Picture of the week ~ Peonies swaying in the breeze

https://youtu.be/u0I78Yfew2g

Picture of the week ~ Spartan Race Trifecta 2019

Seattle Super (Blue wedge: 8 to 10 miles, 24 to 29 obstacles obstacles)

Seattle Sprint (Red wedge: 3 to 5 miles, 20 to 23 obstacles)

Montana Beast (Green wedge: 12 to 14 miles, 30 to 35 obstacles)

Spartan race info.

https://hearsdifferentdrummer.blogspot.com/2019/05/montana-spartan-race-weekend-2019.html

Bigfork, Glacier & Yellowstone National parks trip (part seven)

The road to home

We stopped at West Yellowstone for gas and a rest stop, It was warmer outside than we've felt for a few days, I saw an ice cream shop and announced that I thought we should celebrate our fine trip with an ice cream cone. We went to it and it was closed 😥, but we drove a little farther and found an even better one! I've never heard of a Haagen-Dazs ice cream stand before, but here was one way out in the wilderness of Montana! A waffle cone for each of us!

We drove out hwy 191, and continued on to hwy 247. We followed that hwy until we saw a sign for the Lewis and Clark Caverns State park. We took that exit and drove a short ways to find a spot for the night. What a nice big campground. Lots of space between the sites, even though it was not too private.

What a great dinner view!

We drove to Missoula via hwys 247, 12, 141 and hwy 200. That was a great way to work our way through Montana. We tried to stay off of the big highways. It was wonderful❤. It was still warm when we got to Missoula, so I lowered my window as we don't have a working air conditioner in our car. When I tried to raise it, it wouldn't budge. As my husbands window has not been working and has been stuck in an upright position, mine was now stuck in a down position😂. Now I have all the air conditioner I could ask for and then some. We stopped at a store to buy some Duct tape in hopes of fashioning a window for the remainder of the trip. We drove along with my air conditioner blowing at full force until we reached Lolo Pass, Idaho. I had an idea that we could cut out one of the plastic window panels from our canopy tent (we had some extras at home, so it wouldn't be an issue) and tape it in place, then I could have a "see through" window.

When we arrived at Lolo Pass my husband made and attached a window while I did my sightseeing in the "open year round" visitor center, what a great concept!

My new "see through" window. What a great job he did!

We drove along a windy road that followed the Selway river, we saw a few rafters, stand up paddle boarders and some sport kayakers enjoying the whitewater. The Selway joined the middle fork of the Clearwater river at Lowell. We followed the curvy trail of the Clearwater river until we found the Pink House Recreation site near Orofino, our home for the night.

A site right on the river❤

A new morning with my window!

We drove on hoping to spend the night at either Alta Lake State Park or Pearrygin Lake State Park. We drove past Alta lake and stayed at Pearrygin. It was a pretty windy evening, so we set up our side walls quickly for our dinner.

Dinner view.

Another beautiful morning!

After showering and packing up we drove to Winthrop for breakfast. Before we hit the road we searched the empty town for something that might be open to "tourist" in before we left. Not much was open as it was a Monday. We found an awesome shop that "was" open and bought some coffee to go and two tempting nut covered cinnamon rolls from the "just baked" pan.

What a great journey we had! We tried to stick to the back roads as much as we could, and really see the country. I think we did pretty good considering the amount of days we were gone.

Total miles driven - 2851

Animals seen on our journey: 

Deer 

Pronghorn

Moose

Elk

Bighorn Mountain Sheep

Bison

Grizzly bear

Black bear

Coyote

Wolves

Sandhill Cranes

Pelicans

Raven

Home❤
Where we discovered it had been unseasonably warm and spring growth was abundant while we'd been away.

Bigfork, Glacier & Yellowstone National parks trip (part six)

Yellowstone - Day three

Again prepare for a photo overload!

Leaving Yellowstone. 

We had heard that the east entrance was opening today. We decided to drive through Hayden Valley again, but this time as a loop going counterclockwise as we made our way out of Yellowstone. We were hopeful for some better weather views, but first we decided to tourist the thermal areas we'd skipped when we were animal hunting.

We headed south from our campground towards Old Faithful on hwy 191. Here are some of the views from the "hot spots".

Many of these spots had water boiling up and splashing upward - "mini" old Faithful's.

 We went and watched Old Faithful again, this time with a blue sky and a breeze from the other direction.

Tourists following their leader (holding a flag).

We then went in to the Lodge and ate a nice lunch after oohing and awing over the inside of the building.

After lunch we drove to the area that had just opened, it was previously closed at the Keplar Cascades area. On our way to first day opening views!

A frozen over Yellowstone lake.

A Wile E. Coyote near Canyon Village.

Slinking along beside the road.

The ever present Yellowstone Raven.

Valley view along the Madison river before leaving Yellowstone, headed for the West entrance as we exit the park.

I loved our "early" season visit to Yellowstone❤

Bigfork, Glacier & Yellowstone National parks trip (part five)

Yellowstone  - Day two

Prepare for another photo overload!

We decided to wake up early and get a good start on our animal sightings. We sleep in our van and I was so surprised to see that our front window had frosted on the inside! Wow, 20 degrees overnight. Our extra cozy hats & layers are coming in handy even while we sleep in the car. We have a propane heater that we use in the canopy tent when it's cold so we're pretty set up and yes we even brought our chains. We came prepared.

Our route today would be the Lamar Valley & to the Northeast entrance/Cooke City, then on our return turn at the Norris junction and continue to the Hayden Valley area. The Bear-tooth hwy was still closed so that's about where the road ends going this direction. Here's the link for the PDF map of the Yellowstone area: Yellowstone official road map PDF

Back up to the Mammoth area to turn off for the Lamar Valley.

Our first sighting of the day other than Bison, was this small Bighorn Mountain sheep.

As we were nearing the Yellowstone river bridge, something dark in a ditch caught my eye. I asked my husband to turn around and sure enough I had spotted a black bear. We don't have any fancy photo equipment, just binoculars (my husband gifted my a new pair of binoculars when we were in Gardiner), my iPhone and a small FujiXP camera. So that might give you an idea of how close things have to be for us to photo them and get a decent shot.

After congratulating ourselves on our first black bear sighting, we got in the car and drove across the bridge only to see another one down the bank. Wow!! 

Zoomed in abit.

We continued on to the Lamar Valley, scanning the area for Elk, Wolves and Bears. We stopped and looked at something we thought might be bear, but it was so far away even with our best binoculars it was hard to see what exactly was there. So we moved on. We came up to a group of cars a short distance down the road where many people looking through Binoculars and spotting scopes. I later found a live Yellowstone animal reporting site, this link explains what everyone was looking at: http://www.yellowstone.co/tripreports/2019/05082019.htm. It has a day by day reporting of what is seen, where and by whom. One of the people with a scope was kind enough to let us look through his scope. Then we could clearly see what had been a blur to us earlier. 2 Grizzlies (one small and one large), Wolves, Coyotes, Ravens all taking their not so patient turns at eating on a carcass. Since it's reported that these animals had been in here awhile it seems that the carcass was probably a Bison. The Ravens were enjoying harassing the bears.

We didn't see much of anything except two Elk on our way to Cooke city. We found one of the few businesses open and had a good lunch. We had a great waiter, he shared fun local information while we ordered. The best one was that the bears like to come and lick the bugs off of the windshields when the cars are parked in town.

Local scenery

As were driving towards the next small city (Silver gate) before re-entering the park, I looked towards some small shrubs and saw two Moose right at the outskirts of town!

The smaller one.

The larger one.

Oh oh, a stand off!

A lone Bison in the road.

We waited abit and he casually walked along side of us.

As we re-entered the park we saw a couple out with some big zoom lens cameras set up. Of course we stopped to take a look. Another Moose! 

On our way back, another sighting.

Baby Bison

A storm approached as we made our way back towards Mammoth.

Snowing!

We turned at the Norris junction and headed towards Hayden Valley. There was quite abit of snow on this side of Yellowstone.

Hayden valley

A blue sky showed itself for awhile, making the river view very scenic as we drove towards Fishing bridge. The road was closed at Fishing bridge (east and south entrance roads - all closed) so we turned around.

As we came back into the valley I saw what I hope were two more bear. It was snowing and our camera's just didn't pick them up very well. What do you think?

iPhone photo

FujiXP photo, both photos are pretty much the same. Too hard to call, but I'm claiming two more bear for my list.

We stopped and took some waterfall photos. It was getting cold and snowy out, so we only got out and walked to one view area.

The north rim trail was looking a bit cold

Heading back to Norris junction.

We stopped at Elk park to take a photo of a pair of Sandhill cranes.

We stopped at a pullout and noticed this steaming rock across this river before we got to our campground.

❤

12 hours on the road today, yes we were tired, but before bed we took a walk to look out at the Madison river and to take a moment to be thankful for the wonderful views of scenery and animals we saw as this was to be our last night in Yellowstone.