Summer Is Over September 21, 2016
We want to start off this edition of
the blog by stating that daily we feel strong gratitude and a real
sense of how fortunate we are to be on this adventure together. We
have always been blessed with ample time for summer road trips
beginning in 1980 on our first marathon 7-week tour of western states
and Canada and continuing in subsequent summers with our kids.
Retirement has just made it possible to extend these travels into
multi-month journeys. This trip has mostly been a re-visitation of
points of interest from our 1980, 1994, and 1997 trips with a few new
locations and extra time to delve deeper into the places that strike
our fancy.
Since our last report from Helena,
Montana, we continued exploring central and eastern Montana, made
another short visit to Yellowstone NP, spent time in western North
Dakota, and are winding up our visit to the Black Hills of SD.
Here are the highlights:
We found ourselves less than 100 miles
from the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park and decided to
spend two days in the Mammoth Hot Springs area, a part of the park we
had not visited in many years. While the crush of visitors had
abated somewhat, we still saw vehicles lining up for a campsite by
8:00 in the morning. We made time to visit our favorite part of the
park – the Norris Geyser Basin. We awoke to find a bull elk
bugling in the campground with his harem browsing on bushes right
next to our truck.
"Devil's Slide" rock formation, Yellowstone River
Roosevelt Arch, north entrance - Yellowstone NP
These pronghorn are too used to tourists; they should be running away.
bighorn sheep
Tower Fall, YellowstoneNP
Yellowstone River near Tower Fall
Steamboat Geyser, steaming away
Orange Spring Mound
Elk passing through our campsite, the little one is looking right at us.
Replacing a cache above a hot spring along the Yellowstone River
More encounters of Lewis and Clark
historic sites, including Pompey's Pillar in Montana. Plentiful
pronghorn spotted in the rolling ranchland of SE Montana.
We spent three days at Theodore
Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, both the south and north
units. Another first for us – a herd of bison grazing in our
campground!
Campground, South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park
TR's Maltese Cross cabin
prairie dogs everywhere
TRNP
Handsome fellow looking at us
TRNP - North Unit
Formations known as cannonball concretions, TRNP
Along the Missouri River in ND, we
stopped at two historic sites: Fort Mandan where Lewis and Clark
spent the winter, and nearby Knife River Indian Villages where
Sakakawea lived after being kidnapped from the Shoshoni in Montana
and where she joined Lewis and Clark on their expedition.
You know from our previous posts that
we like to stop for quirky, oddball places so we stopped to see
“Salem Sue” (largest Holstein in the world) and the large metal
sculptures along the “Enchanted Highway.”
Salem Sue is 38 feet tall and weighs 12,000 pounds; New Salem, ND
"Geese in Flight"
"The Deer Family"
Signing the log of a geocache in a maze - a first for us!
"Grasshoppers in the Field"
"Fisherman's Dream"
"Pheasants on the Prairie"
"Tin Family"
"Teddy Rides Again"
After passing through the geographical
center of the U.S., we returned to Wyoming for a visit to Devil's
Tower National Monument and to find the caches in the Sundance
Geocache Roundup. The highlight of the 'Roundup' (figuratively and
physically) was the Warren Peak Fire Lookout Tower.
Geographical Center of U.S. in Belle Fourche, SD
B with "The Kid" in Sundance, Wyoming
We realized that we would not get back to our campsite before dark so we made our dinner on the top of the mountain. Handy picnic table compliments of the US Forest Service.
Helicopter rescue training exercise in progress
Devil's Tower from our campsite
Early morning light, view from our campground
Cute prairie dogs, again.
Thanks for the great blog and especially the pictures. Looks like a great adventure.
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