Yellowstone Day 1 (Tower Falls)

Well, it didn't take long to see Yellowstone's wildlife.  It happened pretty much immediately.  Wildlife is all around you here.  It's walking down the roads.  On the side of mountains and hills.  Near creeks.  At YOUR CAMPSITE... AHHH.  Yeah.  It happened.  Not a grizzly but a black bear.  But who cares.  A bear is a bear. 

I got some video of this also.  You could hear their horns hitting each other.  These dudes are big!  They walk all over the place.  It's like they don't even see the cars.  Or maybe they just don't care.

Bear.  I took two shots of this guy.  The next is zoomed in.  He was really healthy looking and so magestic.  Good thing I was in my car.  There was a guy like walking out of his car following him.  That's why people get eaten.

You can kind of see the fall color starting to set in.

We ended up with a pretty sweet campsite.  It's at the very end of and on the edge of the forrest.  Real close to the bears.  Can you see the TentCot?  That thing is awesome.  It was like 30 degrees last night and only my feet got cold.  I intend to fix that tonight.

Elk are all over the place.  This is a female and she had some thing on her ear with an antenna.  I suppose they track them somehow.  Really cool.

I may have to post a larger version of this one.  You can't really tell but I had just landed a fish in the Madison river and he was making a big run. He didn't want to be caught.










I'll try to post some more stuff by Wednesday or so.  But like I said.  There's no cell connections in this section of the park and you have to drive like 40 miles from our campsite to get it.  The place I'm headed to on Wednesday has it I think.  Until then you guys have fun.  I know I will.

Shoshone National Park

Man.  This part of the country just keeps it coming.  I mean everytime that you turn around you find something else.  You could probably spend the rest of your life up here with a camera and cover a fraction of it.  This place is really incredible.  There's water falls and open expanses and just... on and on.

I believe this was Beartooth Lake.  It's crystal clear.  I really wanted to just jump in this thing.  Unfortunately, there are freshwater yellowstone sharks.  Hahahah.  No just kidding.  But there are Grizzlies.  And there are signs about that everywhere.

I believe this is Clark Falls or Fork.  It's been a day or two and I'm kind of fuzzy on that one.  It's enormous and just falls right down the side of a mountain. 

Same place.  I climbed way down to get this shot.  The water raging right past me and droped off like 80 or 90 feet.  There were these huge trees that had ended up just below me and were stuck there.  It was so loud.  And the spray from the water was really nice.

This really is a good display of the landscape here.  Mountains are everywhere.  Trees everywhere.  And fresh clean air.  It's so fresh.  No smog.  Just fresh and clean.  And completely perfect and untouched.  Perfect.

Beartooth Highway

WOW!!!  What can I possibly say.  If the rest of the trip was boring I would be ok.  Beacause this is amazing,  You really must go here.  I can't believe how few people know of this place.  It's just incredible. 

I believe that this is the same creek that runs into Red Lodge.  This is at the point that we're on the Beartooth.  It literally follows the highway at the lower elevation.

This is a lower elevation of the Beartooth.  You're literally driving right into the mountains.  And it's breath-taking.

About half way up there's this rest stop that you can look out across the pass.  These guys are everywhere and they will climb on your shoes and do what he's doing now.  Just flat out stare you down.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

This is looking down from the rest stop into the Beartooth.  So awesome.  Very high though.  I wouldn't say that I was afraid of heights but this will make you appreciate being on the ground.

Interesting story with this  About 29 cars of this make and model started out on Cody WY and drove these things for 10 through yellowstone and theh beartooth pass.  I can't believe that they did it with those brakes.  I'm not even sure I would drive down it with my car much less something that's that old.  Adventure is adventure.

At this point we've pretty much leveled out and will be headed into the Shoshone National Forest.  There's snow up and here and the wind is blowing so hard that my face and lips become chaped big time.  In fact they're still chaped and cracked.  But who cares.

You can see an alpine lake to the left.  They're all over the place up here.  Epic!

Red Lodge Vol 2

Hello everybody.  I know I've been out for a while.  But boy do I have an excellent reason.  There's so much to see and no wifi or cell signals anywhere.  I've taken so many pictures.  I've tried to narrow down the best.  It's such a challenge to show you guys these places with pictures.  You just have to come here and check it out.

This place was soo cool.  It looked like Schwabs in Memphis.  It had all this really old cool stuff inside.  The picture just after this is a really old bike that I saw.  Very cool.  You can kind of see the main drag there in Red Lodge.  All the buildings are pretty old.  And they all look similar to this one.

I'm not really sure that you could even ride this thing anymore but I'd love to have one just to show it off.  I'm sure it's a collectors item.

This is a creek that runs just along side Red Lodge.  It's most noticeable as you leave Red Lodge headed towards the Beartooth Highway.  It was cold and just absolutely beautiful.

Red Lodge Volume 1

This place is soo cool.  I mean it's so beautiful here.  We're basically surrounded by mountains.  It's just this real quaint community with a really cool main drag section that has a old west feel.  We ate at Regis Cafe and it was wonderful.  If ever you find yourself in Red Lodge, please go and eat there.  I had fresh Colorado peaches with French Toast.  It was so good I took a picture of it.  Awesome.  I also saw this really cool looking old-school motor cycle thing.  Anyway, take a look at the following.

I listed this as Volume 1 because I plan to take some pictures of the main drag.  Anyway, more latter.

This is the Regis Cafe from the inside and a picture of my breakfast. Very small and super nice folks serving food.  It's a must if you ever go through Red Lodge.

I took this picture just outside of the cafe.  Old school.  Or at least it looks that way.

Jed Clampet's car.  Seriously.  Dad and I tried to hand crank it but it was a lost cause.  Too bad.  I'm sure it could take us up through Beartooth if we needed to. 

Between Billings and Red Lodge Continued

Ok.  I've found a nice wifi spot at a wonderful little coffee shop here in Red Lodge.  I should at some point probably back of the cofee though.  Because I've been drinking it all morning and I think I'm going to turn into a rocket ship any minute.  Although, with the pace of life in Red Lodge it would probably be a nice to departure for most of the townies.  Anyway.  The following pictures show a little bit more of the places that we stoped at in route to Red Lodge.

I just had to post this.  I love stuff like this and I really love that you still find stuff like this in American.  This was taken at a small casino (casinos were everywhere in Billings).  Good stuff.  I love the hat.  In fact dad mentioning that might should just give in to the whole large Montana hat thing.  I think he's right.

 

This is the Joliet, MT.  If you blink like maybe 4 times you'll drive right through it.  It kind of feels like time might have stoped here. The Following picture is Joliet as well.  I think it kind of gives you and idea of how small of a town it is.  The main drag is maybe about 400 yards and you have access to a pay phone.  I came close to using it just to see how things used to be.  I could stay here forever.

Anyone got some change.  "Long distance information give me Memphis, TN"...  I can't remember the rest but that was the first song that came to my mind.

Between Billings and Red Lodge

This place has the kind quiet, laid back beauty that is really impossible to describe with words or pictures.  But I'll give it a shot.  The following picture describes most of the landscape that we're seeing.  But it's all really just interesting.  I intended to post several others but the pictures from my digital camera are very large and I can't seem to find a way to compress them.  I'm currently in Red Lodge and I'm going to go find a wifi area so I can upload the rest.

This was taken just before we got Joliet, MT.  There's lots of large pastures bordered with this real cool looking hillsides.  Just so nice.  Obviously you can see the mountains in the distance.

I'll add the rest when I get to a better connection.