5 States, 8 Parks, 12 Days, 3286 Miles....

Hi all...well those are the final stats from our big adventure! We visited Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota. We arrived back to Creede late on Friday evening, we were tired and had lots of laundry to do but this is a vacation we will never forget! After our last post we had two more days at Yellowstone, and Saturday was easily my favorite day of the whole trip. We left early and headed for the north entrance of Yellowstone, about a 3 hour drive. Early in the day we saw a grey fox, about 30 elk and den of coyote pups. There were four pups about a month old, we were able to see them up close through a spotting scope someone had set up. We stopped for a picnic about halfway up at the Norris area where there a lots of bison. The mammoth hot springs were a bit disappointing as there was not much water running, but still very interesting. We visited the historic Albright visitors center and saw the stone arch at the original park entrance. We spent about 20 minutes in Montana and took a picture for our friends the Kessner's!






Then it was time to head back south. We took the eastern side of the loop through the park and saw lots of animals. First we came across a huge grizzly bear he was walking along the base of a hill in a field not too far off the road. There were quite a few people stopped to look at him, we were so glad to come across a bear, but he was scary and not sure I would have liked coming across him anywhere but from the car!







Not two miles down the road we came across a momma black bear and a cub. They were playing in a field across from a pond, we stopped and watched them play for a long time. They chased each other and wrestled, the cub tried to climb one of the trees till he was knocked down by his mom. It was one of the neatest things I have ever seen!

Just a little farther down we saw a male black bear very close to the side of the road, the ranger said he had just been in a fight with another bear we got out and watched him move up the road for a bit, the ranger kept moving everyone up as the bear was moving. Further down we saw a momma and baby mountain goat walking a steep cliff, more coyotes, and lots of bison. We also got a little bit of rain and saw a beautiful full double rainbow, I can't imagine a better day! What a beautiful place Yellowstone is, and we only saw a tiny bit of it in our 5 days there.

Sunday we had lots of museums and visitors centers to see, and it turns out it was a good day for this as it rained and snowed on us most of the day! We did do a bit of hiking in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone to see some of the waterfalls and take in some beautiful views.

Monday it was time for us to move on and start the second leg of our trip. It was hard to leave our wonderful camp site, we could have stayed several more days and enjoyed every minute! We stopped in Cody, Wyoming at the Buffalo Bill museum, it was full of exhibits and memorabilia from his shows and lots of other western history. Definitely worth the stop! We however didn't make it as far as we had hoped and ended up staying the night at a hotel in Sheridan Wyoming. It was a nice break from camping though, as we both needed showers, I think even Rocky enjoyed the night at the hotel.

Tuesday morning it was on to Devils Tower Wyoming, the mountain is so unique and we had a beautiful hike around it! June is a significant month for the Native Americans that consider the mountain a sacred place and the mountain was closed to climbers, but the hiking trails were all open , it would be fun to see the rock climbers in action on this peak sometime! At several spots along the trails you could see prayer bundles and prayer cloths tied in the trees that had been left by people during their celebrations, they were beautiful blowing in the breeze.

After our hike it was on to South Dakota. First stop...Sturgis home of a huge motorcycle rally each summer, we had to stop for some pictures and shopping at the Sturgis Harley Davidson dealership! Then we headed for Custer State Park where we planned to camp. We followed our map and ended up on the Iron Mountain Road which from the map headed straight into the park. Well it did, but it was windy narrow road full of switch backs and one lane tunnels! There were actually signs outside the tunnels "Honk Before Entering" I have been on cart paths that were wider and I was pulling the trailer! Yikes! We made it though and later found out the road was completed at the same time as Mount Rushmore and has many good views of the mountain from it...too bad I was white knuckling it and didn't see anything! We found a beautiful spot to camp and made our plans for the next few days!

Wednesday was a busy day! First we headed for the Badlands National Park and had lunch at huge store called Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. Guess it is supposed to be the biggest drug store in the world, well it's a bit of a tourist stop more than anything, but there was a big soda fountain and lunch counter. Then it was off to drive through the park, it is full of interesting mountains and views of the plains. It was unbelievable to see wildflowers blooming right out of the cracked dry earth!

Back towards Rapid City and time to stop at Mount Rushmore. I have always seen pictures of the mountian, and was quite anxious to see it in person, I was not disappointed! It was amazing, just to look at it, an imagine how it was carved and blasted out of the rock back in the 1920' s, 30's and 40's ! The visitors center had lots of exhibits and information about the tools and people who worked on the carving, guess there were about 1000 workers mostly miners from South Dakota, working under the direction of the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. The Black Hills are quite beautiful and reminded me of the areas around Nan's camp in Northville New York.

Thursday morning it was time to move again and we packed up and headed for Wind Cave just South of Custer State Park. We have been interested in caves since visiting Kartchner Caverns a few years ago. This was a beautiful cave with unique formations called box work that are not found anywhere else in the world. The thin brittle formations look like old fashioned post office cubbies that is why they are called box work. We took a 1 and a half hour tour down in the cave and it was a lot of fun.

We had a picnic then off for another long day of driving heading back into Colorado and towards Rocky Mountain National Park. We arrived at the campground in Rocky Mountain about 9:00 Emily made us a good dinner while I got a fire going and set up camp. We only had the spot for one night but it was a beautiful spot on an open meadow that had a great view of the stars! Friday morning we headed out to explore the park, lots of this park is above the treeline and has alpine tundra areas with many glaciers. The park also has the highest highway in the United States at just under 14000 feet in elevation at points, which could explain why Emily and I were both queasy when we got to the visitors center at the top of the park. We were both really tired and decided to take the plunge and make the long drive back to Creede without camping one more night on the way back. We got to my parents house around 8:45 and my mom had a great dinner waiting for us! Saturday they were taking the raft out and I was way to tired to think about going, but Emily was ready to keep going. I stayed home and did laundry and washed the trailer and the car, then got to take a great nap! Today it was off for more fun though they were ready to raft again, I went along and it was a great time! I will have to upload the pictures of that soon! Thanks for reading about all of our fun! This was definitely a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget!