Tumbling the best we can

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These are of us recently.   We both are looking chipper.   But our blog's name Tumbleweed Two might not be appropriate just now because one of us is not in the mood to travel much (tumble) or do much else while the other is.   Tom hasn't been feeling very spirited lately.   He's been visiting doctors trying to find why he hasn't had energy to do much.  So far, they've found him fine.  It may just be trying to be with me that has him feeling low:  I find things to do much of the day and he likes things to be a little less busy, more relaxed and less planned.

We still enjoy each other's company and are hoping we can make this work.

In the meantime, Tom says he does not want to plan any travel or participate in anything that is too active or with too many people.   So I am doing some of these things by myself.

One thing we did together last Thursday:  traveled the hour down to Fort Smith to the Arkansas Oklahoma State Fair.  I wanted to go to see the big dogs in an act that I'd seen would be featured there.   While waiting for the show to begin, we visited the animals barns.

Then we got to see the show: eight dogs taken from shelters or worse and settled into this former rodeo clown's act. 

They WERE fun, but not quite as fun as I had anticipated all week.  Trained with praise only and seeming to like their life on the road.

This weekend, I took off on a camping/hiking trip to a place I've been to a couple of times before - the Hurricane Wilderness where the Ozark Highland Trail goes through.    Above is the stream I camped in my van by on Friday night.  On Saturday morning, I walked on rocks across the stream and hiked about 4 miles along the Hurricane River.  This time of year, you don't hear the rush of water and see beautiful white/blue froth, as you do in the spring.

The next night, I drove to a campground along the Buffalo River and found a campsite near the main walk down to the river.   This is what you see there.  Here I hiked the 1.7 miles up to a picnic area along the river and back.   The leaves here that turn red are now turning. Others won't be far behind.   There'll be several weeks now when all the world here will look and feel glorious.  
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When I came home, Tom had kept the recently transplanted shrubs watered and done some other chores.   I think he enjoyed having a couple of days to himself on his own schedule.

Wyoming ( and south Dakota)

We're just back from about three weeks in Wyoming, with the first few days in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  

Each place was beautiful and we rarely were in town near wifi so I will have to post quite a few pictures to do justice to what we saw and did.  

Tom's son Jon suggested that we meet him near Cody, Wyoming by way of the Bighorn Mountains in northeast Wyoming.  From that suggestion, we found that it was only two days away from home in Fayetteville, Arkansas to get to the Black Hills of South Dakota.  So that's where we headed first.   First we roamed through the Badlands, then found a neat US Forest Service campsite overlooking a lake just outside the Black Hills state park.

The second day there, we drove the van through a "Needles" highway in the park where it was a tight squeeze to get it through the old hand-crafted tunnels.

Then it was on to the Bighorns.   After passing lots of RV rigs camped among the trees lower down on a back road, we found our own little spot, near a very sculptural rock.  There was already a fire ring there so Tom made a fire.

We explored around in the woods and streams there.  Closeby was this mound.   Tom said it is cow manure - I say it's too big.  What do you say?

It must have been there in the Bighorns that we saw the soft pink Indian paintbrush. Usually they are bright orangy red.   Later, near Cody, we saw Indian paintbrush that were yellow.

After driving and camping on the south side of the Bighorns, we drove back up the east side and crossed them on the north.   On the road over to Cody, farther west, we passed an early settlement that still grows the original crops, among them, sunflowers.

We spent four nights at Big Game campground (forest service) alone the Shoshone River. That's where we met up with Tom's son,  Jon, who had come from Shreveport on a 20+ day jaunt up through the northwest in his Jeep.  While Tom and Jon took an all-day jeep ride up the Beartooth and through Yellowstone, I drove the van over to Yellowstone and hiked a bit of the Pelican Creek trail.  These yellow columbines were along that trail.

 This is the meadow I crossed before getting to the forested part of the trail.

On the way back, I stopped along the big lake in Yellowstone to walk over to a  smaller lake so I could see the pelicans themselves.

Just after that, I stopped again because I saw a large antlered animal in the nearby woods. Do you see him?

The next day, when Tom and Jon went out again, I hiked along the Elk Fork river, from behind a campground just a few miles up from our campground.  I saw horseshoe prints along the trail, then lost them, then found them again on the way back where they had turned down to the river for the lunch part of their ride.  I felt so superior that I had walked farther than the horseback riders had gone.

The trail took me along and through range land just above the river.  The soft colors together were so beautiful.

Our next campsite was along the Popo Agee (puh poo sha, the ranger said) River, outside of Landers, Wy.  We got the very nicest spot along a bouldery, turbulent part of the river.  Tom and Jon hardly noticed the river just next to them they were so  busy catching up with each other.

The state campsite is located  there because that is where the river sinks through the boulders for a while before resurfacing.  Where it comes up again, trout gather, trying in vain to go farther up the river.

On another day, Jon took Tom and me up through the southern Wind River range.  Before heading up into the mountains, we passed through a couple of very old mining towns. 

We stopped to see the Little Popo Agee river.

Our last day there, Tom and I walked the one-mile nature trail.  The day before, I had walked another trail, up that side of the river and saw a couple of Blue Grouse (large ground birds.) 

We liked seeing our van from across the river.

Rather than drive around through the plains to get to the southern Wind River area (Pinedale, Wy), Tom and I drove toward and through the Teton National Park.  On the way, we saw such colorful rocks/hills.  During that same time, Jon hiked into the Circe de Towers (high peaks area), spent the night and met us a couple of days later in Pinedale.

Tom and I spent a night camped at a pretty little lake where a group of people from Idaho had gathered for a long get together.    They had boats, four-wheelers and kept the clear, sandy beach very crowded.  We liked it there but would have liked it better if it hadn't been so busy.

The next morning was rainy.  And Tom and I were feeling very tired from so my observing, riding, fresh air.   So we decided to come back to Arkansas.   And Jon decided to take a route through Colorado back to Shreveport. 

We got one last experience in the mountains when we drove down through the Snowy Range in the Medicine Bow mountains, west of Laramie.  I don't know which mountains I liked best of those I saw, but the Snowys rate way up there.   As we drove to them, we thought it had recently snowed! But that's the whitish rock there.

 

You do see snow at the Snowy Range (I've been there twice before), right up close in the pockets of the mountains.

And the freshest, brightest flowers were there.

We found a campsite on the eastern side from the top, near a stream.

And the next day, we drove through all the south of Nebraska where we got a motel.  The next day we drove home.

Now, we're here resting and acknowledging the comforts of dishwashers and showers and a big bed.   It may be a while before we take off on a long trip again.

Stopping and Going

We've been back in Arkansas since about the middle of April, but we didn't move back into our house until July 14.   In the meantime, we've been enjoying stays at several other places:  the month and a half at the lake cabin we wrote about, a month in an apartment in town and near the bicycle trails during June, then ten days housesitting for friends/neighbors two doors away from my  house for the first 11 days of July, then three days at our nearer (next door) neighbor's lake house with them and grandchildren.  

First, a few pictures from Andy and Julie's place where we house sat.   They like gardening.  While there we enjoyed flowers, vegetables and fruits from their garden.

We earned our keep by watering plants and mowing, feeding their chickens and being good buddies with their aging dog - Buzz.

Then, after we brought them home from the airport, we headed next door to John and Judith's where we followed them up their place on Beaver Lake.

We spent a good bit of the time there down on the dock where we all took turns swimming.

On Sunday afternoon, John took Tom and Destiny out on the tube.  We wondered how Tom would do, but he seemed as pleased as Destiny to be spinning along on the top of the water.

When John and Judith and kids went back to Fayetteville on Sunday, they let us stay in the lake house that night so we could time our arrival into our own place just right:  Monday night.  That's when I found myself hanging out on the deck.

Now, we've been here in my house for about five days.  We've been very busy unpacking things from the storage room and putting them away.   We do notice that animals have gotten real comfortable living on our property while we were away.

Sometime during this time, Tom and I went camping (vans and motor homes) with my brother John and his wife Brenda down at a park on the Arkansas River.   We spent lots of time fishing and catching fish.  And bicycling the back roads and playing gin rummy. Generally just having a good time together.



And one Sunday, when Tom didn't feel like  doing much, I went out to one of my personal favorite spots, King River Falls.  Here is where I usually get my first swim of the year and it worked out that way again this year, only it was in late June rather than May.  A natural swimming hole with water fall and above it little pools holding water to dabble in. 

Now we're to a place where we're about to leave this area.   Usually, in Arkansas, it's  hot in July and August.  And Tom's son Jon has some weeks free to travel.  So we plan to meet him up in Wyoming around July 27.   There he and Tom will travel some backroads in Jon's jeep and I'll hold down the fort while checking out the local scenery and maybe getting in some drawing and violin (yes, you read that right) practice.    After a week or two, Tom and I will head over to Arizona to see an area where my late aunt Betty lived, a little town up in the mountains near the Colorado/New Mexico border.  We should be home in the middle of August.

Below is the house we live in.   Hard to leave after we just got settled in, but it will be here waiting, projects and all, for when we get back.