Craters, bears and bison oh my!

We have been having a lot of fun and taking a lot of pictures the past few weeks!   We spent a few days north of Reno.  We did a little gambling with Ted having some luck, me, not so much!  We had some nice weather and had a moth problem.  Every afternoon the moths were thick!  Sophie had a blast chasing them around the little yard that we had!  Problem is, we are still finding moths!  I’m not sure where they hide but we find moths just about every evening…grrr!

From Reno we went south to Minden, Nevada.   At the airport they were having a National Soaring Contest.  Since we were going to be close by, Ted wanted to go so I could see the takeoffs and especially the landings!  Unfortunately it’s been many years since Ted was soaring and they changed the landings for safety and liability reasons.  Now instead of doing a low, fast, fly by, they have a GPS point out about 3 miles that they go by for the final point and then just come in and do a regular landing!  We dry-camped in a parking area across the road from the airport.  We attended the pilot meetings, watched the takeoffs and landings!  We were the only spectators so everyone was curious as to whom we were so we talked to a lot of people and had a good time.

 One of the pilots was kind enough to let me take some pictures of his plane!

Ted crewed for a pilot at a National Soaring Contest at Minden in the 70’s and the group frequented a Basque restaurant and it was still there!  Now they have individual tables but the food is still served family style.  We had a great dinner!

From Minden we headed northeast after a few stops along the way we ended up at Craters of the Moon, Idaho, a National Monument.  There is a campground in the lava beds right in the park with around 50 sites.  Many are too small for us but we got there at noon and found a good spot.  We did the drive through of the park, it is really unique, and in the visitor center there is a small museum and a theater they show a couple of movies about the area and the volcanic eruptions.  There were eight major eruptive periods 15,000-20,000 years ago.  It has been a long time since the last eruption and we were hoping it would stay that way!  LOL

There are even pink and yellow flowers growing out of the cinders!

After a lot of hot weather in Nevada, it cooled off while we were at Craters and one day we had a snow shower that lasted three hours!  It was really pretty looking out at the snow on the black lava rock and cinder cones!

We left Craters and moved over to West Yellowstone!  We had lovely weather with a little rain a couple of days.  We went in the park and got to the Elk and Bison meadow and there were none.  We were disappointed but kept going.  We found that summer is not the best time for retired people to go to the park!  There were tons of cars and it was difficult to find parking.  We got lucky to get a space by the pools area and as you can see, we found a good photo spot!  These pools and geysers are amazing.

We moved on to the Old faithful Lodge and Geyser.  Usually you can see some bison in this area but again there were none.  We did manage to be among the throngs to see Old Faithful do her thing!

Inside Old Faithful Lodge

Old Faithful!

 On the way home in the afternoon we finally saw a bison along side the road!  We were beginning to think we were only going to see animals of the two-legged variety!

 On Sunday the 22^nd of June we went to the Grizzly Discovery Center.  It is a non-profit business that takes wolves, grizzly bears and predator birds that cannot go back in the wild for various reasons.   For example, bears that become too accustomed to eating out of trashcans or birds or wolves that have been injured can come to their facility rather than be killed. The wolves were having a lazy Sunday, but the bears came out hungry!  They put food in among the rocks so they come out and look for the food right away!  They have educational movies and a small museum of facts about the animals.

On Monday we got Sophie, a picnic and a full tank of gas in the car and took off for the upper loop of Yellowstone.  We had heard that was where the animals were.  We hit the Yellowstone jackpot for sure!  We saw four adult bears and two of the bears were mama bears with two cubs each.  Surprisingly we were able to get close enough (with the car) to get some pictures.  When one of the bears was a good distance away from us I had the window down.  Sophie saw the bear and was really excited.  The bear started coming towards us and the window was up in a hurry.  Fortunately it was one of the mom’s and she was busy watching her cubs and walked on by!

We also saw several herds of bison but there were generally too many cars to park so had to get drive by photos!  We did have one bison walk out in front of us and we were happy to wait for him to cross the road.  We gave him plenty of room!

We only saw two elk and again, too many people to get good pictures.  They still had their velvet on their antlers and they were huge!

In addition to seeing the animals, we had a nice picnic.  We had some snow at 8800 feet, which Sophie thought was fun to play in (and make yellow snow)!  We saw some waterfalls and Mammoth Hot Springs. 

Yellowstone is amazing and one of my favorite parks!

We are now in Helena, Montana.  It has rained here every afternoon.   When the rain clears we do have pretty sunsets!

We haven’t done much sightseeing in Helena, we have been preparing for our crossing in to Canada.  We will have phone and texting but no data usage unless we hit a wifi hotspot, while we are in Canada, which will be from June 29th to July 26, or 27^th.  We will be at the Calgary Stampede for over a week and then on a tour through the Rockies ending in Vancouver, Canada.  We are excited about the trip.  It is our first RV tour.  I don’t know how many RV’s will be in Calgary but I believe there are 22 RV’s plus a wagon master and a tail gunner in the Rockies group!

Soaring, craters of lava, bears and bison…”Ain’t Life Grand!”