July 21-22: Mount Roosevelt, Black Hills National Forest, SD
As we traveled through South Dakota, we realized how flat Minnesota is. South Dakota is the land of cows and hay.
The camp site on Mt Rosevelt was picturesque. We had a fellow camper nearby who got sick of the Florida heat and decided to go north. He fell in love with the Black Hills and was going to stay a while, but now the black flies were around and biting him in the morning when he paints. He is a tattoo artist and usually goes out east in the summer to work there, traveling in the van he calls home.
July 23: Bighorn National Forest, WY
One night here was enough. It was mosquito heaven! Beautiful wild flowers and vistas of mountains in the distance and rolling hills in the foreground.
July 24-26: Eagle Creek Campground, Shoshone National Forest, WY
Wyoming is a state with many faces. Long stretches of cattle fields, scruffy land forever, then fabulous mountains. Our home on the shore of a creek was peaceful and surprisingly very quiet, not many campers, yet only 5 minutes from Yellowstone's east entrance.
This is bear country and only hard sided campers could camp here. No tents or pop ups. There was a bear locker for food and we couldn't leave even a water bottle outside during the night because it could attract bears. We had our bear spray at the ready!
Our first day in Yellowstone we didn't see any animals. It was Tuesday, so we decided they had the day off, not enough visitors. When we went on another route on Thursday, Mat saw a bear, we saw 2 buffalo, 4 elk and a ground hog. These were animatrons for our pleasure- kidding! Nice to know that there are really animals living there. At our campsite there were barely any bugs and we only heard one bird in the early mornings, we were getting worried about all the wildlife warnings.
Yellowstone was, is, truly grand. The lake so large and blue, sulphur pools everywhere, bubbling pots of mud, Canyons of green, red and white sand, flowing rivers and waterfalls. The infrastructure was amazing, newly paved roads, electricity, running water and some flush toilets, a well oiled machine!
Everyone can flow in and out of the park and get along.
Still don't know what to think of Idaho! We wanted to spend a night in a cheap hotel, no shower for 8 days and my hair was greasy, wet wipes can do an ok cleaning job, but hot water would be nice. The hotel we booked had dirty sheets, you can imagine and you would be correct, hair on the toilet, an unfinished platform bed and dirty floors! We are still trying to get our money back, of course we couldn't stay there but the booking was done in such a way that they are making it difficult. The hotel next door was better and only $10 more. Very dated, but cleaner and had working wifi. We are clean! But they didn't have HGTV ):
Mat looked up the laws on hotels in Idaho and found there are no set rules on cleanliness, he found this in an article written by someone who had the same issues we had with hotels here.
Today we are going to Boise to see my uncle Jerry, my dad's older brother. I have never been to see him here and am looking forward to seeing his own private Idaho! We'll let you know if our thoughts of this place change.
See more photos on my Instagram page anne_l_kramer.
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