Old Faithful

Old Faithful under full moon at 7:40 pm. Forgot my tripod, but it turned out pretty well.

Entering Yellowstone National Park

My most memorable family vacation when I was young was 3-days spent in Yellowstone park when I was 12-years old. We were able to bring Ben here when he was 12 years old and he says that it was his most memorable family vacation. Charlcie and I are fortunate and so excited to spend some time here again - this visit with no schedule, so we are going to take upwards of two weeks here to take in as much as we can. If you've never been here, you need to make plans to come and spend at least a week fully enjoy this most magnificent park. Since there is very limited cell coverage and no wi-fi availability, contact with friends and family and postings to the blog will be sporadic, depending on where we are and if worthwhile to wonder outside the park. Today we are in the very cool town of West Yellowstone to take care of contacts, blog, showers, laundry, and to visit the four famous fly-shops(?). First moose sightings - two cows just inside the park Fall colors are arriving The bull is just out of the picture, napping in the shade This guy and his harem are wondering around in our campground area - they are in rut so it is wise to be alert and keep your distance Watched this fella for awhile and couldn't figure if he was eating the tree or just scratching his neck At Mammoth Springs; when you're hungry, who cares if you have to stop traffic?

Three Dollar Bridge: Madison River - Montana

The Madison River gets its start with the convergence of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers in Yellowstone National Park (in front of the Madison Campground where we are camped for the first days in the park). This is one of the iconic fly-fishing rivers and it runs north to near Bozeman, MT. One of the more storied fly-fishing destinations is the Three Dollar Bridge, which we surprisingly learned was on our path to Wade Lake. I was giddy to be able to fish there for about 4 hours and although I only caught a few small rainbow trout, it was a fantastic experience to be able to fish this classic water.

Wade Lake; western Montana

On recommendation from Derek DeYoung, we spent a couple of nights at this small lake in western Montana. We pretty much had the campground to ourselves most of the time. Although the fishing was non-productive from the bank, we nevertheless enjoyed watching the wildlife and just relaxing on the shore of this beautiful, clear lake. On the way down from Livingston, we clipped the northwest corner of Yellowstone and then headed west, past Hegben Lake (famous for very large trout), Quake Lake (formed when a massive earthquake in 1959 resulted in a landslide that created a natural dam). Just beyond these lakes, we headed over the Three Dollar Bridge, across 7 miles of dusty, rough road thru Three Dollar Ranch to the lake. Quake Lake Landslide from the 1959 Earthquake Wade Lake River otters on their evening feeding run across the lake Aspens are starting to turn

Paradise Valley, MT

We enjoyed the Livingston area so much we extended our stay at the KOA in Paradise Valley. Also, the weather was cold and rainy for a couple of days so it was convenient to stay and dry out a little. That, and the fact we were able to go in to Livingston to the Chop House to watch the Razorbacks defeat Georgia! I was able to sneak in a couple of hours fishing on the last cold, windy evening - caught a bunch of whitefish, but did get a 14" brown, which was a nice conclusion to the day.