The Wonders of Yellowstone

We've been to Yellowstone National Park before, but there were still things we hadn't seen.  We knew it was going to be a long day.  We are staying about 80 miles from the entrance to the park and we wanted to complete a couple of circle tours in the park.  Since one goal was to see wild animals, we left very early in the morning (5 am) and headed toward Haden Valley.  If there were animals they were hiding, but we finally saw a herd of bison. 

The views of Upper/Lower Falls are spectacular.  We weren't aware of the rainbow that can be seen at a certain time of day....we were there at that time.  The photo turned out pretty good.

The "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone

The Rainbow at Upper Falls

We finally saw something besides bison as we were leaving the falls and Artist Point.  First there was one lone Bull Elk - just hanging out and eating and then he was joined by another one.  They were oblivious to all the people taking photos of them. 

As we approached Mammoth Hot Springs, we had no idea what to expect.  We would be near the North Entrance and the Montana border.  It's a small touristy type of town with a few services, but looming over it is the mammoth mineral formation.  We found the road to take us to the top for spectacular views of the town.
 
The area named Artist Paintpots is always intriguing....how do they do that?  Randy took some awesome close up photos. 

Upper and Lower Geyser Basin have dozens of geysers.  We stopped to to take pictures of several...and then we reached the famous "Old Faithful" Geyser. 

Old Faithful

Old Faithful

Yellowstone Traffic Stoppers

 It was a very long day in Yellowstone.  Randy drove almost 350 mostly slow miles.  But it was a fun day full of cool things to see.

Grand Teton National Park - Under Appreciated...

I often think that Grand Teton National Park is considered a step-sister to Yellowstone and does not get the respect it deserves.  At a mere 310,000 acres (compared to Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres) it is definitely smaller, but the scenery is absolutely stunning.  We could see the majestic Teton Mountains just pop up in our view as we approached from Dubois.  We went to Jackson for breakfast and then drove out near the mountains to Teton Village.  We opted not to do the tram ride ($29 each).    The scenic drive to Jenny Lake was closed for a few hours due to road work so we just continued on to Jackson Lake and stopped at Signal Mountain Lodge to check out the view of the lake.  All the while we had spectactular views of the Teton Mountains.

On our way out of the Park we came across a traffic jam of cars...all caused by a moose standing in the river eating.  She seemed oblivious to the presence of dozens of people and vehicles so we got some great shots of her.

Our Geocaching Adventure

We've been geocaching in every state we've been in.  Most of them have been quick "grab & go" cachesat rest areas, visitor centers and even the RV parks we have stayed at.  While Randy was searching geocaching.com for caches near us he found a multi-cache close by with the intriguing name of "Wiggens Fork Outhouse".  It took us a little while to find the road we wanted, but when we did we found ourselves "heading for the hills". 

We followed the map display on the GPS and my iPad and we were getting closer...except we weren't.  We couldn't get there from where we were.  We took the wrong fork in the road and ended up on a massive and beautiful plateau at roughly 9000' elevation.  We had to retrace our steps and take the other fork.

Massive Plateau

I think I have been using the term "road" rather loosely.  We have been following tire tracks that have huge rocks and huge holes.  They are also very steep and scary (to me).  There are sharp corners and no room for error.

After taking the other fork (this turn around took over an hour).  We were finally heading in the right direction.  Since the hint for the first cache mentioned a tree it made it a little easier to pinpoint.

The next set of coordinates lead us to another tree and another set of coordinates which would lead us to the final location...an outhouse...in the middle of nowhere.  We determine the location but the road is very frightening...a hump in one tire track that could dump us over the cliff...not meant for me.  Randy finally backed up and decided to walk.

This adventure took us about 5 hours.  We had a lot of fun and the scenery was spectacular.  We want to find out more about this homestead on the Wind River.  We will be doing some research on it's history.

Little Big Horn Battlefield

One of my favorite places to visit is the Little Big Horn Battlefield.  I've been there several times and each time I find it somewhat eerie and sad.  The visitor center has very interesting displays and of course the headstones in the cemetary add to the eeriness.   But I think the biggest impact comes from standing at the top of the hill near the memorial looking out over the meadow when the wind is blowing.  You can almost hear the battle happening.  The wind, the grasses and the headstones give this spot an eeriness.  Since the last time we were there they have added a five mile audio driving tour.  Using a cell phone, you call a number and enter the sign number and listen to the information.  This is a great addition to this monument.

While on the driving tour we saw dozens of horses.  I spotted a small group of them a short distance off the road.  One of them had beautiful markings and we stopped so I could take pictures.  Apparently this horse was curious and approached the side of the road.  He stood there just a few feet from us posing for pictures.  It seemed to fit the eeriness of the area.

Hill City SD

After we had completed everything to establish our domicile in South Dakota, we still had some time and lots of things we hadn't seen yet.  We decided to move to a more scenic RV park closer to some of the attractions of the area.  We chose Rafter J Ranch in Hill City SD.  It is a large RV park that is spread out with different groups of sites.  We ended up facing a large meadow.

Crazy Horse Monument is only 5 miles from there.  It cost $10 per person admittance to the visitor center.  We really didn't spend a lot of time there.  We could have paid more to take a bus tour that went closer to the monument and we could've paid additional money to visit the museum.  We got a return pass for an additional visit so we could come back at night for the laser show.  The laser show was pretty good.  The native american music set the mood.  The final display was the outline of what the monument will look like when completed. 

We took a ride on a steam train while in Hill city.  For some time we have watched the programs on PBS on steam trains and thought that would be something fun to do.  We enjoyed it... riding in the open cars between the granite walls and hearing the whistle blow (19 times) for crossings.  It was surprising to find out that the train does not burn coal...it never has.  It runs on recycled motor oil.  If it ran on coal there would be too much danger of sparks causing fires.

While in Rapid City....

There's lots to see in do..maybe not IN Rapid City...but certainly all around it.  Our main purpose to be here is to establish residency in the State of South Dakota.  It only took a few minutes to get our drivers license and the same with licensing our truck and trailer.  That left a lot of time for sight seeing.

We made side trips to places like Deadwood - there seemed to be lots of people milling around - but no one in the casinos playing.  We also took a look at Sturgis.  I think it's a good time of year to look around.  There weren't many people there.  Probably the most popular place in Sturgis when we were there was the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum.  It really is pretty cool.  They have an amazing collection of Motorcycles.  Including one like Randy's brother Gary had when he was younger.

One of the other  "touristy" things we decided to do was check out "Bear country USA".  It is a drive through animal park.  It has animals other than bears.  Even though there are signs everywhere we drive here to watch out for Big Horn Sheep - I think they are fakes.  I had to go to the animal park to see any.  We got some great pictures...including some 4-5 week old bear cubs that are having blast playing.