Wow, another week has flown by!

We went to a new place for us, Henry's Lake State Park in Island Park, ID, just 17 miles southwest of West Yellowstone.  I have mentioned our love-hate relationship with state or national parks.  Usually the sites are larger with more space, but they are overrun with kids or partiers, loud, busy, especially on the weekends.  Now don't get all upset, it's not that we don't like kids or families enjoying themselves, it's just the two of us much more prefer quiet, darkness, and calm where we stay.  Well, Henry's Lake SP was wonderful!  It is all paved, including the sites which are enormous.  There is tons of space between, killer views, lots of walking, and right on the lake.  There are only 8 full hookup sites with electric, 50 amp, water, and sewer, but most of the others have water and electric.  A majority of the sites are huge and can easily accommodate our 45' and the truck, no problem.  It is peaceful, and large enough that even with the kids, families, partiers, it is great, we highly recommend it.

The view right from our campsite

And near sunset

It also gave us a great jumping off spot to go fishing, some more, on a different spot on the Madison, drop in to see some friends of relatives in a remote lodge on Cliff Lake, pop into West Yellowstone, and to do some exploring of the area.  The smoke had moved out for a few days, but returned with a vengeance.  This is from the very bad fires near Missoula, about 200 miles away!

So first, we went to visit a friend of one of Jan's cousins and her husband in Pennsylvania who operate a lodge on a beautiful remote lake, Cliff Lake.  The color is amazing!

Yeah, that's the real color

Then we went to scope out the fishing on the upper Madison.  There are several access points, so we went into one that has a good reputation and ended up having a delightful conversation with an older gentleman that has been fishing all over the west that lives in Colorado, in fact we spent over an hour talking to him.

Checking out the Madison 

After that we went over to a local fly shop, bought some streamers and they told us things were pretty slow right now with the warm water temps, yeah tell us something we don't know:-)  

The smoke had moved out quite a bit for a change so we took a ride to Red Rock Lakes Wildlife Refuge west of Henry's Lake, to see what we could see.  It is famous for its trumpeter swans.  It turned out to be a 150 mile loop on rough dirt roads, but remote and beautiful.  We saw some swans but they were pretty far off.

View west of Henry's Lake

Our coffee spot in the refuge

Later we did a loop around and through West Yellowstone that was packed with folks getting ready for the eclipse and up by Hebgen Lake, then by Quake Lake, the lake formed by the catastrophic earthquake in 1959 that caused a slide that blocked the Madison River and flooded the area forming the lake.  It killed 28 people that were camping along the river and Hebgen Lake.  It is an eerie setting as the trees still poke out of the water all over the lake.  Then we continued around back to our campground.

Our coffee spot on beautiful Hebgen Lake

We had heard the fishing was a bit better in the river between the lakes, Hebgen and Quake so we gave it a try.  No luck although the scenery was absolutely killer on a beautiful day!

The Madison River between the lakes 

Me working it

No fish, but man it was gorgeous

We ended up fishing there 2 mornings with only a few bites.  
We finished our time at Henry's Lake and moved all 17 miles over to one of our favorite campgrounds, Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone.  It is a large, well run, manicured, easy to maneuver, large sites, lots of grass and all paved roads, although fairly expensive.   And you can walk right into town, which we did to do a little shopping and to get our picnic breakfast and lunch stuff for the next day in the park.  We only had one day to go and it was eclipse day.  Now don't hate us for this, but neither Jan and I were very hyped on the eclipse so we did the park instead.  We wanted to scope it out again specifically for fishing next year when we come back.

We went to Lamar Valley first for sunrise and breakfast, a mere 72 miles.  Then after heading up to the eastern end of the valley we encountered a black bear crossing the highway with a few onlookers.

Coming through

On up the hill and out of view

We wanted to look over Slough Creek, we had been there many times before watching wolves, but never to evaluate it for fishing, though we had heard it was good.  The park has miles and miles of fishing opportunities, and requires its own license to fish.

Well Slough Creek looked spectacular.  Wadable, fishy, and beautiful!

Peaceful and fishy

Not a very good photo, but you get the idea

A Cutthroat feeding

We had a nice picnic lunch overlooking the creek during the eclipse, and wow, we had the park to ourselves.  I guess everyone was elsewhere watching.

Some bison crossing the creek during our picnic

A prime looking bull, rut is right around the corner 

We had a wonderful time in the park, we always do, and it was especially great with so few other people.  We even checked the Madison out on our way back to West Yellowstone.

What a day!

So now we are in Dubois, WY and have had quite an experience I'll share in my next post getting here.  We hope to do some exploring here, then we will head farther south finally into Colorado.