August 30-31, 2017 Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

We left Cody and headed to the Bighorn mountains in eastern Wyoming for Labor Day weekend. We did not have reservations, which is hard on a holiday weekend. We were headed for one of the few  first come first serve sites.

We drove though Greybull, Wyoming. On the outskirts was this  field with huge airplanes next to bales of hay. It was a museum with the firefighting planes. We didn't stop. Next was beautiful downtown Greybull. Then Shell population 83. Including the Fossil Rock Tavern where the beer is cold.

First we drove though scenic Shell Creek Canyon, very deep. The visitors center by the falls was closed. We scored a site at the second campground we came to, Prune Creek Campground. As I was walking around looking at the two sites available I saw two moose in the campground.

Our campsite. John gave me this wonderful screen house for my birthday. I gave him the rainfly for his birthday. Our view from camp. It was in the 70's and felt wonderful

We walked up a dirt road from camp and this is a view of the campground. We drove on the Bighorn Scenic byway to camp. We saw Granny's memorial on the trail, daisies and yarrow were blooming.

King's crown, paintbrush and asters.  I am still working on the masterpiece. It has turquoise with copper  in the center, tiger eye, goldstone and magnetite bears and chucks on blue magnetite so far. 

Some of the aspens at the visitors center have started turning.  Still a few things blooming. Yellow and white buckwheat, a growth on a wild rose and  blue penstemon.  

Hare bells, more pentstemon, blanket flower, rain drops on a pine. We left the visitors center because a huge thunderstorm was coming. 

The storm was huge, lots of rain, lightening, thunder and even a bunch of hail, some marble sized. I was nice and dry in my screen house and John sat under the rainfly awning and was dry. The hail ran off the fly into a big pile. It was still there the next day. We walked along the South Fork of the Tongue river that runs through camp after the storm.

The left over rain clouds made for a lovely sunset. 

August 27-29, 2017 Cody, Wyoming.

    Meeteetse, Wyoming on our way to Cody. The air is smoky so some of the familiar views are hazy.

Welcome to Cody. We scored one of the few shaded RV sites with a tree. We are happy.

My latest masterpiece has a turquoise center with two turquoise bears, a gold stone bear and a tiger eye horse. We are here to visit my high school friend Billie. We had dinner tonight with her and Glenn. Here are Billie and I splitting a bottle of red wine called Bitch! I love the back of it. It is good to see Billie.

This is the house we lived in when we lived in Cody. It was red then, but still looks good. The whole block looks pretty much the same, very nice. Main street on the other hand I don't really recognize anymore. The Buffalo Bill Statue at the end of main street, which is near the hospital I used to work in, which is much bigger and more modern.

There are deer all over town. This fawn posed for me by the road. Many painted buffalo are also around town.

I visited Lee and Jan Hermann this afternoon. Lee was the pathologist and my boss at my first job in the lab here. It was wonderful to see them and they doing well. Lee with his new mountain bike, which I am jealous of. He says the Cody bike club has built a lot of nice trails and they get out and ride a lot. We had dinner with Glenn and Billie again tonight at the local brewery Pat O'hara's. Yummy food, good beer. 

We were going to take off today and try to find a spot for Labor Day weekend, but Billie and Glenn invited us to drive to Redlodge, Mt with them. We had lunch at the Red Lodge Ales brewery. A view from the Beartooth Highway on the way back. 

More views from the Beartooths.

Wildflowers and a big mountain goat.

Alpine Lake and Pilot and Index peaks

Way down to the river and the view from Dead Indian Pass

Red Butte.

August 24-26, 2017 Riverton to Thermopolis, Wyoming

The new propane detector came in today. John got it installed, it seems to work better than the old one, so we are ready to go. A grasshopper chowing down on a burr.

 Now that the table and table cloth are no longer part of my sales booth we had dinner in the back yard today. The view both directions. No campers around the lake now. Sunset over the rendezvous grounds with no people. 

Same sunset over the last Teepee standing. We took off for Thermopolis in the morning. We drove through Shoshoni, the Boyson State Park, into Thermopolis. Through town we saw  Loonie's Bin, Camp Run Amok, a bronze cowboy and his horse, Hot Springs state park, multiple brands and of course there is the One Eyed Buffalo Brewery. 

We drove though Wind River Canyon. In town here is the Elk antler Inn and beautiful historic downtown Thermop as we called it when I lived in Wyoming. 

The Hot Spring Park that we hope to visit today. We are parked at the Fountain of Youth RV park. It is a dumpy park-dead grass, weeds, rundown buildings, but is includes some really beautiful hot spring pools.

In 1992 my friend Pat and I went on a week long car trip in Wyo. We stayed at this same Fountain of Youth then. It was much the same then, but in better shape. Sue and Pat with the Maid in the pool, we called it the Nymph then. She-the nymph not Pat  is long gone, only the pedestal is left.  There was grass, but no trees between us and the train. The pools are still lovely. Here is the pool that had the Maid, the pedestal is on the left of the top photo. The spring itself is the same, pictured here during the day and the night. They have kept the pools up nicely.

 Flowers by the pool, a steer horn, a sign by the spring inlet that says extreme hot water- it is 130 degrees and the train going by the pool. The spring was formed when drilling for oil, they hit hot water and it still running strong. I don't know how to get rid of this highlighted text. Sorry.The pool is wonderful. The front of the One Eyed Buffalo Brewery, John and I at the Buffalo. Behind John are two people from Boulder we met who just got back from a week long backpack in the Wind River range to watch the eclipse. 

We walked around the Hot Springs State Park in downtown Thermopolis today. It is lovely. The top photo of the Teepee hot spring was built as a brick teepee in 1910 to vent the springs and cool the water.  The minerals in the water have built up on the teepee over the years.See the brick teepee in the inset. The other photo is the color of some of the springs.

The Mineral Terrace where the spring water flows into the river. We walked across the suspension bridge for the view and back through the park. The trappers called the pools Smoking waters originally. 

The Star Plunge water park with three water slides, a couple pools and a vapor cave are near the hot springs park. I remember going there in high school and riding the slide. I think there was only one then. Flowers in the park, a buffalo totem pole called into the wind, sunflowers in front of the Bighorn river, the Rotary club was having there turtle race in the park today. John wanted to go to the Tensleep brewery, in Tensleep. Liz in the brewery last night told him it was only 10 miles away. So without a map we headed that way, only to discover it was 60 miles away. We turned around in Worland. That should teach him to listen to women in the bar!

We also went to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. It is a huge warehouse with 30 full sized dinosaur skeletons and more. It was very good.There was a supersaurus that was 106 feet long stretching from one side to the other. Also a nest of baby dinosaurs, a couple playing like puppies, a trilobite mass death, slab o'crinoids, John photo bombing a stegosaurus and mega mouth was a 27 foot fish dinosaur and much more.