Finally

After 31 days, 4314 RV miles and over 2500 miles on the car, we have finally finished a wonderful trip. Our last day was only 230 miles. This is one of the shortest driving days since our short trip to the Tetons. We have spent the last several hours putting up our "stuff"and that is just a good beginning. Our "covered wagon" had not been washed since we left and it had dust and dirt on it from South Dakota during a rain, more from Montana from a beautiful thunderstorm that we drove through hoping that the lightening would stay off to the side of the road and then finally the dirt and mud we picked up in Wyoming on the 10 miles of road construction. Jan has kept the interior in great shape even with the cat shedding and me tracking in, whatever. Overall the RV has made the trip with limited problems. Speaking of problems, we have made the last two weeks of the trip with the broken windshield. It has not caused any more issues. I finally was able to speak with the insurance representative this afternoon. We probably will be able to have the windshield replaced here in Cookeville. Everyone that has helped keep up our home up has done a great job. Only thing needed is a little mowing.

The trip has been eye opening. Lots of things that we were unsure of became very possible. Nothing has been really discouraging. Would we do again? Yes, in a heart beat. In fact, I will be hoping that the opportunity will occur again. I know exactly where I'd like go. Where? I'll let you know later.

Writing this has been a fun chore. I hope that you enjoyed the blog. It was fun having you along. Later when I am able to get my pictures together I'll post a site where you can go over them.

Day 3 of Homeward Bound

Aug. 30: Today like all of our days started early in Abilene, KS. We fueled up and were on the road by 6:50. The sun was not our friend as we were driving directly at it. This was one long day of driving. We put 580+ miles behind us today. We made it through Kansas City just after rush hour and our timing brought us into St. Louis midday. This was just right by me. Jan shot a skyline of KC as we went through and also a photo of the Mississippi as we crossed it. The day was pleasantly uneventful. We finally landed in Paducah, KY for the night. We have already scoped out a place to exercise in the morning. Then the final leg of the trip will begin. Just 200 miles to go.
Last night as we checked into our RV park we got quite a start when they show us where the tornado shelter was located. It just “ain’t” right that we should even think of this.
One of the pictures is of our rather unhappy cat, Frosty. He really has done quite well on the trip but doesn’t like the time we are moving. Even though you see him in his cage, most of the time he has the opportunity to either be in it or ride where he wants.

Homeward Bound Day 1 & 2

Aug.27: We arose early and departed the beautiful Tetons about 6:30. As we drove away from the mountains, the sun was beginning to hit the tips of the Tetons. With the clouds hanging about half way up the mountains and the sun peaking through, it was a wonderful closing to a great visit. We took highway 287; it is a diagonal high way that crosses the US. We started to climb as we drove away and at about 9500’ we came to a pass in the mountains. I wish I could tell you that it was a great experience but, I can’t. The road was under construction up there and there was nothing left to do but to wait on the flagman to let us through. I should tell you the flagman was dressed in a heavy coat with a fur hood and big mittens, oh; I forgot to tell you it was cold. After about 10 minutes of waiting the pilot car lead us over the pass and down 10 miles of road under construction. What I failed to mention was that construction was all the way to the dirty, which was not dirt after the last nights rain and the on and off showers as we drove down the road. There we times that I had to make sure that I did not stop the RV knowing that I would probably be there until the construction crew pulled me out. Yes they would have because there was not room for anyone to go around me. After the 10 miles at less than 15 mph our RV and car looked like we had been in a mud derby and we won for the most mud. At the bottom of the mountain we snaked along a beautiful river through rocks that were beautiful red rock canyons. This road never seemed to develop a shoulder thus making the trip rather interesting. Finally we arrived at I-80 from there we went on to Laramie and back on 287 for the shortest way to Loveland, CO. Sure the two lane roads are interesting but, next time I take the two lane roads I think I’ll stick to driving a car instead of a 38’ motorhome with a car towed behind. Just after we arrived in Loveland, we were joined by Jan’s sister and brother-in-law, Joan and Al Moxon. They took us to a wonderful supper and then on to their home in Longmont. What a great visit. It is a shame that we don’t see them more often. Back to the RV campground for a less than satisfactory night of sleep. Concern was drifting into my sleep about the RV as we drive back through Kansas City and St. Louis. I forgot to mention our backup camera went out somewhere on the off road area earlier in the day.

Aug. 29: Again rising fairly early, we hit the road about 6:50 this morning to avoid the Denver traffic. Success, just as we drove through, we heard on the radio about someone having an accident just after we had driven by. We probably scared them to death. Nothing of any consequence happen until we crossed into Kansas. We have all heard about Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, well today, even though our winds were straight lined, I was afraid the Kansas winds were going to take us to meet Dorothy. We drove nearly 200 miles with our “prairie schooner” acting as a giant sail. Our winds were a direct cross for our path and at 40+ mph they made for a real white knuckle drive. Our intent was to go through Kansas City but the winds slowed our travel so much that we stopped in Abilene, KS for the night. Even though the odometer shows just a little over 420 miles today, I think we could have only traveled 350 if I had not been weaving all over Kansas. Tomorrow we’ll try to get through Kansas City just after rush hour and then on to St. Louis, hoping to beat rush hour. Our fingers are crossed.
Jan made all the pictures as we traveled.

Final Park Visit

Aug. 27: Our final day here in the Tetons. We went to Jackson about 30 miles south of here to see what everyone has talked about. Neat little town. The town has tried to keep the feeling of an old west town. At the town square, the four corners have large arches of elk horns. This is rather cool. All around the town are western art galleries. There is a lot of beautiful art in these galleries. There is an old stage coach that will drive you around the town, with a cowboy as your driver. The weather was not good today, we only had 12 hours of sun instead of 14. I don’t know how they can stand it out here. At lunch today we stopped into a local counter hamburger “joint”. The waiter had a constant banter going with all the customers. To get a refill on you drink he would ask the women to kiss him. He even made reference our “non local” accents. The place was full and a couple of people were standing. He asked one man, who was through eating, to get up and let another fellow sit. He had no problems saying what he thought to the customers. In fact, he referenced my straight laced appearance. I can’t imagine that at all. As we left town it began to rain and rain hard, however, a mile down the road no rain and dry as a chip. Speaking of chips, we have seen our share of them out here as we hiked. Driving the highway back to our “home”, we noticed a lot of folks stopped on the side of the road and pointing into the bushes just off the road. Of course we stopped and joined them to see what they had seen. To our surprise it was a large male moose in the brush. He was difficult to see, but every now and then he would raise his head and we could see his antlers. Finally as he ate his way through the brush we got a good look at his head. That made 3 moose that Jan and I have seen on this trip. We made a count while we were out for a walk a while ago on the animals we have seen on this trip. 7 grizzly bears, 2 black bears, 3 moose, 3 wolfs, TOO many buffalo, a weasel, 2 beavers, family of otters, herds of elk and mule deer, lots of pronghorns, 2 marmots, countless ground squirrel and squirrels, herds of big horn sheep and mountain goats.
Today is the last day we will be in the parks from here on it is homeward bound. I don’t regret a thing about this visit to the parks. They have shown us things that we would have never experience or felt if we had not had made this trip. Jan is still alive even though we share such a small living space.
Sad, but looking forward to the trip home.

Bradley Trail Hike

Aug. 26: It is hard to believe it, but we started our day rather slowly. Awaking about 5:30 then a leisurely breakfast. We planned to hike a trail to two lakes in the southern part of the park. Since this is such a linear park, it takes a while to go from the north to the south. We drove about 45 minutes to the trailhead. This trail is at the base of “Grand Teton”, 13,770’. Our trail began at 6500’ then we had an easy hike of 6 miles to Lake Bradley at 7000’ and back to the car by way of Taggart Lake. Hikes in these mountains are a lot easier than the Smokey Mountains. They aren’t as steep nor are they hard to follow. Almost every step of the way we could see Grand Teton, then the lakes reflected it and the adjoining peaks all framed by beautiful lodge pole pines. Even when we walked through the open meadows with the sun beaming down on us, we were greeted with a soft breeze to keep us comfortable. When we started on the trail the temperature was about 45 and it climbed quickly as the sun intensified. It becomes boring to tell, but these peaks are overwhelming in their beauty (this is a starkness against the darkest blue sky you have ever seen). Whatever we do, we continually check out the peaks. They are framed by pines, dead trees, rocks and just whatever is around. I can go on and on about these peaks but I’ll just bore you.
Visiting the three national parks, we have on this trip, Glacier, Yellowstone and Tetons, it is hard for us to choose the one we like the best. However, we would put Yellowstone last on the list. Glacier for the outdoors enthusiast would be the top, but if you are just driving through, it would be second to the Tetons. The trails are the most beautiful with more diverse scenery. Every turn gives a different feeling (some of it is fear, because of the animals). Here in the Tetons, the view of the mountains is first and foremost. There are a lot of trails here and we only scratched the surface but the feeling is not that of Glacier. Yellowstone is the most diverse of the parks, but it lacked the feeling of awesomeness that we got in Glacier and Tetons. We thoroughly enjoyed the Canyons of Yellowstone, but as Jan says it is so vast it is overwhelming.

Teton Hike and Photo session

Aug.25: Morning came very early today. We got up long before sunrise and hit the road to some spots that a ranger had told us of the night before. Always seeing pictures of the Tetons, I wanted to get a chance at seeing what I could do. First we noticed the full moon was about to set behind the mountains. I did not plan on where it was going to be aligned so we missed the best opportunity. We did get to a beautiful overlook just as first light hit the top of the Tetons. My pictures don’t do it justice. We went from there to an old farm setting that has been preserve for effect. It is very effective as a foreground. After all the camera play, we were ready for breakfast so we headed for Moose Junction a small area where there is fuel, fishing supplies, boating and bike rentals, and food. Food was in order now so we had breakfast in a teepee at an outdoor café. At 32 degrees this was a tough choice but we did not know where else to go. The food was great and gave us the energy we needed for our hike around Jenny Lake. The hike was only 7.5 miles but it was plenty for us (I think we are about hiked out). We have just one more planned hike before we leave here in the Tetons. This is a park that should not ever be missed. I am so glad we have come by here.

Last day at Yellowstone

Aug. 23: Today Jan and I went back to the canyon area for a morning hike. Since we have to travel through the buffalo area, we were expecting delays. Luckily, we only saw a few older buffaloes resting around the area. Further up the road we saw folks standing on the side of the road looking far into the distance. So not to miss anything we pulled off into a pull-off to see what was happening. Our first sighting was a wolf and a couple of pups. There was also, we learned, a female grizzly and 3 cubs in the same area that caused some confusion as to which one was seen. Sadly, the distance from them was too far for a picture. Then about a ¼ mile on down the road we watched a grizzly walk back into the woods. From there we went on to the canyon. When we first viewed the lower falls the sun created a beautiful rainbow at its base. This was spectacular. Proceeding on to the trail, we were greeted with more wonderful views of the canyon and the falls. This trail followed the canyon back to the bridge above the upper falls then across the road to a grass covered knoll that over looked the Hayden Valley. At that point we met a group of hikers from Missouri that we had met at the falls. They had chosen to go the reverse of the trail, as we talked we began being peppered with sleet. Hardly a common occurrence back home at this time of the year. We started out our hike with the temperature around 45 and a brisk breeze. I had to keep checking the date on my watch to believe that today was Aug. 23. The trail climbed into an area full of hot mud pits then on back to the canyon. This was one of the most diverse trails we have ever done.
Aug.24: This will be our last morning in Yellowstone. I entered this park with a a lot of skepticism, and now we leave it with at least a tremendous respect. The diversity is so overwhelming. First animals, almost any wild animal that inhabits the mountain west is here. Scenery, rivers everywhere beautiful fast flowing and placid streams. Mountains and plains, trees and meadows all magnificent. Of course the geological uniqueness, with geysers and smelly muddy steam popping through the soil almost anywhere you go. Rocks that I had never seen except in science class (a few years ago). It is all here. God put it all in one place for all to enjoy. We left Yellowstone after an early morning outing to see if any animals had come back to a carcass of a buffalo (no I did not shoot him). The carcass had been down for 3 or more days and was pretty well picked clean. No matter. For the first time in days we had an early morning fog. It really hampered our visibility. We (Steve, Anne, Jan and I) went back to the café for breakfast before Jan and I left a day early for the Tetons. The drive was beautiful and was very nice for our final day in Yellowstone. As we arrived in the Colter Bay RV park the man who signed us in was from Whitwell, TN about 70 miles from Cookeville. He told us there was a celebrity in the park. Of course we had to find out. It ended up being Elle MacPherson, the former supermodel. Wow what a beautiful RV. We did get to see her a couple of times in the market and at her RV before she left.
Jan and I decided to do a ride around to see an overview of the area. There some beautiful places around here.

First Days in Yellowstone

Aug 20: Our visit to Old Faithful. Steve and Anne and Jan and I drove over to Old Faithful for the true Yellowstone effect. “OF” gushed as expected but in the background another geyser behind it also spewed forth. Since Old Faithful did not shoot as high as was expected, it was thought that the other geyser may have taken a little steam out of Old Faithful (pun intended). There must have been close to 600 people watching this eruption. In the back of the crowd was an old interpretive ranger (another old geezer). After watching this for quite some time we decided to visit the Old Faithful Inn for a snack. This was truly impressive it was built early in the 20th Century. It was beautifully constructed, using wood with all sorts of curves and angles. The fireplace weighed over 100,000#. After this we decided we would walk the boardwalks to the hot springs and other geyser. As we started we saw that the crowd was gathering for the next show of Old Faithful. Since being on the boardwalk gave us another perspective we stopped and watched. Old Faithful did it right this time very impressive for an old geyser, in fact the spray came all the way over to where we were standing, not good for camera. Our walk along the boardwalk was interesting maybe not so much the hot springs and geysers but the people were interesting to watch. They dressed in everything imaginable and some not so much. Flip flops to hiking boots, long sleeves to spaghetti straps, long pants to short short shorts. After so long of looking at the springs and geysers, it was time to change the scenery, so we headed home (back to our covered wagons).

Aug. 21: Jan and I start to drive to the trailhead for Mt. Wasburn (elevation 10,232). We did not get but a couple of miles till we encountered a “buffalo jam”. This “jam” was not because there was a sighting of buffalo, but because this herd of buffalo wanted to use the road at the same time as we did. They have the right of way. We have seen so many buffalo on this trip that the next buffalo I see, I hope will be on my plate. As we got to the Mt. Washburn trailhead we notice a lot of vehicles in the parking lot. Since we are used to a single track trail we were a little concerned over the amount of folks doing this hike. Well it did not take long to figure that this trail had been an old stage road to take guest to the top of the mountain for the view. We started out like this hike would be over in just a short while; it did not take but about 100 yard till we realized that we were not at 1100’ of elevation. I had started out in front and soon pulled up laughing because there was not very much oxygen to be had (trail starting elevation around 8800’). As we climbed, we had several views into the vastness of Yellowstone. As several points we were able to see the mountains of the Tetons, over 110 miles away. I guess that is what you call looking forward. When we reached the top, we were greeted by 30+ mph winds. There is a lookout tower that has a viewing room built under it. It is a great place to get out of the wind and relax while enjoying the scenery. The station is manned 365 days a year and the ranger is changed out every 3 months. Being the top of the mountain someone has to bring up supplies to the ranger bi-weekly. I imagine during the winter this is the only physical contact with people. Other than fire spotting he maintains a weather station and all sorts of electronic equipment. Our hike back down was considerably easier than the ascent. It took us about 2/3 the time. From here we drove to Tower Falls (kind of a Falls Creek Fall look alike). As we drove back by where we had hiked cars were everywhere. People were standing all along the side of the road look to the field where we had hike about 1 earlier. I got a quick glance over the railing and saw at least 2 bears this called for pull over to do a look see. When we found a spot to pull into we hopped out and ran to the side, where we were able get a great view of a grizzly sow and 2 cubs. Just as we saw them the sow stood up and looked down hill into the woods. She was joined standing by one of the cubs (as to say “what are we looking at mom”). Really a beautiful sight. From there we came back to our RV to find that the house batteries were so low that we could not start the generator. After much distress and reading of our manuals (written in code) I thought that I might do some logical knob twisting. It worked and we generated for 3 hours to get our batteries back to the top. We have a steep learning curve as to how to use our off grid RVing, but by the time we get back home we will have a good idea of what we need to do.


Aug. 22: Success! We made it through the night without draining the batteries. We are allowed to use the generator between 8 am to 8 pm. That is just wonderful, during those hours we are out seeing the park. Jan and I are what some say “early risers” this does not work well here. They could easily allow the generators to turn on at 7 which is minimal, better if 6 am. We started the day hiking Elephant Back Mountain, NO, it was named before I got here. This was a good little trail that had some great views of Yellowstone Lake. We realize that even at 7800’ in elevation, we were challenged to breathe easily. We then drove up to the Lamar Valley in hope to see some different animals. The first animal we saw was my favorite, the buffalo. People stop in the middle of the road, not thinking about those of us who have seen their fill of bison, to make pictures and just ogle at them. I think these animals are having fun messing with traffic since when they mosey onto the roads, they do it with absolutely no purpose. We did see a black bear that had chosen a soft rock in the sun to take its afternoon nap. He was noticed by 25-30 cars even though he was in the woods across a river a good 75 yards away. On up the road we saw one of the fattest coyotes we have ever seen, in fact he would make two of those at home. On our way back to the RV we stopped when we found some bars on our cell phone and called the children. I tried to work the blog but was unable to get a solid connection.
Pictures Later.

Day 1 at Yellowstone

I am sitting in the parking lot at old Faithful waiting on it perform. Yesterday as we left the parking lot of our campground the windshield broke again. I'm going to ignore it as best I can till I get home. The trip into Yellowstone was uneventful with the exception for the 2500' climb up a rather narrow road from Gardiner to just past Mammoth after that clear sailing. We did have a couple of obstacles that entered the road to slow us down. Buffalo along the road through Lamar Valley are not very considerate when it comes to walking into the road. Some of these animals are bigger than Jan's CRV. After checking in at Fishing Bridge campground Jan and I decided to explore the Lamar Valley and on up to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. In Lamar Valley there are a lot of "hot spots" where water and mud are bubbling. In the canyon area, WOW. The scenery and the colors were spectacular. I'll attach some photos.

Jeep Trip To Monmonth

Today we decided to jeep into Yellowstone to see the Mammoth area. We wanted to see the area that would be furtherest from our campsite at Fishing Bridge. This country is so stark. Mammoth is a thermal springs area that shows what the world would look like if it were oozing hot sulphur water. The sulphur builds up as it comes out of the ground and ever slowly takes over. This is nothing like our cool springs in Tennessee(I like them much better). We saw no animals, not good.

As I had mentioned earlier, Fishing Bridge has no cell coverage, thus I'll have a difficult time blogging. But we will give it a try if possible.

What a Trip today

This was the morning of windshield replacement. After talking with "Budget Glass" on the phone yesterday and making an appointment to do the deed early this morning (8:00-9:00), I start waiting on these folks at about 10 minutes till 8. By 9 no one had arrived and no phone call, so I proceeded to call them. NO ANSWER!!! GRRRRRR. I continued to wait another 45 minutes, still nothing. I called again. This time they answered and said that then man had left several minutes ago to be at our campground. Let me tell you this town is not 1.5 mile long and does not have a traffic light. I waited another 25 minutes and finally he arrived. Nice guy, BUT! Two hours later we had a nice new windshield and we were ready to go.

We were on the road all of 25 minutes moving our RV about 20 miles closer to Yellowstone. This is where we finally hooked up with Steve and Anne Rausch. Nice big campground on the banks of the Yellowstone River. Tonight a big meal in prep for our trip into Yellowstone on Thursda

The pictures is of Livingston, MT(the building says Court House), Yellowstone River, and our mobile home.

Killing time

Since we had to wait to find out whether or not our new windshield was going to make it today, we decided to drive a road out of Bozeman to West Yellowstone. What a beautiful canyon! Our visit to West Yellowstone was a surprise. The western gateway city was a great little town. It was such a quaint town with a western flair. As we entered the park our first wild animal was gorgeous swan. This was a little disappointing but was soon over powered by a sighting of a bull elk, 3 elk cows, a gigantic buffalo, and then at the northern park entrance a herd of elk in the middle of the road. Then we drove up the valley to Livingston. If you had any interest in a log home you would have had an easy viewing of any style or size. This valley was along the Yellowstone River. Any setting was beautiful.

We were a little disappointed in the northwest section of Yellowstone Park. When we finished going through it, we ask each other to describe it in a word. Jan's word was vast. Mine was diversified. Neither of these begin to compare to our words for Glacier. It appears that Yellowstone may be more of an animal refuge than a beautiful. As we explore over the next week I may have to change my opinion.

Livingston, MT an experience

We drove from Glacier(St Mary, MT) to Livingston, MT this morning. Thank goodness it was uneventful. With the windshield in rough condition(broken from a rock thrown by a truck and then the upper right hand shattered in a twist). We have been looking for the company that is to replace our window. So far their address is in a residential area and does not exist. This company has been hired by our insurance company(Progressive) so I am counting on it working out(fingers crossed).

We are looking forward to meeting Steve and Anne Rausch on Tuesday for our next adventure in Yellowstone and the Tetons.

I had to add one last photo of Glacier.

Last Day at Glacier

As we had yesterday, RAIN. This how our morning started. Jan and I had made up our mind that nothing short of a storm was going to keep us off the mountains today. So we gave the weather a chance to slow down by not going out as early as normal. We waited until about 8:30 then drove to Logan's Pass to hike the Hidden Lake trail. The first mile of the trail is all boardwalk, the next half is mixed boardwalk and regular trail to the overlook then the next mile and half was down major switchbacks to the lake. The lake from the overlook was beautiful but as we got closer to the lake we found it to be more beautiful and much larger than it had appeared from the overlook. We are ashamed to tell you that we wore long sleeve shirts, long pants and jackets. The temperature was somewhere around the upper 40's, with off and on light rain. Soon when we started back up the trail the sun came out and clouds spread out more. When we finally got back to Logan's Pass parking lot, we saw it at its capacity. In fact, we nearly witnessed a fight over a parking place. It was at this point we realized that this was our last time to be in this park and as we drove away it was nearly a sad occasion. But as we came upon St Mary Falls we decided that we wanted to see it also. We drove into the parking lot and began our short hike to the falls. Being that I have had such a hard time with adjectives in this park, all I can say is WOW, what beautiful falls at the head of St Mary Lake. What a great memory we have now. This was a remarkable visit and we still have Yellowstone and the Tetons to go.

Rainy Day

Out of all the wonderful days we have had, today was a rainy day. In fact, the wind picked up so much that we had to bring in our slides, last night. All of this gave us a chance to clean the RV and the linens. This took a couple of hours. Now what? Well, Jan needs to get a prescription filled. This had us use the internet to look up where there might be a Walgreen drug store. We had already planned on going through Helena and pick it up Sunday afternoon. Today, will be a great time to get this done. So we checked out Kalispell one of the larger towns near the park. Yeah, it is near the park but on the absolute opposite side. Kalispell does have a Walgreen so we decided to drive over an get the "scrips" filled. The little ride around ended up being 118 miles one way. Since we have had such bad luck in not seeing bears we stopped by a place that had them captive within a fenced area. This was the safest way and a guarantee of seeing bears. We were really bored to do this. By the way the high today was 55(I would not rub this in to those of you in the back home).

Iceberg Lake Hike

Today we got to hike the trail that we learn of last week. It was recommended as one of the most beautiful trails in the park. Everyone we spoke with about the trail told it is beautiful but it also has one of the worst reputations with grizzlies. Jan and I have been aware for years that grizzlies were not the best animals to meet on the trails. So today, as usual, we went to the trail early but, we had decided that we did not want to be the first hikers on the trail. Generally the first hikers will be the ones who either scare off the bears or they will retreat and tell the other hikers on the trail. We were about 30 minutes later entering the trail than we normally do. We saw two other folks up ahead of us, so we were relieved. But since they were not always in sight we made sure that we were doing our best at watching for the bears. There were many places that we could not see more than 5-10' off the trail. In one of these places, just of the trail, we saw a shadow move that made both of us jump back. We jumped higher than two sixty+ year olds you have ever seen. Then together we realize that it was nothing but our own shadows. With a sigh of relieve both started laughing, since it appears that we are afraid of our on shadow.

A little further up the trail we encounter a moose(cow) that just stood in the middle of the trail and looked at us. We knew that we did not want upset the moose but we wanted to go by up the trail. Finally she move off the trail but only about 8'. So, like a gentleman, I let Jan go first by the moose. Since the moose didn't bother her I followed bravely. The rest of the trail was uneventful until we reached Iceberg Lake. The eventfulness at this point was how beautiful this lake is. Just as we arrived, we entered meadow that was covered with beautiful wild flowers. Iceberg Lake is a perfect name for this lake. There were chunks of ice all over it. The water was a deep turquoise and surrounded by 1500' shear walls. Even on these walls we looked for mountain goats and we were not disappointed. There is no way of even figuring out how they got to where they were. Our hike back down the mountain was beautiful watching the clouds begin to move in over the peaks. As we met people on the trail we always share our sighting of animals. They shared to us that close to the bottom of the trail that there was female grizzley and 3 cubs. This report kept being given to us until we were near the area and the next hikers were telling us that they saw nothing. Rats, no bear sighting for us.

For those of you back in the Southeastern part of this US of A, I want to share with you that the temperture out here today just barely reached 60. However, the wind has picked up and is somewhere near 35 mph.