On our four previous visits to Rocky Mountain National Park, we stayed one or more nights in the adjacent town of Estes Park. This time, we didn’t, as we were able to get reservations at Moraine Park Campground in the park for the duration of our planned visit.  As a result, we actually spent less time in Estes Park than any other visit – other than traveling through town and stops for fuel and groceries, just a short visit before and after lunch on September 15th, followed by an afternoon alpine hike back in the park.  It was an nice stroll along the street and into some of the shops – and much less crowded than our last visit on Labor Day weekend, 2009.

Estes Park, a town of just under 6,000 permanent residents, is a popular summer resort in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies, though there are plenty of recreational opportunities during the rest of the year. Located at 7,522 feet above sea level, the town is at the east entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Tourism has been a primary business for the town for most of its history.  Lodging includes The Stanley Hotel, inspiration for the setting of Stephen King’s novel The Shining.  (We stayed in the hotel during our 2001 visit.)

The word “park” used in place names in the Colorado Rockies often refers to a valley or meadow. Estes Park, then, originally referred to the valley and was named after town founder Joel Estes.

The town experienced severe damage in July 1982 from flooding resulting from the failure of Lawn Lake Dam.

Additional information on the Lawn Lake Dam Failure, July 15, 1982:

• KOA TV Channel 4 – YouTube, 1982 footage
• Wikipedia
• Town of Estes Park

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

Each time we visit Rocky Mountain National Park, we travel the Old Fall River Road from it’s junction with the modern Fall River Road, U.S. Highway 34.  The road is two-way and paved for the first 1.75 miles, passing Lawn Lake Trailhead, Lawn Lake Alluvial Fan, and the Endovalley Picnic Area.   The remaining 9.4 miles is winding, narrow,  unpaved and one-way from the picnic area  to above treeline at Fall River Pass, following the steep slope of Mount Chapin’s south face to it’s junction with Trail Ridge Road.

Old Fall River Road was built between 1913 and 1920.

The Lawn Lake Alluvial Fan is a particularly interesting recent geologic feature.  It was created when flood water and debris rushing down the steep and narrow Roaring River valley from a failed dam at Lawn Lake slowed down when it reached the broader Fall River valley, leaving behind an alluvial fan of debris.  When we first saw it over 20 years ago, the large Roaring River gully scoured by the flow and the alluvial fan were still a fairly fresh scar on the land, with little new vegetation. In the ensuing years, the scar has weathered some and vegetation has moved in.

Additional information on the Lawn Lake Dam Failure, July 15, 1982

Aerial view of Estes Park, July 15, 1982 (USGS)

• KOA TV Channel 4 – YouTube, 1982 footage
• Wikipedia
• Town of Estes Park

Lawn Lake alluvial fan from Trail Ridge Road

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

The Bear Lake area of Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the most popular parts of the park.  We’ve hiked several trails in the area, including the 0.6 mile trail around Bear Lake.

The Bear Lake Trail is an easy walk, listed as accessible – available to most people, including those with handicaps. However, the trail is not entirely flat and is more challenging than most accessible trails.  The lake is about 9500 feet above sea level.

Bear Lake is  at the end of Bear Lake Road, eleven miles from the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center.  With several other trails in the Bear Lake area, the parking lot fills early during the summer and weekends.  Bear Lake Route shuttle buses run from a large Park & Ride parking area across from Glacier Basin Campground, with stops at other trailheads along the route.

Selected Information
Resources:

Rocky Mountain National Park

• National Park Service– Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Suggested Hikes
  • Conditions and Closures
• Wikitravel
• Wikipedia

Estes Park

• Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Town of Estes Park
• Wikipedia
• Wikitravel
• Trail Gazette (newspaper)
• Stanley Hotel

Grand Lake

• Grand Lake Chamber of Commerce
• Wikipedia (the lake)
• Wikipedia (the town)
• Town of Grand Lake

On September 10, we headed out to drive to the top of Pikes Peak from Garden of the Gods Campground in Colorado Springs, a driving distance of about 25.6 miles, with an elevation change of almost 8000 feet.

We had attempted to drive to the top in 2004, but were stopped at Glen Cove Inn, at 11, 425 feet, due to high winds higher up.  We were told that the winds will likely lessen later.  After waiting a while, we went back down and, later, decided to try to go up on the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway.  When we got to the top, we found that it was brisk and chilly at 34°F with great views, and the wind was low enough that there were already cars in the parking lot.  The ride on the railway was a great experience, though.

On this year’s trip, the wind was not a problem.  With stops, we made it to the top in around 2 hours.

The road has recently been improved significantly as a settlement of a Sierra Club lawsuit. (A lot of the online references say that the road is not paved on the upper half.   This is old information.)  Except for a section less than a mile long, the road is paved all the way to the top.  The road is on federal land administered by the U.S. Forest Service, but is leased to the City of Colorado Springs for operation.  The toll is used to maintain and improve the road, thus requiring no general tax revenue for the road.

Note:  The images and video segments are sequenced from the bottom of the mountain to the top, but most of them were actually taken at pullouts on the way back down.

Pikes Peak is about 10 miles west of Colorado Spring, Colorado.  It was originally called “El Capitan” by Spanish settlers, but was renamed after Zebulon Pike, Jr., an explorer who led an expedition to the area in 1806.  It is one of Colorado’s 54 fourteeners, mountains rising over 14,000 above sea level.

Information and Resources:

• Wikipedia
• Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway
• Aramark
• Pikes Peak Country Attractions

September 9, 2011 – After visiting Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, we headed on down the road to Cripple Creek.  In 2004, we had rented an A-frame cabin near Cripple Creek and, on this day trip, decided to drive through the area again.

Cripple Creek sits in a high mountain valley just below tree line at about 9,500 feet near the western base of Pikes Peak.  For many years the valley was consider to be of little value for anything more than grazing cattle.  A mini gold rush was caused in 1884 when three con men salted gold in a prospect hole near Mount McIntyre, 13 miles west of Mount Pisgah.  The men planted a fake claim sign and invited the press.  In the excitement over news of a new gold strike, the papers mistakenly identified Mt. Pisgah, near current day Cripple Creek, as the location of the strike.  Experienced miners quickly determined the strike was a fake and the incident became known as the Mt. Pisgah Hoax.  It gave the area a bad reputation, prospectors avoiding it for many years.

A persistent prospector, Bob Womack, came to Colorado in 1861 with his father at the tail end of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush.  While they didn’t do well, they liked Colorado well enough to bring out the rest of the family, purchasing the Levi Welty homestead in Pisgah Park, where Cripple Creek would later be established.  Womack dug hundreds of holes search for gold, becoming known as “Crazy Bob” and a drunkard.  In 1890,  Womack dug a narrow shaft into Tenderfoot Hill, finding gold ore.  Womack called the discovery the El Paso Lode.  It later became the Gold King Mine, eventually producing $5 million in gold.

In 3 years the population rose from 500 to 10,000.  Though the mines of Cripple Creek produced a half a billion dollars of gold ore, Womack profited but little and died penniless in 1909.  (See more on Cripple Creek history at Wikipedia.)

Unlike many of the historic gold camps and towns that have faded into ghost towns, Cripple Creek reinvented itself in the 1940s as a tourist destination.  In 1991, Cripple Creek was one of a small number of towns opened to legalized gambling by Colorado voters.  Casinos now occupy many of the old historic buildings and gambling revenue has revitalized the area.

Information and Resources:

• Wikipedia
• Cripple Creek Travel Website
• City of Cripple Creek
• Ghosttowns.com

Our next destination has long been a Colorado destination – more tomorrow with a video photo presentation of our visit there, including a bachelor herd of sheep with big horns.

Leaving Canton Lake, our next destination was La Junta, Colorado.

Most of our trips to and from Colorado have required crossing two or more states to go between Arkansas and Colorado.  Our last two trips traveling to Colorado, though,  have crossed only Oklahoma by going though Oklahoma’s panhandle, a relatively narrow section of land that separates the Texan panhandle from Colorado and Kansas.

From Canton Lake to the Colorado border, we traveled State Highway 3, the longest highway in the Oklahoma road system.  The portion we traveled is officially designated “Governor George Nigh’s Northwest Passage.”

The route lies across a portion of the North American Great Plains, a broad expanse of flat land with few trees, comprised mostly of  prairie, steppe and grassland.

We missed the big dust storm in Lubbock, Texas, on Monday by just a couple of hours. Even though we fought the wind all day, we managed to make it past Lubbock before the storm hit.

We were on the homeward leg of a 6 week trip and had planned to go further south, crossing Texas below Dallas and Fort Worth.  Saturday and Sunday nights, we had been camped near Carlsbad, New Mexico.  We were able to get online Sunday night, barely, and checked the weather forecast for where we were thinking of going – wind and blowing dust, with temperatures in the mid to high 90s.  The forecast for the Lubbock area was cooler and windy, but blowing dust was not mentioned. After talking it over for a bit, we decided to head north instead of east.

I did get a some video from our windy day’s trip and produced a short YouTube video.

On this trip, I decided that I was not going to try to keep up with a travel blog.  My intent was to keep a written journal and take lots of photos and video and to incorporate the journal and images into blog posts after we got home.  I was only partially successful.

While I did take lots of photographs and videos, the written journal fell by the wayside after only a few days.

I did read quite a few books over the last six weeks, though.

Even though we had been to Grand Teton National Park many times before, on this trip we explored some areas we had not been to before in the southeastern part of the park and just outside, in the Gros Ventre and Antelope Flats areas. They which yielded quite few opportunities for photographs from viewpoints different from what I had taken in the past including old log structures and the Mormon Row settlement.

Other photos include a large plane landing at Jackson against Grand Teton as a backdrop, Jackson lake, Signal Mountain, Chapel of the Transfiguration, moose resting along the Snake River near the Moose entrance to the park; Menor’s Ferry, Bill Menor’s cabin and store, and aspen fall colors.

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References and Resources:

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
  • Grand Teton National Park
  • Jackson Hole
  • Jackson, Wyoming
• Wyoming Tourism
• Wikitravel
• Grand Teton Lodge Company

Separated from Yellowstone National Park by only 10 miles, Grand Teton National Park is another of our favorites that we have visited many times.  Though we have camped in the park on some previous visits, this time we stayed at a campground on the Snake River south of Jackson, Wyoming.

The park is named for Grand Teton, the tallest peak, 13,775 feet (4,199 m),  in the Teton Range, which rises abruptly above the valley of Jackson Hole.

Jackson Hole is believed to be named after a mountain man, David (Davey) Edward Jackson, a mountain man who trapped the area for beaver in the early 1800s.  The name “hole” is a term used by early trappers who entered from the north and east, descending along relatively steep slopes, giving the feeling of descending into a hole.

The town of Jackson, Wyoming, the only incorporated town in the valley, is often mistakenly referred to as Jackson Hole.

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References and Resources:

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
  • Grand Teton National Park
  • Jackson Hole
  • Jackson, Wyoming
• Wyoming Tourism
• Wikitravel
• Grand Teton Lodge Company

On one of the days we were camped near West Yellowstone, Montana, we decided to take a drive into Idaho.  The high point of the drive was the Mesa Falls Recreation Area.

From Wikipedia:

Upper Mesa Falls is a waterfall on the Henrys Fork in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. Upstream from Lower Mesa Falls, it is roughly 16 miles away from Ashton, Idaho.

Upper Mesa Falls is roughly 114 feet high and 200 feet wide.[2]

Formation

Mesa Falls Tuff, which is the rock over which Upper Mesa Falls cascades, was formed 1.3 million years ago. A cycle of rhyolitic volcanism from the Henrys Fork caldera deposited a thick layer of rock and ash across the area.[3] This layer compressed and hardened over time.

Between 200,000 and 600,000 years ago, the river eroded a wide canyon which was subsequently partly filled with basalt lava flows. The Henrys Fork of the Snake River then carved the channel through the basalt; which is the inner canyon seen today.

References and Resources:

• Upper and Lower Mesa Falls Interpretive Site – USDA Forest Service
• Henrys Fork – Wikipedia

In all the visit’s we’ve made over the years to Yellowstone National Park, we’ve always seen plenty of wildlife.  Though we’ve seen large mammals in all parts of the park, by far, we’ve seen the most along the eastern section of the Grand Loop Road.

Large numbers of buffalo can be seen from – and, often, on – the road in Hayden Valley, though we’ve seen them all along the route from Yellowstone Lake to where the road starts to climb towards Dunraven Pass.  Bears and wolves can sometimes be seen in the same area, though we’ve yet to see a wolf and it’s been a long time since we’ve seen a bear there. We have seen quite a few of the wolves’ younger cousins, the coyotes.  From Dunraven Pass past Tower Falls, we’ve seen bighorn sheep a number of times.

There is a bit of thermal activity along this route.  The lower potion lies within the bounds of the caldera of the Yellowstone super-volcano.

The lower part of the route follows the Yellowstone River, parting from it at Canyon Village and then returning to it near Tower Falls.  At Canyon, the river tumbles over two falls, the Lower Falls the more spectacular of the two, as it thunders into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

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Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

The northeast part of the park has few of the thermal features so prevalent in the rest of the park.  This section is more mountainous than some of the other parts of the brush, with striking vistas of a wilderness of high peaks and deep valleys. Vegetation ranges from grasses and sagebrush to aspens and pines.  All of the wildlife found in other parts of the park may also be seen here.

Our route for this video is shown in darker red on the map.  The dotted line represents a one-way dirt road – well maintained, and a favorite of ours – that crosses the Blacktail Deer Plateau.

With each visit we generally make the whole Grand Loop Road. Doing the whole loop all at once makes for a long day – and it truly is impossible to see everything in a single day.

If you’re a camper, my recommendation would be to stay at either Madison Campground or Canyon Village Campground.  These are in the middle part of the long sides of the Grand Loop Road.  This will eliminate a lot of repetitive travel over the same areas.  In 2011, we stayed at Fishing Bridge for a week.  It was plenty of time to see everything.  However, we spent a lot of time just in transit, much of it in the Hayden Valley or nearby, caught up in excruciatingly slow traffic, generally caused by buffalo – or people slowing down or stopping to see the buffalo.

If you want to stay in the park, whether you are camping or staying a lodge, make reservations very early.  The reason we ended up at Fishing Bridge instead of one of our preferred campgrounds was that we didn’t plan far enough in advance.  Six months in advance may not bee soon enough.

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Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

During our 2007 Yellowstone visit, we made it to three thermal areas on mornings that were quite cool – Artists Point Pots, Norton Geyser Basin, and Mammoth Hot Springs.  Cool mornings make for interesting photographs in thermal areas.

At Norton Geyser Basin, I was quite pleased with all of the wonderful photo opportunities that I had had during our walk.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t until we had made it all the way back to the parking lot when I noticed the message on the LCD screen, “No card in the camera.”  This was worse than the old SLR cameras where you would discover after thinking you had shot a roll of film, only to discover that the film had not been engaged on the takeup spool properly and not a frame of film had been exposed.  In the case of film, the pictures that were “lost” would be limited by the number of photos expected for a roll – for, me generally 24 or 36.  Digital media, on the other hand, is limited by the capacity of the storage device, in this case an SD card.  I probably had “snapped” 100 to 200 images that never got saved, because I had left the card in the computer.

I haven’t made that mistake since then.  The other way that I have lost opportunities for pictures is when I forget to charge the camera’s battery.  Now, with my new camera, I have a spare battery that is always charged before we set out.  It certainly has been beneficial already, when, on at least two occasions, the battery in the camera ran out of juice when we were out doing, seeing, and picture taking.

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Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

West Thumb Geyser Basin is situated on the shore of Yellowstone Lake’s West Thumb, a submerged volcanic caldera within the larger Yellowstone caldera.  It was created about 162,000 years ago when a magma chamber bulged up under the earth’s surface, which it cracked along ring fracture zones, releasing the magma as lava.  Once emptied, the chamber collapsed and, later, the caldera was filled with water, forming an extension of Yellowstone Lake.

The boardwalk trails at West Thumb provide easy walks that let visitors take in the beauty of the deep thermal pools and Yellowstone Lake.

While we’ve visited West Thumb Geyser Basin over the years, before 2007 we had not looked at the Yellowstone Lake Hotel, a few miles to the northeast.  The hotel is one of three hotels in the park constructed by the Northern Pacific Railroad.  Originally built in 1891, it was re-designed, expanded, and remodeled in 1903, 1922-23, 1928 and 1894 to 1990.  The building is a “relatively plain clapboarded Colonial Revival structure with two large Ionic porticoes facing Yellowstone Lake.¹”

Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

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¹ Lake Hotel – Wikipedia

We probably visited the Old Faithful part of the park more often this trip than any place else.  We saw Old Faithful erupt at least four times that I can think of.  We also made dinner reservations for one evening.  Another day we hiked up to an overlook where you can view the eruption.  Unfortunately the eruption occurred before we got all the way to the overlook, but we were able to get a good view of it.

Old Faithful is, without a doubt, the most popular location in the park.

The Old Faithful Inn is a fascinating hotel over a hundred years old.  We stayed there one time back in the late 70s in the fall.

Reservations for lodging and camping – for those campgrounds where  reservations can be made – should be made as far as possible in advance.  In 2011, we waited too long to decide on our travel plans and campsites were not available in the campgrounds we preferred.  We had to settle for something else.

Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

On our first night at Arches National Park, I was so excited with a photo that I had taken that I went into to show Karen, then went back out to try to get more – and tripped over a big rock that was in plain view even though it was dark since we had the outside light on.

I’m a bit too old to go tumbling like that.  Fortunately, except for a gravel nick on the arm and a leg that was a little sore after hiking for the next couple of days, I wasn’t hurt.  I was a bit afraid for my camera as it hit the ground pretty hard, too. Fortunately, it’s pretty tough and came through unscathed, though the lens did gain a a few scratches.

So what was I taking pictures of that had me so excited that I didn’t watch where I was going?

Stars, of course.

Now, I’ve seen a lot pictures that others have taken of the night sky, but I’ve never been successful, not that I’ve tried in a long time.  The following photo is the best of the bunch that I took at Arches.  It was taken at 9:26 p.m.,  a couple of hours after sunset.

There was little or light pollution to mask the stars.  It is a sight that many of us seldom, if ever, have the opportunity of seeing these days.

The area just above the hill that looks a little smoky or, perhaps, milky is our galaxy, the Milky Way.

The exposure time for the photo was about 60 seconds.  Towards the end of the exposure, I used a large flashlight to “paint” the hill with light so that it would show up in the image.  The hill is actually a huge rock, one of many in the campground area we were in.

Below: Part of our campsite, with  a Scrabble game set up, a portable speaker unit for IPOD, and my Kindle on the table.

Since we were camped near West Yellowstone, we traversed this part of the park several times.  There are a lot of thermal features here, but we didn’t make it to all of them.

Some of the more popular destinations in the park get very crowded as the day goes by, even in September when the season is starting to wind down.  One secret to getting in at those places without having to fight traffic and/or search for a parking spot is to get there early.  It seems as though a lot a folks are late risers when on vacation – or they are just taking their time.

In Yellowstone, like many other places, early morning is a good time for photos, especially on chilly mornings in areas that abound in thermal features.

Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

During our visit to Yellowstone National Park in 2007, we stayed in a campground near West Yellowstone, Montana, so, each day, no matter where we were going in the park, we traveled along the Madison River on our way in and, again, on our way back to the camper.  Sometimes it was clear, sometimes, cloudy, but always a beautiful drive.  One morning, the day I photographed the mists over the river, the temperature was several degrees below freezing – winter was just a few weeks around the corner.

The rest of the video slideshows from Yellowstone 2007 are arranged by regions of the park and will be posted here every three days  over the next three weeks, followed by those from Grand Teton National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park.

Yellowstone National Park has long been a favorite of ours.  I first visited in 1963, back when bears were a very common sight.  Our first visits there as a family came in our second year of marriage, tent camping with a six month old with temperatures falling into the mid 30s at night.  When we lived in Idaho from 1977 to 1980, we visited many times and have been back numerous times since we moved to Arkansas.  We also spent a week in the park in 2010.

Yellowstone References and Resources:

Yellowstone is one of the most popular destinations in the U.S. and there are a lot of available resources, including books and DVDs as well as internet resources.  I’ve included links to a few reliable resources below and have more on my Yellowstone page at Haw Creek.

• National Park Service
• Wikipedia
• UNESCO World Heritage Site
• National Geographic
• New York Times Travel Guide
• Wikitravel
• Gorp
• PBS

While in Montana in September 2007, we had plans to stop in Lewistown to get set up with a satellite internet system.  The installer, Ron, had an extra RV spot at his home for friends, complete with hookups and invited us to stay there for a few days.  The satellite system was a new model and there were a few wrinkles in getting it set up right.

Ron was a member of an on-line RV forum I participated in.  Retired, Ron did satellite system installs for other forum members at one price no matter how long it took.

While there, we shared supper with Ron and his wife several times in their house and once at the Black Bull Saloon and Steakhouse in Hobson.  We also took in the 2007 Lewistown Chokecherry Festival and the What the Hay “hay art” contest that stretched over 21 miles in Judith Basin County between the towns of Hobson and Windham.  As, well they took us on a couple of other drives out into the Montana countryside.

“What the Hay” is now also called  the “Montana Bale Trail.”

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Lewistown, Chokecherry Festival, and Montana Bale Trail information:

• Lewistown Chamber of Commerce
• Lewistown Chokecherry Festival
• Lewistown in Wikipedia
• Montana’s Russell Country
• Bureau of Land Management
• Montana Bale Trail