Here, There & Everywhere

Thursday, August 23

The Big Day–Miss B goes to Kindergarten! Amanda, Evan, Tommy and I all took Miss B to school. I may have been the only who cried. It was certainly a bittersweet moment. Funny how I cried about Miss B going to Kindergarten but didn’t cry when Amanda and Hall went.

Wednesday, August 22

We decided to try the Sand Creek Road again since it looked like we had beautiful weather. I do love the Wyoming skies!

Hawk or juvenile eagle?

We got to Camel Rock and I just couldn’t get a good picture of it. However, I did look down the road and saw a gorgeous view.

Some more beautiful skies.

We kept driving past where we had stopped in the past. Eventually we found that we were going in a big circle. On the way we saw this longhorn with the funny horns.

And a red barn. :)

We circled on around and came out at Woods Landing. We planned on heading back to Laramie but saw a road that we had never driven before. So we turned. This is a picture of more of the damage from the Badger Creek fire.

What a great day it was!

At dinner, the girls showed us how they could curl their tongues. :)

 

Tuesday, August 21

We’d already been out Highway 230 to Woods Landing and Highway 130 to the Snowy Range so what was next? Sand Creek Road! Once we got on the dirt road we saw that the weather didn’t look too good where we were headed.

But just a few minutes down the road we saw an eagle and decided to keep going for as long as we could.

I remember when we first started traveling out west I loved seeing the windmills. I still do but I don’t get many pictures of them anymore.

Another eagle! :)

We were headed to Camel Rock but when we saw a bolt of lightning (probably the most impressive one I’ve ever seen), we turned around.

Tommy was impressed with this fence.

I was impressed with this sky.

Almost back to the main road we saw this hawk.

I’ve seen this old sign for years. Each time I thought I should get a picture of it before it’s torn down. This time I did.

 

 

 

Monday, August 20

The kids were off to work and school again so Tommy, Bubba and I drove out to the Snowy Range.

When we left the Snowy Range, we went to look for eagles. We saw hawks instead–but still pretty cool!

Saturday and Sunday, August 18 & 19

We spent the weekend doing things with the kids. On Saturday, Evan, Amanda, Miss B and I went to Cheyenne to do some school shopping. We stopped by the Harley Davidson store to pick up a chip for my cousin Sue.

We were lazy on Sunday.

 

Friday, August 17

While the kids were at work and school, we decided to ride out and see the remains from the Badger Creek fire in northern Colorado. The skies were smoky again.

Some of the aftermath of the Badger Creek fire in northern Colorado. While it is now fully contained, there are still many hotspots. It was interesting to me that so many of the aspen trees did not burn even though they were right next to the pines. Their white bark is a sharp contrast to the burned black pines.

We then turned around and turned on the Woods Landing Road. When we saw these horses, we pulled over and the dark brown horse came over to us. Notice her cross? The blond one was in the road grazing and didn’t really care that we were there.

And we visited this barn again.

On the way back out to the main road, we turned and drove up the Laramie River Overlook Road.

Back on Highway 230.

Before heading back to the house we went looking for eagles.

 

 

Thursday, August 16

A day of rest from being in the truck. Since we weren’t going anywhere, I went to the backyard to take some pictures of Amanda’s flowers. Unfortunately, as is usual in Laramie, the wind was blowing pretty good. So I only got two photos.

Wednesday, August 15

We left the Best Western at 10:40 AM. It was 64 degrees and clear. Because I wanted something different for breakfast, we stopped at a small cafe in Sheridan. Tommy got a cinnamon roll and a pecan roll. The cinnamon roll had absolutely no taste and the pecan roll was stale. So we circled around and went to the Silver Skillet. Tommy got me another cinnamon roll. While the first few bites were pretty good, I found a hair baked in it. Yuck. Should have just gone for the usual McDonald’s.

Leaving Sheridan we saw this banner. Unfortunately (or maybe not), we were going to miss this festival.

On our way to Laramie we drove I90 to Gillette and then south. Along the way we saw these osprey and a jackalope.

Looking at the map when we got close to Douglas we saw that we were pretty close to the Ayres Natural Bridge. It’s a nice little park and would be a great place to picnic but pets aren’t allowed.

We drove through Sybille Canyon hoping to see some wildlife. Nope.

We got to Laramie at 6:20 PM.
4806 miles driven

 

Tuesday, August 14

We left the hotel at 11:15 AM; it was 61 degrees and smoky. We got gas, ice and breakfast and headed south. When we travel, if we can’t find a local cafe to get breakfast, we will go to McDonald’s. It is a pet peeve of mine to get an Egg McMuffin like this one. Is it really that hard to get the ham, cheese, egg and muffin centered?

On our drive down to Yellowstone, we saw this eagle. Majestic!

We drove to Yellowstone National Park. It obviously was pretty busy as the line to get in was 1/2 to 3/4 mile long.

We saw on the park map a 6 mile dirt road, so we took it. It was a nice drive but we had hoped to see some wildlife.

Back on the main road we did see some bison and some beautiful scenery.

After leaving the park, we drove through the Big Horn mountains on our way to Sheridan.

Along the way, we were stopped for road construction. You can’t really see from this photo, but just past where we were stopped, half of the road was gone.

We stayed the night in Sheridan at the Best Western. Tommy walked across the road to a food truck and brought hot dogs and brats.

4414 miles driven.

 

 

Monday, August 13

We woke up to another beautiful morning; it felt like Fall. When we left the hotel it was 55 degrees and clear. We gassed up and went to the Montana Nugget Casino again for breakfast. We planned on heading south. As we were leaving Kalispell, we found this beautiful church.

Fishing on Flathead Lake in Big Arm, MT.

After we left the lake area, which was pretty congested as it seemed to be a resort/tourist area, we came to the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. Beautiful! Unfortunately it was getting smoky again.

in St. Ignatius, MT:

Not far down the road we found a roadside stand selling cherries so, of course, we stopped. We bought some Lambert cherries. They were the best I’ve ever tasted. Yum!

Unfortunately, our route had us get on the interstate (I90) at Missoula until we got off at Drummond. We drove around the little town and found two small churches.

Of course we had to stop in Hall.

In Phillipsburg, MT, we found a couple of churches, a jail and a high school.

Just outside of town, we found a barn that had such pretty, rich-looking wood.

We got to the Yellowstone Pioneer Lodge in Livingston, MT at 7:30 PM. A problem with booking hotels online when traveling is you’re not really sure what the hotel looks like until you get there. When we pulled in the parking lot, Tommy said, “Kerry, I don’t think this is it.” We were the only auto in the parking lot. The hotel looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1970s.

4079 miles driven.