Leg 4 Wapitit/Cody

Leaving Yellowstone by the East exit puts one into a beautiful drive through the Wapiti (pronounced wop pity, Indian for elk) Valley. We have come to believe “beautiful drive” and Wyoming just go together. Teddy Roosevelt called the drive through the Wapiti Valley the most scenic 50 mile drive in the U.S. We descended from about 8600 feet to 6000 feet through canyons and valleys of ever changing but always spectacular views. We shot a few pics out the window, which never works well but captures enough to trigger great memories. We were traveling with our Hitchhiker friends Mike and Sally Theroux and will be meeting Stacy and Sharon Wise (coincidentally, hee hee, Hitchhiker owners also). We have selected a National Forest camp ground, called Wapiti, right on the Shoshone River. We were pleasantly surprised to find the camp ground even nicer than we anticipated. (Opening picture is Big Horn sheep across the river from our camp, they entertained us during several Happy Hours.)

Couple of "window" shots coming down Hiway 14 to Wapiti camp ground.

And here is our great camp site. The Shoshone river is just in front of us, not quite in sight but surely in hearing sound.

Then here are a couple of the Shoshone River rambling through.

By the way, this is only the North Fork of the Shoshone River, pretty big body of water.
And a bit further downstream is Holy City, a rock formation which is supposed to resemble the silhouette of the ancient Holy City of Jerusalem.There is a nice bridge across the Shoshone right at camp and then a dirt road, more like a path, that follows Sweetwater Creek which feeds into the Shoshone. Makes for an adventurous bike ride (and at over 6000', puff, puff) but with magnificent views.
If you look real hard you can just see my bike parked about mid way down the road, which continued to get steeper.

On the canyon wall across the river from camp we spotted Big Horn sheep, mostly all we saw were ewes and their baby's but what great Happy Hour entertainment. They were pretty far away so even with our big lens it was difficult to capture a great shot but Stacy insisted we digitalized those durn sheeps. We tried to invite them down for a cocktail but apparently they have not acquired a taste for scotch, heck they wouldn't even come for Stacy's American bourbon.

There are 6 of those guys in this pic, can you find them all? They really do blend in, natures camouflage works very well. Below is a mom and her two babies.

One more, look at how they "cling" to the rocks.

Well, gotta work a sunset shot and moon shot in here, so after the Big Horns left us The Big Guy kept us entertained with a nice sky, followed by a nice moon.



We have coated windows on the rig to keep the sun load down and help with the cooling. They look mirrored from outside, side benny is we get some added privacy, but a problem is that birds can see themselves in the window and attack their image as an intruder. This little warbler (Audubon's warbler or Yellow-rumped warbler - how would you like to be called a pink-rumped human?) would not leave us alone. He just kept attacking the window time and time again. Nothing I could do would discourage the little bugger. So I shot him - with the camera of course!

We were out cruising one day and stumbled upon these pretty wild yellow roses, man there is stuff everywhere you look, what a place.

Might not be Montana but we sure saw a lot of big sky!

We really loved Wapiti, definitely one of our top favorite campgrounds and one of our favorite areas. Really want to come back here!

We left Wapiti and drove with the Wises the rip roaring entire 32 miles to Cody. Cody is a pretty neat little town, very western, quaint and not too touristy. When we checked into the campground we immediately spotted a big old box addressed to me! The new camera and lens had successfully made it to the Campground, although not yet successfully to me. Since Sharon checked in for the Wises, the owner did not know that Stacy was a Wise, making it easy for him to claim to be me and abscond off into the west with my camera. Fortunately Shelle witnessed this and hauled out her lariat and lassoed the sneaky criminal. Lucky for Stacy there were no high tree limbs or horses around so he was forgiven and not hanged.

Cody has a huge rodeo around and during the 4th of July, very big and very famous. We didn't go to the actual rodeo but discovered "slack time". Those contestants that don't make the "draw" and get into the actual rodeo do get to compete in the slack time. Not as big a deal but still the real thing. Observer/fans can attend slack time for free (right up my alley and budget!) so we did. Really cool because hardly anyone is there except cowboys and stock and you just get in amongst them. Nice treat. Oh, no pics, operator error on the new camera

Also worth mentioning is the William Cody museum. We are not big museum people but this museum is definitely a must see. When you get your tickets they are good for two days, it takes that long to see this marvelous museum (although, us non museum guys did it in one day). Lots of history, a whole wing dedicated to guns, mostly of the era, tons of Buffalo Bill stuff, Annie Oakley stuff, animal stuff, photography stuff and more. If you ever get into town, don't miss it.

The other thing that was fun was to attend was the 4th of July parade. A real small town big deal parade. Everyone even close to Cody was there. The parade was fun, diverse, and very well done. They had everything from mounted cowboys, to floats, to about 30 hot motorcycles, to you name it. Once again camera operated error prevented pictures (I brought the camera but forgot the card - which is like the film). I borrowed a couple of Stacy's pics to post here (hopefully a little cropping was O.K.).

A boat with a 5 piece band!

Happy on lookers, Shelle, Sharon, and Moi.

Leg 3 Yellowstone

Well, it’s off to Yellowstone, almost reluctantly leaving our great camp in Grand Tetons. Saturday 6/06 we head off. As you might notice, we are a little behind on our journal/blog, but we are so very busy and having so very much fun it is difficult to keep up. I might wax philosophically and introspectively for one second, hopefully not sounding corny. There is barely a day goes by that Shelle and I don’t thank our lucky stars and greater being for the phenomenal blessing we are experiencing. Never ever do we take any of this wonderful adventure for granted. To have the health, to have the means, to have the time, and to both greatly enjoy equally the experience is phenomenal. We are truly grateful!

The drive to Yellowstone is an experience itself, very pretty. Most of it a pretty good drive but also some very challenging construction, one lane bumpy dirt, but it goes well. 3.5 hours to get to West Yellowstone where we stayed at Lionshead resort, along with about 40 other Hitchhiker trailers like ours. We had planned Yellowstone ourselves and then our fellow Hitchhiker owners who talk on a forum on the Internet decide on this get together. What a hoot to meet all these people in person.

Here is our overall impression of Yellowstone:
· Geysers – tons of geysers (we though just “Old Faithful” and a few more)
· Thermal areas – steamy/bubbly/stinky/weird/pretty
· Many lush meadows, most with meandering brooks, some with wildlife
· Lots of forests
· Lots of, tons of area (this makes seeing the park really challenging and time consuming)
· Lots of traffic (and jerks that stop in the middle of the road so they can take a picture)
· Big
· Beautiful

West Yellowstone is actually in Montana as is a very small portion of the park. The town of West Yellowstone is kind of interesting, definitely has the flavor of being in the real west, but also has the flavor of a tourist stop, which of course it is. The west entrance to Yellowstone is the most popular and fuel prices and camp ground fees reflect that.

We spent 9 days here and were never without something to do. On top of our touring of the park we had mega activities with our fellow Hitchhiker folks. Pot luck dinners, pizza night, cowboy breakfast, a local rodeo (hence the opening patriotic shot), Shelle and I hosted a breakfast in a bag (make omelette's in a zip lock bag and boil them) for 80 plus folks, and a talent night, emceed by Shelle and of course a few uke tunes by yours truly. What a wonderful bunch of people. Mike Mitchell, the CEO of Hitchhiker, visited with us for 3 days, nice treat.

Here is a picture of camp from out back, all those white things are Hitchhiker trailers.

Another part of camp.

There was a cool nature trail just outside of camp and Roxy really loved to go exploring, what great fun she had.

Busy beavers built this big beaver home. Saw lots of signs of beavers but did not spot any in our travels.

We saw lots of elk but this little baby fawn was precious. It was just full of vim and vigor and Mom was just tolerant. The little guy did finally get some breakfast!

Yellowstone is definitely about geysers and thermal activity. It is simply amazing to see all this thermal stuff going on everywhere. This stop is called "Painters Pot" with lots of thermal activity. The ground around the area is not safe to walk on, thin crust in areas, and the water is scalding hot. The park has built wonderful wooden walks so we can go around and peer at the amazement of this area. All that white stuff you see in the pics is steam .

Here is how this site got it's name, Painters pot. Fascinating to watch, almost mesmerizes one.

And more stuff like this:Looks kind of outer spacey. Imagine stumbling onto this years ago, whew. Even in modern times there have been a few idiots who tried diving into one of these pools, only once then it is bye-bye forever.

And then some other sights we liked:

On one of our adventures we came across this big boy, what a majestic animal (elk).

Waterfalls abound, I can't remember this one's name but I do remember what happened just before this stop. We had spotted a bear, actually a bear and a cub, stopped the truck to grab a shot, opened the back door and kaboom my camera dove out of the truck. I think to my great credit it should be know that I only uttered one swear word and a mild one at that! The camera was O.K. but the lens committed suicide. Now since I had been thinking of a new camera and a different lens.......... trip expense! (New D300 and 18 to 200mm lens were delivered to Cody and waiting for us when we got there! Made do with old Kodak until then. Mom always said "there is a reason for everything"!). We never did get a bear shot but we did get to see a few. Here is the waterfall, I think it might be Tower Falls.

Here are a couple of shots from the rodeo we went to, what a Montana/Wyoming thing to do!

And I love this one, they had a break and ran some stuff for the kids. This little guy was running to join in, isn't he just full of it!

On the way to see "Old Faithful", a whole field full of geysers. Looks almost like a forest fire, nothing but steam.

And of course we need a shot of the signature geyser, Old Faithful right on time:

One of our favorite things to do was try to find some of the roads less traveled. Yellowstone has several side roads that are really wonderful. On this one we found an undesignated place to stop, hiked around and found this remote spot to have a private picnic on the Firehole river, one of our personal highlights of Yellowstone.

Our view up river:

And down river:On the way out of Yellowstone we drove past Yellowstone lake. This lake is huge, it just goes on forever. And blue, very blue maybe representing almost the full spectrum of blue. And as the first pic shows, still have thermal activity all around the lake.And finally, I know long chapter - big like Yellowstone - for my lovely granddaughter Madison: