Bighorns & Cody

We left South Dakota in our rear view mirror and  headed into Wyoming.  We went through Gillette Wyoming home to one of the largest coal mines in the world.  Between coal, methane gas and oil this region of the US produces one sixth of our energy needs, that's pretty amazing.  Our real destination showed up a little later as we were travelling up I-90.  Here they are, the Bighorn Mountains.

The road up was quite a trip.  It gains about five thousand feet and comes complete with hairpin turns and steep grades.  This is where we were just starting up.

The trip up was well worth it when we reached the top.  After climbing over the pass you drop down into a huge basin that encompasses a large part of the Bighorn range.  We chose a site in the Bighorn National Forest at one of the Forest Service campgrounds called Tie Flume.  It sits at about 8400 feet and is beautiful.  Here is the view out the back window of the Dancer.

This is a little closer view of the stream running behind our campsite.

Marcia and I took a hike up the stream and found quite a bit of snow remaining in places.

Marcia encounter this crazy mountain man while walking along the stream.

This area was a real treasure.  What made it even better was the fact that since trash services had not begun yet and the water was not turned on it was free.  Now that is my kind of campground, beautiful and free.  Here is a photo as we approached our site from along the stream.

Here is another shot showing the Dancer in our site.

Sadly the next morning we had to leave and continue our journey.  There is an old saying that goes what goes up must come down.  Yep the road down was just as steep and winding as the one going up.

We headed on west to Cody, Wyoming.  It is a nice town at the base of the Rocky Mountains  named after Buffalo Bill Cody.  It is the home of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, www.bbhc.org, which I would deem a must see attraction for anyone travelling in this area.

We had this beautiful rainbow to send us on our way as we left Cody headed towards Yellowstone.

Wind Cave

Wind Cave National Park lies adjacent to Custer State Park directly to the south.  It is one of the largest cave systems in the world underground and is where the prairie meets the mountains above ground.  Here are Marcia and Moosie checking out the sign by the visitor center.

The topography at Wind Cave is similar to Custer State Park with rolling prairie and forested hillsides.  Wind Cave is a bit more open prairie as the two come together.

Underground is a whole different world.  This shows some of the box work which occurs throughout the cave.  This cave contains 95% of the box work in the world.   

Wind cave is one of the largest known caves in the world.  There are currently close to 200 miles of the cave which have been explored.  This shows the colors present from different elements in the sedimentary rock which the cave is comprised of.

This shows the vista looking across the prairie from a turnout.

Here we have some of the native creatures which abound in the area.

This is back in Custer looking north from a high(read scary) lookout towards the Needles area of the Black Hills.

On our return trip to the campground we explored a forest service logging road and came across this elk bounding through the trees.  It is not a great picture but she did not leave me a lot of time to grab the camera and shoot.

Tomorrow we leave this beautiful area and head into some even bigger mountains.  

Custer State Park

Custer State Park is one of our favorite places.  It is a large park located at the southern end of The Black Hills in South Dakota.  This whole area is rich in natural wonders.  We plan to spend a few days here exploring.

The first picture is from an overlook and gives an idea of the beauty of this whole area.

We took the wildlife loop drive and got to see lots of different animals.  This pictures shows part of the herd with cows, bulls and babies not very old.  A couple of the bulls in the foreground are wallowing.

The buffalo were right by the road.  These were only a few feet away.  They are losing their winter coats so are a bit shaggy.

A little further down the road we encountered this herd of burros.  They were standing in the road and I had to kind of weave around them to get through.

 

This fellow came right up to the truck looking for a handout and decided my mirror would be a good place to scratch a little. 

Continuing down the road next we came across some pronghorn antelope.  This one was standing right by the road.  It us unusual to get this close to a pronghorn.  You usually see them fleeing over a distant hill.

The buffalo herd in Custer is maintained around 1300 head which means they have too reduce the population every year.  In the fall every year they have a roundup of all the buffalo in the park.  They move all of them into some large corrals adjacent to these working pens.  These are made pretty strong to handle those 2000 lb bulls.  They sell off the excess primarily to buffalo growers all over the country.

We stopped at a nice trail which followed a creek bed for a mile or so and returned to the trailhead.  The creek was dry as are a lot of them here.  It is extremely dry for this time of year so it could be a bad year for fires.

We had a nice time at Custer and will probably go back for another day but not until the beginning of the week as this weekend is a free weekend and they are very busy.  We are looking at exploring Wind Cave tomorrow because it is supposed to be raining.  We figured the rain would not be too bad in a cave.

Wedding and on to Nebraska

We started our long awaited trip to the western states on Friday the 11th.  Our first stop was in Wabash, Indiana to attend the wedding of our niece Mallory Baer and her now husband Bobby Lynn.  We had a great time at the wedding and got to see some of our relatives.  We also want to thank Patty(Marcia's sister) and Rex Baer for their great hospitality.  They insisted we park our RV at their house while we were visiting.   When we arrived on Friday evening they had a campfire going with all of the fixings for a cookout for us.  They have a lovely home and we thoroughly enjoyed our time staying with them.

Here is the happy couple dancing at their reception. 

Here are Brian, Jennifer, Alyssa, Cole and Quinn in downtown Roann before the wedding.  We were glad to see all of them and spend some time together.

We left Sunday morning and continued on westward.  We crossed central Indiana, central Illinois and southern Iowa travelling through some of the best farmland in the world.  We had a long day and arrived at a Rathbun Lake Corps of Engineering's campground late in the afternoon.  It was nice and we were about the only ones in that particular campground.  I walked down to the lake at sunset and got this shot.


We left there and drove most of the day across the rolling hills of southern Iowa to arrive at Nebraska City, Nebraska.  We are staying in a nice campground on the edge of the city. Today we went to the Arbor Day Farm.  We have belonged to the Arbor Day Foundation for several years and have wanted to visit their home and the grounds.  Here is the entrance to the main exhibits.  We walked a trail that wound around through the wooded grounds with lots of points of interest.

The very helpful lady at the store did a good job taking our picture enjoying the rocking chairs on the porch.


The story of the Arbor Day Foundation is very interesting.  J. Sterling Morton was a Nebraska statesman very interested in planting trees in Nebraska.  On ground that he owned, he laid out a beautiful estate planting many varieties of trees.  He was responsible for making Arbor Day an official national day of planting trees.  On the first Arbor Day over a million trees were planted in Nebraska.  His farm was later the home of the Arbor Day Foundation which still calls this beautiful farm it's home.  Here is a picture of  Morton Mansion.


While touring the grounds of the Morton estate we came across this tree hugging moose.  How Moosey managed to get into that tree is a true mystery.


We are heading towards the Black Hills tomorrow.  

Christmas 2011

Christmas 2011 was not white but it was a good Christmas.  All our family was able to get here for the Christmas Holiday and that was the best present we could have.  All had safe travels and that is another thing to be thankful for.

We had a great time with everyone here.  We had some of the traditional activities which included the frosting of the Christmas cookies.  That can be quite interesting, just saying there are usually some unusual creations.  Here are some of the creators at work.

The underlying theme for this year was the Sasquatch.  It has been rumored to have been spotted in our area.  I believe there was even some evidence of his passing.  A large footprint was found in the trees east of the house along with some areas where he had bedded down under the trees and even evidence of his sanitary cleanliness.

Here is a picture of Alyssa all dressed up for our Sasquatch walk.

On Christmas Day we had the Meston side of the family here for Christmas dinner.  There was lots of good food and conversation.  Grandma Powers was also able to come, here is a picture of her and Quinn.

We had lots of presents to open with Quinn getting things started.

Cole seemed happy with this present.

Since we open presents in age order Seri was next.

Next was Matt’s turn.

 

Alyssa was next.

Then it was Jennifer’s turn.

Next is Brian.

The lovely Miss Marcia.

Next is yours truly. 

I got some cast iron skillet ware that I really liked but this picture is actually from last year so it does not show. 

We had a great Christmas enjoying our family.  They all departed on Tuesday and the house seemed to get very quiet.  It was so good to have everyone home, it made for a wonderful Christmas.

Hope everyone has a great 2012.

Quinn’s # 4

This entry will try to catch up with what has been happening this fall.  We have been busy with fall chores and visiting family.

Here is a photo of one of Marcia’s flower gardens in full fall colors.

We made a journey to Whitewater River Campground in October.  It is a nice campground and the best part is it is only about ten miles from Brian & Jennifer’s.

Here is part of the crew on a trail along the river.

Brian, Dewey, Cole & Quinn

Marcia, Jennifer & Alyssa

After this trip the Melton’s came up to the farm so the boys could pick out their pumpkins.

Cole & Quinn in the pumpkin patch

Then we went back to Noblesville to attend Cole’s school’s grandparents day.  We had a great time.  We stayed overnight because the next day was Quinn’s 4th birthday celebration. 

The cake is ready and Quinn looks excited.

The candles were lit and Quinn got them all in one shot.

  Quinn got lots of presents and we had a great time watching him open them. 

This is a rocket he got which blasts off when you jump on the air bladder which shoots it up into the air a long way.

A great shot of Quinn, Cole and Dad working on one of Quinn’s presents.

We had a great time with the boys and Brian, Jennifer and Alyssa.  We enjoy the time we get to spend with them.

Brimley State Park & MATT

We moved across the bridge into the UP(ah it feels like home) and on to Brimley State Park.  Brimley is just a few miles from Sault Ste Marie, MI which is why we decided to stay there.  We had never stayed at this park before but the attraction on this particular occasion was MATT.  Matt was travelling through on his way from Toronto to Minnesota and this was a stopping point for him.  We had made plans to meet up for a couple of days.  It was really good to see him.  We had a nice time visiting and just catching up.

The trees were just beginning to show their colors.  There was one in the campground that was still green except for the ends of all of the branches and they were bright red.

We took a walk along the beach and you can see the Sault from the campground.

Matt had some major news for us.  He and Seri both have gotten jobs in Houghton at Michigan Tech.  Seri has a research position at Tech and Matt will be working for the Forest Service on a project for them.   We are so happy for them both finding jobs in the same place.

We went into the Sault for some sight seeing and had a nice time.  We saw some ships in the locks and toured the historical museum.  Here is Matt with Mom.

Here is one of Matt and Dad.

We really enjoyed our time with Matt.  We were sorry that Seri was not able to join us.  But now that they will both be in Houghton we will have a reason to visit the UP more often.  That sounds like a win-win deal.  We get to see the kids and the UP both.