We have returned!

We had a wonderful trip, with a few exceptions. We had what might be called a minor catastrophe. We had left our deep cast iron skillet in the oven half full of oil. When we arrived at the campground the skillet had left the oven and we had oil every where and I mean everywhere, In the carpet, up the walls, and of course we didn't realize what had happened right away and the dogs walked through it and tracked it everyplace that it wasn't. I cleaned it up as best I could and then threw the rugs over what I couldn't as I was determined for it not to ruin our trip.

Yellowstone was wonderful as always. We had near perfect weather with warm days and cool nights.

We had 2 adventures that we had never done before.

The first being Blacktail ridge road which is a 6 mile one way dirt road, kinda off the beaten path. The terrain is grassy hills, then lots of forested areas. I think this is what Yellowstone looked like before the fires of 88. Its incredibly beautiful, and you never know what you will find. We stopped to walk the dogs next to a small hill, and walked up to the top only to find a huge bull buffalo on the other side, needless to say we hurried right back to the truck.

At the end of the road we were waved down by a SUV full of 8 people it turns out to be 2 Canadians, 2 french Canadians, and 4 German tourist. They had a flat tire on there rental vehicle and couldn't find the jack, lug wrench, etc in order to change the tire and they were so surprised that there cell phones didn't work. Mitch got to work helping them change the tire and I visited with the 2 french Canadian ladies who it turns out are sisters married to the 2 Canadian males. They spoke both french, English and German. the 4 Germans 3 females and 1 male spoke no English at all. So you can imagine the conversations we had luckily we were all able to smile and shake our heads when we didn't understand something. The one sister and her husband had retired to Dallas Texas. The other sister and husband still lived in Canada, and well the Germans were here from Germany. They had all flew into Denver and had been all over North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and had just arrived in Yellowstone that day. We ended up spending all most 2 hours with the group and I really enjoyed visiting with them, learning about there hometowns, families, dogs, etc. They when they found out we had been to Yellowstone many times had many questions and we were happy to oblige. When we left there were many thanks, hugs and the Germans even tried to pay us for our time (at least that is what I think they were doing ) It wasn't until we got down the road that I realized that I should of gotten a pic of the group for my blog, but that is the story of my life.

Mountain goats.

Next we got to see the mountain goats. We have never been close enough to get a good look let alone pictures, So that was exciting.

And last but not least we took the grassy lake road which goes from GTNP over to Idaho this is a 46 mile dirt road that is narrow with lots of up and downs and back and Fourths but really scenic. From there you can take the road into the south west corner of the park. This road only goes in a short distance but the waterfalls at the end of the road were well worth the drive over there. besides the fact that I was so curious about this part of the park since reading the J.C. Box book that was set in this part of the park. This part of the park has no entrance gate its kinda like stepping back in Yellowstone time. The buildings, and roads haven't been updated. The road is so narrow built more for skinny cars not our big old wide truck luckily we didn't run into any place where we couldn't get by.

We left Yellowstone on Friday and headed to Granite Creek but since this is so long now I will save the rest of the trip for my next post.