The highs in Billings on Thursday, August 30th, was forecast for the high 90s (over 35°C). The night before I had read a short piece on the Beartooth Scenic Highway that started climbing into the mountains just past Red Lodge, reaching an elevation of over 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). After showing the route to Karen on a map, we decided to go for it.
The highway is also the northeastern route into Yellowstone National Park. It was a really neat drive. However, I would not recommend it for those who nervous on high, winding, mountain roads. I also would not recommend taking a recreational vehicle of any size over it. For everyone else, this is a truly wonderful drive — in good weather. The road is closed during the winter, but is subject to snow even in the summer.
It was 60 miles from the campground to Red Lodge. It looks like an interesting little town, but we decided not to stop on our way up into the mountains. Our first photos were about taken twenty miles down the road at the Rock Creek Vista Point.
This is a composite image of several photos showing the walkway out to the vista point.
Another composite image. The road had certainly taken us up a long ways in a relatively short period of time.
A stone mason and his apprentice/helper (?) were out on the walkway working on the walls. I don’t know if the overlook is new or being refurbished, but it is certainly in good shape and a spot worth visiting.
I try to take some photos of things that look interesting, composing the image to take advantage of the subject that I am photographing and its background. In this instance the branches of the dead tree were the subject, but it had a spectacular background.
Another view of the mountains near the vista point, including part of the highway.
Another composite image. The lake in this picture is probably frozen over most of the year.
The high country alpine tundra vegetation is changing color already. These stunted plants are probably many years old and have a very short growing season.
At one of the highest points along the road, Karen started climbing up a jumble of rocks — my shoes didn’t have good enough tread for it.
At this point, we are nearing the highest point on the Beartooth Highway. Another composite image.
Highest point where we actually saw a sign.
We didn’t find a picnic table when we decided it was time for lunch. We did find a nice handy tree trunk next to a very pretty lake.
This is one of my favorite views from along this road. We’re back down below the tree line into a very pretty forest.
Karen spotted this waterfall as we were driving by on the road. It was a short hike back to where we could get a really great view. (composite image)
Cooke City, Montana - the entrance to Yellowstone is at the far side of town — and that’s where the road construction began. We didn’t go into the park on this trip. We will be spending some time there later this month.
The sign speaks for itself. Fortunately, I’ve got an auxiliary tank on my truck and did not have to purchase fuel.
The trees on the hill above the trading post are testament to the fires of 1988 that burned through much of Yellowstone, as well as many areas outside the park.
One last image from our drive, taken on our way back across the highway, headed back to Billings.
The drive from our campground to Cooke City was 125 miles. We’ll probably do it again someday, but we’ll be staying someplace closer — because it was also 125 miles back to Billings.
Continue reading about Travel Journal - Beartooth Highway in Wyoming and Montana - August 30, 2007
The morning started out very cloudy with a forecast of 60% chance of rain. We had been planning on taking a 2.8 mile loop trail, but decided to wait awhile to see what the weather held for us. When the clouds lowered and it started misting, we decided to go for a drive back to Spearfish in South Dakota, do some shopping and see some different country on our way back.
On the way back it was still raining intermittently.
In one section of Wyoming 24, the fill dirt under the road had settled a lot earlier this summer. Until just the last couple of days the road had been closed as a result.
We had gone over that section of road the day before and had been wondering whether the workers would be out in this kind of weather. Having lived in this kind of country before, we were not terribly surprised to see them out in the misty fog. There is not a lot of time left before the weather could get inclement to the point that the job will have to be shutdown until late spring.
While the road is open now, there is only one lane open — and it is nasty muddy. It was a bit windy and cold and the flaggers were all bundled up. In just a short section of road, the truck got dirty enough that we need to take it to a car wash so that we won’t have to be careful of leaning or rubbing up against it.
On the way back from Spearfish the conditions must have been just right to entice deer to come out in the open. We counted 95 deer — almost all of them white-tails — between Belle Fourch, South Dakota, and Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, and I’m sure that there were many more that we didn’t see.
Three of them were pretty close to the road and I got some close ups of one of them. I was very pleased with her doe eyes, but when I saw the second picture, I was surprised that it looked like she was sticking her tongue out. She’s really in the middle of eating, but it is one of the oddest pictures of a deer that I’ve seen.
By the time that we got back to the campground it had cleared up considerably. Deciding to take a walk while it was clear, we first went over to the front of the KOA store. At the entrance to this campground, there are 2 artistically painted large boots. The first boot has the KOA logo on it and it is also painted on all sides.
This is the other side of it.
The other boot is also painted on all sides. The back of the boot has an image of Teddy Roosevelt and the front has an image of Sitting Bull. The side that is in this image is interesting in that it depict Devil’s Tower and above and behind it is the real Devil’s Tower.
When we got to the overflow camping area on our walk , I changed lenses on the camera replacing the telephoto zoom with the closeup zoom so that I could get more area into the shot. However, just after I did, we spooked two deer and they took off running for the national monument. I didn’t have time to switch back to the telephoto zoom, so the images of one of the deer as she ran and then jumped the fence are not as clear and crisp as I would like.
The area at the rear of the campground is by far the prettiest. It is wide open with a lot of tall cottonwood trees. One side borders the national monument and on another the campground property ends at the Belle Fourche River, with a red rock cliff on the opposite side of the river. There are a lot of photo opportunities in that part of the campground.
This photo is a twisted dead tree with the Belle Fourche (pronounced foosh) River, part of the cliff and other land in the background. The buildings in the picture are KOA Kamping Kabins.
This is a similar image, except I’ve focused in on the grasses along the river, with the background intentionally blurred.
The monument boundary fence ends right at the river and then picks up again at the top of the red rock cliff, as shown in this picture:
Every month during the summer and when weather permits, a nighttime walk is conducted on the night when the moon is full. In the morning the weather looked like it would likely cause the walk to be canceled. However, after we got back to the campground from our drive earlier in the day, the sky just got more and more clear. By the time we headed up to the trail head where we would be hiking from, the sky was almost perfectly clear. This photo was taken with my camera held in my hand, no tripod. The night by that time was too dark for any other photos without using the flash. I didn’t want to use the flash because it would momentarily impair the night vision of the other hikers.
We enjoyed the walk, though when we stopped for the park volunteer to talk, the breaks lasted too long. The temperature has dropped into the low 50’s and there was a slight wind blowing. Even though everyone had bought flashlights, the moon light was bright enough in the open areas away from the trees that you didn’t really need them. We started out on the trail at 9 P.M. and got back to the truck at 10:30 P.M.
Continue reading about Travel Journal — Rainy Day Turns Very Clear — August 28, 2007
I decided how I’m going to catch up with photos of all of the places that we’ve been this trip.
I’ll be putting together a post for each day with pictures and, when the post is done, I’ll post date it for the date of the pictures. I’ll also be including a link to each of the late entry posts in a new current posting.
The first of these late entry posts is for August 26, 2007, the day that we arrived at Devils Tower, Wyoming.
I’ll be working on the most recent days first as we want to share these newer images with our family and friends back home. I’ll publish the older material later as I have time.
On this day, we took the trail around the base of Devil’s Tower and, later, a drive to see some of the countryside around here.
The Devils Tower KOA has a large area at the back of the campground which, at this time of the year, is empty, except for those who are using the Kamping Kabins. It is very pretty back there. This view is of the Devil’s Tower National Monument from that part of the campground. The fence in the picture is the boundary between the monument and campground properties.
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Devil’s Tower is sacred to many Native Americans.
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This image is a montage of over 10 separate photographs. Even with a wide angle zoom lens, we were so close that I was not able to get all of the tower in. The rocks below the tower are remnants of rock columns that have fallen over the ages.
Critters around the tower:
Deer
Chipmunk
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In the afternoon we took a drive and ended up at Interstate 90 east of Sundance, Wyoming. Seeing a sign pointing to Vore Buffalo Jump, we decided to go check it out.
For over three hundred years, Plains Indian groups stampeded bison over the rim and into a deep natural “sink hole” at the site which is now called the Vore Buffalo Jump. It was one of the most effective means available to the Indians to procure the buffalo which were their primary food and the source of many other materials used in their cultures. It is believed that up to 20,000 of the shaggy bison were trapped at this one location. - Sundance, Wyoming website
Note: this image is a panorama compiled from several photos.
Continue reading about Devil’s Tower and a Buffalo Jump - Photos for June 27, 2007
Our drive today was a relatively short one. We went from the Rushmore Shadows campground–about 9 miles south of Rapid City, South Dakota–to the KOA that sits just outside of the fence of Devil’s Tower National Monument in Wyoming.
Images from the I90 rest area at Sundance, Wyoming:
Silver Buffalo Berry (see reference) - silver refers to the color of the leaves of the plant
Devil’s Tower images
The camper in this image is ours, after we had set up and extended the slides. Excellent location.
This is the view from the campsite next to ours. We have a small tree across the drive that is slightly in the way of our view.
We see deer every time we go for a walk or go for a drive.
This is from the opposite side of the tower, from the parking lot at the head of one of the park’s trails.
Long before the official time for sundown, we were in the shadow of the tower.
The Devil’s Tower KOA is a very large campground with plenty of room for tenters and RVers. This is the “overflow area.”
A twilight image of the tower.
Critter count for the day (to be added later)
We are currently camped about 9 miles south of Rapid City South Dakota.
My original intent was to write on a daily basis and work on photo galleries associated with our trip. I was planning to do reviews of the campgrounds and different places we’ve seen.
I’ve recognized now that that is a bit overly ambitious — pretty obvious, since I haven’t published anything here since we left home.
At one point, I had decided to retire this blog and incorporate the material that I would be including here into my Exit78 blog. After only a few days of that, I decided that it was diluting what I was doing there, so I will be posting most of my material focusing on the outdoors and travel in this blog.
Instead of working on the web galleries, I’ll be posting a few pictures here, hopefully daily. I’ll work on the photo galleries over the winter. For the week or so, I may be posting two or more times a day as I intend to start from the beginning of the trip.
I won’t be writing many full fledged reviews of anything until after we get back home. I need to do a better job of taking notes to trigger my memory,
Our plans as we work our way across some of the western states are evolving as we go. We will be moving on Sunday over to near Devil’s Tower for a few days and then will be moving on over to near Sheridan, Wyoming. After a few days there we will be heading up to Montana.
Monday we will be leaving on our next trip. I hope to do a better job with the travel journal posts than I did with our last trip.
We will be traveling first to Spring Lake Campground near Halstead, Kansas. From there we will be going to North Platte, Nebraska, where we will be visiting family. Other destinations for this first leg of our trip will be Badlands National Park, Rapid City, Devil’s Tower National Monument and Lewistown, Montana. The estimated distance is about 1675 miles from here to Lewistown, by the route we will be taking.
We will be stopping at several campgrounds along the way.
I’ve included the following picture in PhotoHunt 69: Funky on my photo blog.
Toad Suck Daze, Conway, Arkansas - Hot rod and vintage auto show
Teardrops trailers are definitely cool little campers - FUNKY!
May 5, 2007, 11:51 AM - Pentax K10D: ISO 100, 28 mm focal length (42mm in 35mm format), 1/180 second, F 8.0
Paint Shop Pro XI:
- added depth of field around teardrop trailer
- applied “sandstone” texture effect.
Here’s what the photo originally looked like.
and here’s the tow vehicle it was hooked to.
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