe shelter, and a tent offers no protection whatsoever. Sources at the bottom.
Second note: the mountain range Cara couldn't name is the Absaroka.
The campground we mention: [LINK — "Red Lodge Adventures: Free Camping at Willow Creek, Cheesesteaks & Road Trip Lessons," August 25, 2025.] We called it Pleasant View in the episode, but the spot is Palisades Campground, and it can be hard to find on your own, so bookmark this if you're heading to Beartooth Pass.
If you've been the person sitting still in a storm because moving would have made you look dramatic, that's not a personality flaw, and it isn't nothing. It's a story about how you'd be seen, running faster than the thing you actually knew. We're pulling at that one all month over at The Reinvention Project. Come as you are, and come find us at kerouacscruising.com/reinvention.
Want to just talk instead? A free Connection Call, no pitch, 45 minutes: https://calendar.app.google/5A86yjz11VATNEsB8
Find everything else at linktr.ee/kerouacscruising
Buy us a coffee at ko-fi.com/kerouacscruising
Lightning safety, straight from the source:
Lightning myths (NWS) — https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-myths Outdoor lightning safety (NWS) — https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-outdoors
