Day 6 - Welcome to Wyoming

We are just over an hour away from Yellowstone, the moon over the Beartooth Mountains is spectacular this morning in a beautiful blue sky.
These pictures are at the Clark's Fork River. Just before we left we watched the two part PBS special about the Lewis and Clark expedition. They must have been amazed. These mountains are majestic. This is where Lewis and Clark split. Lewis went up the Missouri to find a shorter way through the mountains. Clark took this river.
There was a shortcut, they both missed it. What I can't comprehend is how they found each other after this split!

Absarokee

We spent most of the day in Absarokee, Montana. We stopped at Ginger's Coffee Corral where Celeste gave us some suggestions for places I want to use in the new series.

We drove to one, Cliff Swallow campsite on the Stillwater River. It was so beautiful. Pat went for a walk while I sat by the river and wrote. I ended up with several paragraphs I really like!
We changed our plans for tomorrow. The Beartooth Pass sounds treacherous so we are taking the Chief Joseph to Yellowstone. It is getting down to 28 tonight and Beartooth Pass may be closed for ice.
Can't wait for Yellowstone National Park!
We are staying in Red Lodge, Montana tonight. This afternoon I watched a young doe walk up to the busy street, look both ways and then she crossed when raffia cleared! She went to the bank sign next to our hotel, looked around and started eating the grass. Then a school bus was too noisy and she ran away. Of course no camera!

 

 

Day 5 - Mountains

Bear Tooth Mountains!

Way off in the distance; they are majestic.

Snowcapped it gives me chills just looking at them!

We are on our way to Absarokee - where we visited Janet, Rod and baby Patrick 30+ years ago.

In the next series, Four Season, part of the story takes place there. Can't wait to see everything to make my descriptions better.

This sign was at the rest stop! - We sure aren't in Michigan any longer!

Montana

We've seen more "wide load" trucks piled high with rolls of hay, trains miles long filled with coal, grain and boxed cars.  Hills covered with sage brush and scruffy bushes. But best of all Montana really does have a big Sky! It must be because of all the open space. No trees, skyscrapers for miles and miles.

Badlands

What a great morning. We dove through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. 

We saw buffalo, wild horses and fabulous hills and valleys.

I have close up pictures of the buffaloes, it was very scary driving just a couple feet away.

They were right next to the van!

The wind was blowing hard.

We had rain on the way in and on the way out. But it was great.

Oh my, we just passed a city called "Oh Home on the Range."