Where to Next?

Regular readers long ago figured out that the blog tends to trail real time by weeks. Sometimes, I'll have several already written & scheduled for future publication. Other times, it's just a title and some notes.

This one sat in the Blogger editor for weeks with the title and some cryptic notes, "Working our way north - jasper - Vancouver Island."

We had plans to depart May 15th, wander our way north, cross paths with our son & his family in Jasper for Memorial Day weekend, and then head for Vancouver Island for a few weeks. Key word is "had."

Instead, we're still at home, traveling twice a week to Physical Therapy appointments for BJ. Her back is slowly getting better, but we're not committing to thousands of miles of travel this summer.

I'm hoping that we'll get out together for some short trips later in the summer.

Meanwhile, we've invested in something that BJ's wanted for years.  We're both really impressed with how well this ILIFE V3s Robotic Vacuum does. I finally gave up trying to get a good picture of it in action and decided to use this fuzzy one instead.

Looks like I'll be spending some time creating more 'interesting' caches in the shop this summer.

Helena GeoTour

We spent two nights at the Lincoln Road RV Park. Lincoln Road was laid out similar to Pony Express in North Salt Lake, but in this case you just drive in and pick whichever open space meets your fancy. Roads and spaces are gravel, but prices are similar.

Next time we may stay further out of town at Devil's Elbow Recreation Area. Sounds like connectivity could be marginal but the setting is beautiful!

While we were in Helena, we concentrated on geocaches that were part of their GeoTour. We quickly figured out that the outlying caches took a lot more time to get to, but took us to areas that we loved.

I used a modification of the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) to lay out a route that was supposed to be efficient. Sometimes I wondered, but it was always interesting!

One that I thought we might bypass turned out to be a favorite. It was several miles up a dirt road on the way to the summit of Priest Pass - one of the initial routes over the Continental Divide. Just two weeks previous, there had still be snow obstructing the road and the route to the cache.

Another of the caches took us through a neighborhood of historic homes. This one wasn't the fanciest nor our favorite - it was just the first one that we commented about.

Historic school house.

Morning reflections on a lake near Gates of the Mountains - named as such by Lewis & Clark.

The vista was really neat but I didn't take a picture of it because I was too busy drooling over the placement of the Devil's Elbow Recreation Area below this vista point.

This one is especially for a dear friend who is know to carry a blow-up flamingo with him. This flamingo is positioned outside the Lewis & Clark County Jail which might be appropriate...

One of the very last caches we did was located near this church. Yes, we did sign the log, but I was tripping over myself looking at the architecture. Beautiful!

Finding enough of their designated caches resulted in a Helena GeoTour 'coin' and a travel bug. Lots of time and effort for the mementos, but lots of memories and a place we'd like to come back and spend more time.

Dead Men Tell No Tales

We spent three days in the Helena, Montana area doing their GeoTour. Once again, locating caches took us to some interesting places including visits to more than one old cemetery.

We spent our first night at the Galena Gulch Recreational Area near Boulder, Montana. Nice location, and free were both positives, but essentially no internet connectivity on any of our various devices.

We'd stopped here to visit the southernmost caches of the Helena GeoTour. One stop took us to a ghost town's cemetery.

Most, but not all of the stones represented children.

The second cemetery served the community of York, northeast of Helena. This picture would make you believe the community was decaying, but that certainly wasn't the case.

York is a small, active village that still used its historic cemetery. The sign pointing the way was posted on a historic cabin which serves as their museum.

Since it was the Memorial Day weekend, the path was lined with flags which made it easier to follow UP the hill to the cemetery.

Typical of a historic cemetery.

We were surprised at the size of some of the stones in the cemetery since there was no obvious way to access it except UP a narrow path. Note the dates on the stone of 1911 for the son and 1898 for the father.

Right next to the previous Smith stone were these two Smiths with much more current dates. BJ appreciated seeing there was another Bette who spelled her name "right."

As we headed DOWN the trail, my parting thought was that I would not want to be a pallbearer in this community!

Jellystone

We had a beautiful day in store as we headed north out of Idaho Falls towards West Yellowstone. Rather than taking the highway the whole way, we turned off in Ashton to take the scenic route which rewarded us with our first (and last) view of the Tetons for this trip.

We did a short hike along an old rail line to the remains of a short tunnel on the mountain side above the Warm River.

Of course, there was a geocache involved, this one dating back to 2001. With the geocache found, logged, and replaced, we continued on towards West Yellowstone.

Our first stop was Bakers Hole campground about 3 miles north of town. We snagged one of the last sites (it's all first come, first served) at 2 p.m. After dropping the trailer, we headed out to wander around the area a bit.

I found the speed limit signs to be unique. This was posted along the main road, but it left me wondering if it only applied to snowmobiles, or expressly included them. I'm not sure who gets the duty to do radar enforcement of the snow mobiles.

Many of the motels in West Yellowstone had some sort of western theme and quite a few had neon signs. I don't think the Round Up was operating, but the Dude across the road was w elcom e (ing) guests. I don't know why they had the weird spacing in their Welcome sign.

First thing in the morning, we headed east, intending to transit the park. Almost immediately we encountered road maintenance in the form of striping in process. The signs were clear to stay off the fresh paint but the Cornhusker fan in front of us couldn't read, comprehend, or drive well enough to avoid the fresh paint. They were on the stripe more than they were off of it, but the white treads on the right rear tire did have a bit of designer style.

The clear, cool morning made the steam stand out.

We didn't see any bear, but we did see other wildlife of the four legged variety.

I wanted to stop for a picture at Fishing Bridge in part because there had been one in my parent's collection from the early 50's. Now there's No Fishing off the Fishing Bridge.

Maybe it was the weather that allowed for longer views, but I loved the area east of the park.

We routed through Cody because someone had mentioned a quilt shop in Cody in their blog. Cody was in the process of getting ready for their big rodeo the following weekend, and horse trailers were already gathering at the rodeo grounds.

Home for the night was a little RV park in Thermopolis, specifically so we could plug in the Air Conditioner. After a couple months of cool, often rainy, weather, we were suddenly starting to feel the heat.

Wind River Canyon was beautiful but difficult to drive because I wanted to watch the river that ran along the road most of the way.

We stopped at Hell's Half Acre to see what it was all about. Turns out, it was a miniature version of Brice, complete with hoodoos, but it's apparent claim to fame was that it was "Planet P" in the 1997 movie, Starship Troopers. As I understand it, 4 people saw the movie...

Our last overnight in Wyoming was the most expensive. Sierra Trading Post provides free overnight parking in their lot in Cheyenne, but who could resist a visit to their Outlet Store? Fun!