Every year we have taken our vacation in the fall, usually leaving on Labor Day heading west. We decided this year to take a spring vacation so we left for Salt Lake City the Saturday before Memorial Day.
| The flight was good, security tight and we picked up our 2 suitcases in baggage and also a Ford Escape 4x4 SUV. It was around 2:00 PM MT when we headed north to Jackson Wyoming, to Teton Village where we had reservation for 2 nights. |
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As we expected the sights were very different. In the fall we would see big bull elks with their huge antlers and the crops would be harvested the famers burning their fields. September rivers were merely creeks and even the larger "white water" rivers would have the melting snows pouring into them in the spring.
On this spring visit we witnessed a multitude of spring mountain flowers and roaring rivers, waterfalls and snow capped mountains. The critters all had young ones at their sides.
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We stayed Saturday and Sunday night at Best Western-The Inn at Jackson Hole. We had a terrific room, with a fireplace, cathedral ceilings, kitchen, great view of the Tetons.
We woke up early and saw hot air balloons outside our window with the Grand Tetons in the background. A beautiful sunny day.
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We drove through the mountains taking pictures of the Grand Tetons. The pictures that we had taken when we were here in the fall didn't have the snow on the peaks. The weather was terrific, 75 to 90 degrees F with sunshine in a big blue sky every day. We did see some storm clouds and lightning, but just for brief times and then it was sunny again. Even on the higher elevations where there were snow fields it was warm enough to wear shorts and tee-shirts. |
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Just next to the motel was a flea market type of thing with teepees and middle-aged gray haired and bearded men who were dressed up like cowboys, selling furs and Indian articles.
We took a 9:00 AM ride up Mount Rondezvouz in an enclosed ski lift. The mountain was 10,450 ft high and had snow on top that many of the riders had come up to ski on. There were also several crazy people jumping off the mountain with these kite type of gliders, sitting in their little buckets floating back and forth.
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Monday we headed north to go through Yellowstone. We had been here before so we only did a drive through taking some pictures of buffalo on the way to Gardner Montana, where we planned on staying Monday night.
We stopped by the banks of the Snake River where a thunder storm was brewing. We watched the thunder and lightning as mother nature put on a show for us.
We stayed in Gardner MT Monday night and headed east through the North Entrance of Yellowstone.
We had been to Yellowstone before but had never been in the northern entrance area of the park. The north entrance has The Roosevelt Arch dedicated by President Roosevelt in 1903 when he agreed to lay the cornerstone. Several thousand people attended the ceremony for what was to be the formal gateway to the park.
The elk were just starting to regrow their antlers.
We left Yellowstone and Custer National Forest and drove up the Beartooth Highway, Rt 212. This was a breathtaking series of sharp, steep hairpin turns, along the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River between the 10,940-foot Beartooth Pass and Red Lodge, Montana. It was beautiful! Here are a few pictures from that drive.
Sheila bought a cowboy hat and I really liked it so a couple of days later and several towns away I bought one for myself. Sheila quickly pointed out that I had purchased the exact same hat, and although I at first disagreed, upon closer inspection I discovered that she was in fact correct.
Tuesday night we stayed at Red Lodge, (named after the color of the red clay that the Indians used on the tops of their homes). We had pizza across the street from the motel and gambled in the casino next to the pizza place. LOST $$ ;-(
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We headed to Pryor Mountain where there were supposed to be wild mustangs running fee on open range. There were two secondary highways that would have led to the area, one from the north and the other from the south. There also was a dirt road going through Crow Indian land, a direct route over the top of the mountains.
Well, of course with our 4x4 we decided to go up the mountain. Beautiful sights as we passed snow fields and the snow banks on the side of the winding mountain roads were getting taller than the SUV. We stopped for lunch and enjoyed the view.
We continued up the mountain after lunch but only got about ¼ of a mile, through red mud, when the road suddenly came to an end.... covered with snow, unpassable. And, we couldn't turn around, the road was too narrow. Sheila backed up the ¼ mile to where we had eaten lunch, turned around and we had to go all the way back to where we began, lost a good 3 hours and didn't see the wild mustangs.
It was so covered with red mud that we had to wash it!
We continued east through the Big Horn Basin. On the way we saw several moose. We stayed in Sheridan Wyoming on Wednesday, the 28th of May. While eating dinner at a "Kim's Restaurant" when we got into a conversation with a local resident who said the moose in Wyoming were smaller than the ones back east in Maine.
One of them climbed over the fence to cross the road
but got spooked when we started to take pictures and jumped back.
Thursday morning we headed east through Gilette Wyoming and onto Devil's Tower National Monument. On our way we say lots of critters. The most visible big game in Wyoming is the pronghorn antelope which is the fastest thing on four feet in the United States.
If you look at the dirt road in this picture
you can just about see the pronghorn antelope.
On the way in to see Devil's Tower there's a field of prairie dogs which were amusing to watch for a while.
The "mega monolith" has quite a few Indian stories told about it over the years, such as 3 little Indian girls who were chased by a giant bear and the mound they stood on grew up into this tower as they prayed for help, until the girls were safe in heaven, you can see the bear claw marks on the side.
There were crazy people to be found here too, climbing up and down the side of the tower. It is actually a "failed" volcano, which never even breached the earth's surface when it was formed, the surrounding earth was worn away by erosion. It was our nation's 1st National Monument.
Look at the yellow arrow and you can see the rock climbers.
The Devil's Tower was used in the movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
We surprisingly had enough time to continue on to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. First we took a drive through a little town called Hulett. Sheila insisted that I pose for this photo:
We arrived at
From Mount Rushmore we drove on to see the Crazy Horse Memorial about an hours ride south.
The prairie dogs had made quite a neighborhood there as well.
There was a Native American Cultural Center and the Indian Museum of North America and twin theaters. There were 114 prints of Edward Curtis photos of Native Americans.
of birds and animals called the Black Hills Nature Gates.
We took a bus up to see the "in-progress" work.
The top picture shows a model of what the finished sculture will look like.
We stayed in Hot Springs, South Dakota Thursday 5/29, right next to where they had found the fosseled remains of a mammoth. We were also very close to the Black Hill Wild Horse Sanctuary Wild Horse Sanctuary where over 300 wild horses run free across prairies. We took a drive after dinner to find it. It wasn't very far and we found a nice cascading brook
Friday morning we realized that we needed to get back to Salt Lake City for an early Sunday morning flight. It had taken us 6 days to get to South Dakota and we had two days to get back.
We got up early and arrived at the 11,000 acre Black Hill Wild Horse Sanctuary in time for the 9:00 AM tour. We took a blue bus driven by a cowboy who told us wonderful stories about the ranch and American Indians and horses.
Native Americans still use the lands for sacred ceremonies. Petroglyphs were found this section of the Cheyenne River Canyon.
Two movies were filmed here and the the movie-set fort and buildings can still be seen from up above the filming area. As we continued on we found quite a few wild horses with their new babies.
We took a nice route 18 ride south west, stopping to take pictures and for lunch at a rest area called Fort Hat Creek located in the Black Hills. This was the Cheyenne—Deadwood stage coach route in 1876.
We jumped onto the main highway and headed west at 80-95 mph.
Sheila wanted to take a more scenic route and I found the "Laramie Mountains on 3 different exits so we began to look for them. Somehow we didn't find any of them and were way past the area before we realized it. We had no choice but to continue on and then we hit major highway construction, a complete stop, and it began to rain, acutally, pour! We looked to our left at the mountains we wanted to go through and it was completly engulfed in a huge black storm cloud. AND, our gas tank light was on, the needle near empty.
We made it to Rawlings and rolled in on fumes to a gas station and then got a room and dinner at 8:00 pm.
Saturday morning we got on Route 80 heading west back to Salt Lake City. We noticed an area on the map called the Flaming Gorge, a national recreation area on the Wyoming/Utah border, about 160 mile loop off of and then back onto the highway. We decided to take it and were rewarded with these beautifuls sights:
We stayed at a Best Western near the airport, had dinner, and headed home Sunday morning. We took off Monday and Tuesday to recover from this long trip and to reflect on the wonderful sights we saw in this amazing country.
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