Vernal, UT to Fort Collins, CO-July 21, 22

We had originally planned to spend another day in around Vernal and Flaming Gorge, but we were both feeling ready to head closer to home. We visited the Dinosaur museum in Vernal (very nice, well worth the price of admission) and then went to the quarry and visitor's center at Dinosaur National Monument. When we were there 41 years ago, there were paleontologists on scaffolding working away exposing the fossils on the side of the cliff. They stopped that work in the 90's so you don't get to see them working at this site any longer, but what they have uncovered is amazing.

After that, we headed east thinking we would stop in Craig or Steamboat or maybe Walden when we got tired, but we ended up driving all the way to Fort Collins. We got the oil changed in the Jeep on Friday morning and spent the afternoon with Tara and the boys. She made supper for us and Scott, Janie and the girls. Very pleasant evening!

Thigh bone of a Camarasaurus

Lava Hot Springs, ID to Steinaker State Park, Vernal, UT-July 20

This was mostly a day of traveling. We drove around Flaming Gorge Reservoir in Wyoming and Utah. We were there 40+ years ago with David's sister, Joann, when she and her family lived in Vernal. I wish we had time to find the hike that she had taken us on back then. I remember the wonderful scents of the conifer forest and the view of the water from the end of the hike.

We both remember Vernal as being an ugly little town back in about 1975. It is several times bigger and has the MOST beautiful pots of flowers of any town that we've ever visited! There were miles of them both along the sides of the street about every 30 ft. or so as well as hanging from the lamp posts. There were from one to five or six pots together. The pictures don't do them justice, but they were spectacular! A big part of Vernal's growth was because of the oil boom, but true to the "feast or famine" nature of the oil field, the town is now in the famine stage. We were talking with a gal who told us that the town went from a population of 30,000 to 10,000 in just three months when the bottom dropped out of the oil prices!

After supper, we drove out of town a ways to see some petroglyphs. It was an interesting spot and climb to see them and the lighting wasn't be best for taking pictures, but I've added a couple.

Flaming Gorge

"Tiny" front-end loader at a phosphate mine north of Vernal

Flag atop a cliff on our way to the pertoglyphs.

Lizard posing on a rock.

You can't tell from this angle, but this whole rock is free from the cliff except at the very base where the rock is dark again.

A few of the flower baskets in Vernal

And our sunset, back at camp.

Sula, MT to Lava Hot Springs, ID-July 19

Headed south and slowly toward home. After nearly two weeks of temps in the 60-70 range, this near 90° stuff isn’t any fun! Our main stop today was at Bannack State Park in Montana. It is as near to a true ghost town as I’ve ever been to as there are only a couple of houses that park personnel live in and all the rest are empty. And at least one is reportedly haunted. It started as a gold rush town in 1862-63 and ebbed and flowed until the 1960’s when nearly everyone was gone from the town. It is now a state park with camping outside of town and main street preserved with many buildings from the early days of the town. It was a wild town in its early days with many shootings and hangings. Even the sheriff and his deputies were hung for being the head of a criminal gang.

Here are pictures from today.

I love old barns!

David checking out one of the buildings in Bannack

This was the first county courthouse in the territory of Montana. When the county seat moved to Dillon, this was bought and remodeled into a hotel. The back part was added on for a kitchen, dining rooms and more rooms upstairs. 

What one of the hotel rooms would have looked like.

Beautiful front stairway.

Fancy hinges!

Some of the mining equipment with the hotel in the background

The bankers house. It was definitely the fanciest house on the street.

The Methodist Church, the only structure ever built in Bannack as a place of worship.

David thought the hat holders underneath the seats in the church were a nice touch.

I loved the way this old wood looked.

And I love old wheelbarrows.

One of two jails. In the early days of the town, they had a hard time finding anyone willing to watch prisoners as the men all wanted to be mining for gold, so the jails wasn't used much. Instead the "bad guys" were given a warning, run out of town, or hung.

 The Masonic Lodge built this in the 1870's. The school room was the bottom floor and the Masons met on the upper floor.

What the Masonic room would have looked like at the time. The rug is original.

A couple shots from our evening campsite.

Hungry Horse, MT to Sula, MT- July 18

We’re on the road meandering toward home. Our first stop was at the St. Ignatius Mission in St. Ignatius, MT. The mission was founded in 1854 at the request of the Flathead Indians and the current church was built in 1891. The interior of the church contains 58 murals, painted in the early twentieth century. The artist was Brother Joseph Carignano, and Italian Jesuit who spent many years as the cook and handyman at the Mission. He had no professional training and completed his work in between his regular jobs. While the mission is on the National Register of Historic Places, they are in need of money to make repairs to the old plaster where the murals are painted. Even so, there was such a holy feel to the church that it brought tears to my eyes. It was a very special stop.

A few miles from St. Ignatius is the National Bison Range. There are supposed to be about 350-500 bison in the range, but we didn’t see nearly that number. We did see a few up close and quite a lot of other wildlife, so it was well worth the trip. We saw more big horned sheep than at any other time, and a magnificent bull elk.

Son-in-law Drew had told us about a place in Hamilton, MT that made the world’s second best hamburger (in his opinion, the best is someplace in Virginia). We hadn’t eaten lunch so we headed to Hamilton to find Naps Grill. It was a cute little place and did make yummy hamburgers and fries. David’s was so big he had to eat it with a fork! And with breakfast over and us on the road by 7:30am and us not getting the hamburgers until 4:30pm we practically inhaled them! It changed our plans a little to get them, but we’d go out of our way to eat there again.

We’ve ended up about 85 miles further down the road than we had originally planned, but we found a cute little campground and spent an hour or more visiting with a couple in their 80’s who travel north from Florida for about 6 months out of the year. They’ve driven to Alaska 3 times! Needless to say, they had many travel tips for us and other places that we needed to see.

Here are some pictures from today (that I won’t be able to post until I have internet service again!)

See that line of black? There were miles of tank cars sitting on the track. There was a break in the cars at each road crossing.

This guy was right by the side of the road. Then we didn't see any more bison for about 14 miles!

Some of the Big Horn Sheep

This is about a third of the flock and there were two flocks that size.

A group of does.

There was a nice herd of Pronghorns

Don't you just love a good 360 ° roll in the dust to get rid of those pesky bugs!

Some elk

And then there was this guy. Even with a wayward antler, he was quite a handsome fellow!

In person, these grilled onions did not resemble earthworms in the least. I have a new respect for food photographers!

A lovely little pond by our campsite.