in the wild wild west

Hello everyone! Yes I am alive and well. Surprisingly enough the deep woods of the Western mountains don't have the internet so I have been unreachable. But now I have so many wonderful stories and travel adventures, not to mention photographs, of our travels from east Tennessee to Montana where I am now.

John's family lives here in beautiful Big Sky Montana and have been graciously hosting us for the past two days while we rest up, clean up, and re cooperate after weeks of camping and traveling. The mountains are breathtaking and bears plentiful.. there's even snow on the tops of most the mountains. This is a photo taken from inside John's Aunt and Uncle's House at Dancing Pines.

We just came out of Yellowstone National Park where we explored for three days. Black bear, Elk, Moose, Marmots, Grizzlies,Pronghorn and my favorite, Bison all inhabit the park along with hundreds of geysers and hot springs. We toured it all and even ventured on our most strenuous back country camping yet. Under faulty impression that our campsite was just 3 miles away we packed our hiking packs with the usual food, water, sleeping bags, and lots of bug spray! (the mosquitoes up north here are relentless) John and I have been averaging about a mile every 20 minutes with our packs. A good distance into the hike I studied the map and became painfully aware that we were only half way there. Later we found out the hike was a 6 mile trek. Of course we survived the extra miles but the cake topper was the disappearing trails due to mud, swampy grassland, flooded trails and fallen trees. Looking back I feel especially proud of myself for accomplishing such a feat but have also learned an important lesson on studying trail maps with extra scrutiny no matter what the ranger approximates the hike mileage! Yellowstone was a very neat park to visit. Different than the others we have visited so far in a few ways. First of all the plentiful wildlife called tourists are abundant and may cause traffic jams. Bison have no concern for modern traffic etiquette and will walk on the road without a care in the world- and they are huge! A lot of the forest looks odd at Yellowstone because of the forest fires that in turn repopulate the park. But the burnt and dead trees lay horizontal on the forest floor creating a tree graveyard. And the geysers are so interesting.. hot pools and active geysers have been flowing and erupting for years and centuries...so many geological happenings below our feet!

Prior to Yellowstone we camped 2 nights at the Grand Tetons National Park. I really enjoyed this park that is located directly beneath Yellowstone. There are gorgeous mountains covered in pines and snow and some even have glaciers on them. We camped two nights at the most beautiful back country campsite we have yet to encounter. There was a fire circle and chopped wood and the site was right on Bear Paw Lake. (The picture on the left) The hike to the campsite was approximately 3.7 miles and very enjoyable as we wound through the woods and had beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and lakes. (the photo on the right has the three peaks of the Grand Tetons)







So I guess I am chronologically recording my recent travels in a backward fashion. So before the Tetons was Flaming Gorge State Park. The view from inside our tent was spectacular; a little windy because we were right on the lake but the colors of the rocks were majestic. They range in color due to how the were deposited millions of years ago. I finished a book my parents gave me for Christmas: Randy Paush's The Last Lecture. I must say that the book is a wonderful quick read and do recommend it to all. Thanks for the book!
Prior to Flaming Gorge was Dinosaur National Monument! Now I use an exclamation here because it is, so far, one of my favorite parks. There sadly weren't any real dinosaurs, and just to reassure any confused visitors the signs explicitly explain this, but there is a quarry and hiking trails. The main quarry, on which a visitor center was built, was closed off to the public due to the infrastructure crumbling and shifting of earth plates. But as we explored the surrounding area on our hike we found prehistoric dinosaur bones just chilling in the sides of mountain rocks and really neat thousand year old petroglyphs (drawings from cave people and dessert dwellers)

...to be continued.