On Sunday afternoon July 20, we took a short 15 minute drive into the mountains to the trail head for a short mile long hike to the world’s largest periodic springs. The scenery was gorgeous as we hiked along the rushing scream flowing down into the valley below. On the other side of the stream there was a large pipeline carrying water for the town below from the Damn that we would hike pass.
On Sunday night July 13th, we arrived at Star Valley Ranch RV Park. This is a lovely RV resort park nestled between mountains. It will be our home for the next 3 weeks until August 1st. When we leave here, we will spent quality time in Yellowstone and maybe Grand Tetons. We will visit Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks on our way back to our home inVail, AZ.
Every morning from 9 – 11 am, between 20 to 40 players gather to play Pickleball. The Pickleball Club now numbers about 75 members. The Pickleball Club has raised the funds to finish off 4 Pickleball Courts on a former concrete tennis court. They plan to finish 4 more courts in the near future. This is an all volunteer effort by the members with support from the ranch management.
The quality of play is very good. They use a system of paddles lined up along the fence to determine who goes out next to play. Two Paddles grouped together indicate that these players are playing as a team. Each player typically puts his first name on his paddle. The novice players usually avoid playing with the “team” players.
We have joined a group to kayak on Mondays. They go to different places each week. We are excited about kayaking the rivers in the region.
Yesterday, we did take our Kayaks about 15 miles into Idaho to paddle the Palisades Reservoir. Again, everything here seems nestled in the mountains. Wonderful views all around!
Milly has been invited to go horseback riding in the mountains. I’ll pass on that.
This place is located about an hours drive from Jackson, WY. If you drive a little further, you are in Grand Tetons. Drive still further up the road and you are in Yellowstone National Park
This might just make a good place to spent summers! Day temperatures are in high 80’s and the nights are cool. The people live outside a lot so you meet them. There is an 18 hole executive golf course with free green’s fees to lot owners. I might get tempted to give it a try.
We are tempted to buy a RV lot here. Seems like a great place!
This travel day was one of the most spectacular drives of our life. A great variety of terrains and views entertained us as we drove from Cody, WY through Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons National Park to get to Star Valley, WY. Our plan was to drive up the scenic Chief Josephs highway into reach the Northeast Yellowstone entrance. We wanted to get a feel for the two national parks (Yellowstone and Grand Tetons) where we planned to spend more time at the end of our trip. We knew it would take to 4 to 5 hours to drive straight through. That gave us a few hours for stops along the way.
As with all plans, we had to adjust when we headed in wrong direction. We were on road to Yellowstone East entrance by mistake. We decided to take advantage and visit Buffalo Bill Dam on the outskirts of Cody. This Dam is one of the world’s tallest Dams. It provides much of the water for this region.
We drove up Chief Josephs highway . The climb up through the rising mountain passes and switchbacks gave us great views. The story boards at Dead Indian Pass gave us a history lesson about the last of the Indian wars. We arrived at Cook City in Montana just before we reached the Northeast Gate to Yellowstone. Cook City appeared to be a quiet small tourist tone nicely appointed for this task. We only stopped for gas before heading into Yellowstone.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic area as we drove though Yellowstone from the northeast gate to the Grand Tetons. We went by the Lamar Valley where there is much wild life to see ( we did see a lot of buffalo herds). We passed the canyons and Yellowstone Lake.
We stopped at the Grand Tetons Visitor Center. We got kayaking information for future visits when we take day trips up from Star Valley during our 3 week stay there.\
After a fairly long drive to Cody, WY from Custer State Park area of SD, we pulled into the local Walmart that allowed RV’s to park overnight. It ended up being our home for 2 nights. Thank you Walmart!
After dinner, a storm rolled in with extremely high winds that seemed to rock our camper. We had been told that Cody can have high winds and we experienced them. Then it started to pour. We diced to postpone our trip to the Cody Night Rodeo to the next night.
In the morning, we were about the first visitors to the Buffalo Bill Museum. This is a wonderful place! We spent most of the morning walking though the Buffalo Bill part. There is a huge sub museum devoted to firearms that we barely got the chance to quickly walk through. why? We were tired on being on our feet! We went back to the camper and Fred took a nap.
We booked reservations at a Cowboy Dinner Show combination that included admission to the Cody Night Rodeo. The food was served chuck wagon style all you could eat. The musician cowboys played quiet enthusiastically. It was very entertaining.
The Rodeo was fun! It was our second rodeo. We had attended one of the nights of the annual Tucson Rodeo last year.
This was a beautiful drive particularly for someone who had not taken these roads before!
It all started with a road construction backup right outside of Custer. We had to travel on “dirt” hard pack road for a few miles. Once we got by those conditions, the rest of the trip was uneventful.
We arrived at our KOA campground just close to Custer, SD. This was centrally located for all the various excursions around and in Custer State Park.
Our first full day, our first stop was visiting Crazy Horse Memorial. This was built and operated by a privately funded non-profit organization. The history, cooperation and involvement of the Indians and sculptor’s family was highlighted in the nicely done exhibits.
Our next stop was our visit to Mount Rushmore. Fred had visited this with his family in the early 50’s. He remembers dirt roads and the famous faces of Mount Rushmore. Much has changed around these faces. New were the museum exhibits, the beautiful entry walk ways and walks as well as the parking garages. All the enhancements greatly added to the impressive Faces of Mount Rushmore.
The roads in the Black Hills leading to and way from Mount Rushmore were almost as impressive. The were narrow winding roads with impressive views of the hills and occasionally a slightly different view of the Faces. There were two tunnels that we went though as we were to exit the second tunnel we saw that the tunnel exit perfectly framed the Mount Rushmore Faces.
Early on the morning of the 2nd full day in Custer, SD, we headed to kayak on Stockade Lake not realizing the history lesson we were about to get. Stockade Lake was formed by damming the local streams. It seems that this was the place where the Black Hills Gold Rush started. The gold had been found in these streams. At one end of the lake there was a Stockade fence protecting about 8 or so cabins inside its borders. It seems that a prospector’s group violated the terms of the treaty with the Indians by occupying this land. They built this secret compound to protect themselves while they hunted for gold.
We were able to kayak almost up to the front entrance of this compound since the water was running high.
The area around and In Custer State Park was very beautiful and serene. We tried to extend our stay an extra day but our site had been reserved for that date.
We didn’t see as many animals as we expected. We met people who told us this was unusual.
