Noah Rides the Thorofare (sic)

Yesterday, Noah headed up to the Deer Creek Trail at the end of the Southfork Hwy. to ride his (loaner) horse into the Thorofare (yes, that's how they spell it!)  Wanda came by the house at about 8 a.m., they loaded up Roxie, and off they went.

They were on the trail by 9 a.m. heading up Deer Creek.  The trail was extremely narrow, steep, and precipitous with sheer drops of up to 1,000 feet.  Noah took a few shots (when he could), but he says they don't really do the trail justice...but he couldn't take any photos at the worst places, because he was afraid for his life.

Noah & Wanda were on the trail almost non-stop for nearly 10 hours.  Here's a shot of them stopping around lunch time:

They were really enjoying the scenic portion of the ride through the trees...

...until they realized they were not alone:

Those are VERY fresh grizzly bear tracks, in case you didn't know it.  (Most likely belonging to a sow & her cub).
 
After a long ride, they finally made it to the top of Deer Creek Pass where they could view the Washakie Wilderness & the Thorofare.  The Thorofare is a fantastic elk hunting location.   If they'd kept going, they could have ridden through Yellowstone National Park and eventually ended up in Teton National Park.
 

Here's the sign marking the entrance to the Washakie Wilderness (it was a mite windy--look at Roxie's hair!)

And here's the Thorofare & that's Yellowstone National Park just ahead.

After enjoying the view, they turned around & headed back down the trail:

Noah took this shot when they were about halfway back down the trail.  Still a long way to go....!

Hope you enjoyed reading about Noah's Exciting Ride.  He says Roxie is really a GOOD horse...but I think I'll wait until they widen the road & open it to quad runners!  Until next time...

Love,
Noah & Roxie (as told to Buckskin Lily)



Critters We Saw in Yellowstone

 Well, we drove up to Chico Hot Springs for our anniversary again this year (it was our 10th one, if you can believe that!)  And we went through Yellowstone again, but this year we spotted some different critters:  we had our first ever wolf sighting.  Now, I apologize ahead of time for the poor quality photo, but he was really moving out & he was pretty far away when we spotted him.  I also wasted precious time switching out lenses on my camera, but it's a good thing I did that, because this shot was taken with my telephoto lens just before he disappeared over the top of the hill:

Kinda looks like somebody's German Shepherd got loose, but there was a geek, I mean a guy, from the Wolf Patrol there & he assured us it was a real wolf.

After lunch, when we were almost to the North Gate at Gardiner, MT, we spotted a pair of young, female Big Horn Sheep grazing (actually attacking a tree) alongside the road.  I was able to get some really nice photos of them...I still had my telephoto lens attached to my camera...and they were much better subjects than Mr. Wolf.

Well, that pretty much brings things up to the present.  I just finished my third week of school & things are going along just fine.  There may not be too much of interest happening for awhile...though Noah & I have birthdays coming up soon, AND we are planning to go REAL dogsledding up in Montana after Thanksgiving...which reminds me...I need to call & make reservations before it's too late.  I will definitely have a story on that.  Take care & talk to you all soon.

Love,
Buckskin Lily

Four-Wheeling in Clark's Canyon

On Sunday, August 14th, we took our four-wheelers up to Clark's Canyon for a ride.  It's a beautiful site we discovered when we were shooting with the Colter's Hell Club at the sheep pens up the road earlier in the summer.  It was an very hot, but clear & sunny day about a week before the Hole in the Wall fire started up there, so I was able to get some really pretty shots.  It's hard to do the epic scenery up there justice, but I did my best:

The river running through the canyon is the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone.  It runs straight out of Yellowstone National Park & is named for William Clark of Lewis & Clark.  Clark traveled down this river with Sacajawea on the return trip of the Corps of Discovery's expedition to the northwest.  Lewis took a different route back, so they could explore more territory, before meeting back up with Clark at Rendevous Point...OK, enough with the history lesson...!

Basically, we had a really great time (despite the extremely rocky trail) & we hope we can get back up there for another ride before the snow falls.

Bye for now from Noah & Buckskin,

Legend Rock Petroglyphs

On August 10th, the day before I had to report back to work for the first part of a 5-day in-service, Noah & I headed down to Thermopolis for one last hurrah.  I soaked in the outdoor hot pool at the State Bath House down in Thermop for a bit while Noah had lunch at Taco John's & got directions to Legend Rock.  We'd been meaning to visit for quite awhile.

So after my bath was over we drove to Legend Rock which is located about 25 miles north of Thermopolis & 60 or so south of Cody.  When we arrived, clouds were starting to roll in, so we set off walking to see the petroglyphs right away.  The overcast day was actually a good thing, as it allowed me to get better photos of the carvings. 

About halfway through our visit, the sky opened up & it began raining and then hailing with a lot of thunder and lightening.  We ran back to the truck to sit out the storm & Waldo tried to hide under the back seat to little avail as he weighs as much as I do...The storm passed after about 20 minutes, and we were able to go back and finish our tour. 

The caretaker told us this is a vision quest site & that the petroglyphs are allegedly some of the oldest in the US...that's all I know about them, but they're cool to look at.  Here are some of my favorites: