Goodbye Montana, hello Wyoming

We had a good couple of days here in Montana.  As I said the campground is stupendous with its exceptional views, but baby it is hot!  Over 100 the last two days, still cools off enough at night for open windows though.

Watching the sun set from our site

We had never been to Custer's Battlefield, now the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.  We also had no real idea of what happened here except for Custer being massacred.  His Last Stand is a very small place, yet the overall battlefield is quite large, funny what you remember or invent from your high school years.  It was so recent I'm sure I remember it all clearly:-)

It is a somber place in the middle of the plains, rolling grasslands as far as you can see, up above the Little Bighorn River.  We listened to a very well done dissertation on the battle from a Park Ranger, then walked over to the Custer National Cemetery,

then up the hill to Custer's Last Stand.

Last Stand.  The large stone rests on the mass grave of the enlisted men who
died here.  The officers were interred elsewhere and Custer is buried
at West Point.  The small markers visible are where the men fell.

Looking down the hill with the markers showing where the men fell

You can see Custer's here in the middle

The battlefield as I said was bigger than we thought, several miles long, and that was part of the problem, no one knew where Custer was as the battle raged elsewhere.  It is well worth a visit if you are in the area.  After that we went over to the Custer Battlefield Trading Post Cafe for lunch.  It was great, the indian fry bread was awesome, a lot like a sopapilla with honey!

Indian fry bread taco 

This is a "Bear Paw", a fry bread taco with everything on the inside!

We then decided to take a big loop around to Rosebud, where some of the hostilities began a few days before.  It was a nice drive but there was little information available, so we took a "shortcut" back.  We went 20+ miles through the plains on a mostly doubletrack path that was really pretty.

The start of our shortcut

Pond along the way

We even saw a black bear and her cub, mom split before we could get a picture

Then as we came around a bend, this group came running down to greet us!

Hey, guys!

The next day we wanted to go see the Yellowtail Dam and Bighorn Recreation Area, the 15th highest dam in the US at 525'.  It is a concrete arch dam that provides power, irrigation, and recreation, with a byproduct of an incredible trout stream below the dam. So we took a look at the map and saw a marked road that cut from near us diagonally over to the dam, Shoulder Creek Road.  I'll tell you what, they have a totally unique take on what a marked on a map road is, wow!  It started off as a dirt track similar to what we drove the day before, but after awhile it became smaller and smaller to the point it was difficult to see it across the plains, and oh, did I mention, we had to open and close 11 gates.

This how the road started, first gate

As we progressed

Remember this is a marked and named road on a map!

It was fun and beautiful, we passed lots of cattle and horses.

They seemed very interested in us:-)

We almost lost the road once as we crested and went down the other side of a hill.

Almost lost it just after this point

Going back after trying to figure out where our road went

Down the other side

After 23 miles, we popped out on hard top and went down to the dam.

Yellowtail Dam

The only drawback is that none of the 71 mile lake that was formed is accessible by vehicle, only boat, but we did drive around, 10 miles, to see the other side of the dam from the marina.

View from the marina side, the haze in the air is smoke, they were burning off their fields

So now we are in Buffalo, WY for a few days.  One of our favorite authors, CJ Box, sets many of his books in this area and describes the surroundings in such detail making it so alluring and interesting that we want to poke around and see it up close.  Also, we may make an effort to go see the actual "Hole in the Wall" where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out.  It's really out in the boondocks so it should be fun!

Westbound! And a bit of a change, all good!

I know it's been awhile since my last post but we've been busy, uh, driving west, our favorite direction.  We left you heading for the Bemidji area, Walker, MN to be exact.  We wanted to explore a bit around this area for several reasons, one, we've never really spent any time here, and two, one of our Food Network favorites, Amy Thielen, lives and does her show from near here.  And, although Jan carried around her cookbook just in case we ran into her for an autograph, it never happened:-)  Also she has mentioned on the show that her family has a oldie time meat market, considered to be the best in Minnesota that wasn't too far away, that we wanted to visit, Thielen Meats.  

So that's what we did amidst the rain and showers.  It truly is the land of 10,000 lakes, they are absolutely everywhere, pristine and clear, and the topography is lush green, lots of trees, and green green grass.  It seems that everyone you pass on the roads is towing a boat, and also there are miles and miles of paved bike paths, at least that is what they call them in the summer, think snowmobile paths in the winter, absolutely everywhere.  Jan and I took a long walk on one at our campground entrance.

The path near our campground

Leech Lake, an enormous lake near us

We drove over to Park Rapids, Bemidji, yes the same as in the show and movie Fargo, no we didn't see Billy Bob, and then went down to Pierz, where the meat market is.  And we can readily say we helped to keep them in business, with homemade hot dogs, there own world famous bacon, fresh side, can't find that very often, short ribs, rib eye steaks, center loin pork chops, and even some homemade jerky.  The hot dogs, bacon, fresh side, and rib eye were superb, now we wish we had bought even more!  Jan made sure our freezer was empty before we went.

Since then we have been flying west.  We have gone from the rolling lush green forest, grass and lakes to flatter and flatter land interspersed with more fields and dairy farms.  Over through Fargo, ND, no we didn't see Billy Bob there either.  As we proceeded farther west, the rolls came back to the ground, and fields full of sunflowers sprang up here and there, like neon lights, they were so bright with the sun on them.  Amber waves of grain mixed with corn and beets.  Then as we continued, evidence of oil wells in the midst of fields, our visibility opened up to miles and miles, fields with huge round bales of hay scattered all over.

The glow of the sunflowers

Intense

One of many farms

Round bales 

We stopped at a "campground" just short of Bismarck, ND for the night and we have to admit when we got there we tried to leave.  It was a small, maybe 35 sites right along the interstate, with self checkin, and it looked mighty bad, broken down units of every description, stuff all over, not a warm and fuzzy feeling, so we looked at each other, said I don't know about this and then called several other places within a reasonable distance, and you have to remember that ND has very few campgrounds, and Sturgis was just finishing up and filling many places.  So bottom line, we couldn't find anything else, so we grit our teeth, checked in and squeezed in between two rigs that didn't seem too bad, and spent the night.  It turned out fine, and we needed to leave very early this morning anyway.

After we got in and hooked up we went to review our plans for the next few days.  We had planned Medora, near Teddy Roosevelt Nat'l Park for 2 nights, then on to Belle Fourche, near Sturgis for 2 nights, then on to Buffalo, WY for 4 nights.  Well, there were several recent, as in the last two days, reviews that said the place near Medora was NOT suitable to anyone higher than a 12' rig, and that the trees were not trimmed and they had done damage to their rig.  Definitely NOT for us.  So Jan and I pulled out the maps, campground guides and did some figuring.  So what we ended up with was a total rework of our plans for the next two weeks.  We decided to forgo Medora and Belle Fourche and go into Montana instead to a campground in Garryowen, MT for 3 nights, move our 4 nights in Buffalo, WY forward a day, and add a day to our Denver campground reservation to make 4 nights in all.  We have to replace our windshield in Denver so an extra day will come in handy.  We managed to get all that taken care of and settled in for the night.

Today we drove 425 miles to Garryowen, MT to an absolutely superb campground for 3 nights.  We have never had a view like we have here!  We are at the top of a tiered campground looking out miles and miles across the countryside.

Our campsite

Amazing!

We had a great drive with the topography changing constantly as we went along.  The fields gave way to prairie and free ranging cattle with a few antelope here and there.  More rugged relief to the ground as we also climbed a few thousand feet.  Now clumps of sagebrush popped up and some pine trees along the ridges, cottonwoods along the streams and rivers, much more rugged relief, and oh yeah, the humidity kept dropping.  Yes we love the west!

A bunch more roll to the terrain

Yellowstone River from a viewpoint

Pretty day

Oh yeah!

So now we plan to explore Little Bighorn Battlefield and Custer's Last Stand and take a look at the Bighorn Canyon Recreation Area before heading down to Buffalo, WY in a few days.  Hopefully we can work in a hike or two.