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.
