Still Montana

October 30/07Montana...where the men are men and the sheep are nervous! We're still in Montana, Redneck Country...oops, I mean, Big Sky Country...didn't know there was so much to see and do here. We left Dillon in good time and headed south thinking we'd spend the day at ghost towns and then head through Yellowstone. Well, we ended up stopping at a rock shop in Ruby Valley and talking with the guy there. Seems there were garnets all over the place in this area...in fact, he took us out to his driveway and showed us tiny flecks of red stone crushed among the other stones. These were garnets. Well, we had to go mining again! We drove up to the Ruby Damn and walked along the shores there. With a little searching we managed to find some beautiful stones. Some are the size of a pea...others are just chips. Wonder if we can retire on a little bottle of garnets??? We actually got quite a nice handful of them.

After that we drove through Nevada City and Virginia City. Both were interesting...Nevada City was better. It is preserved and the buildings are full of things from the olden days...the barber shop is set up like an old time barber shop...the jail was interesting...beautiful old houses, etc. The town wasn't actually open...seems lots of places closed up here round about the 15th of October...so, we jumped the fence and went and had a look anyway. We couldn't go in the buildings of course, but could look in the windows. Got lots more pictures, but we haven't got wi-fi today so this message and the pictures will have to wait till be can find it.

We stopped at Livingston just above Yellowstone Park for the night. The weather has changed and is wet this morning, but the clouds are lifting and hopefully by the time we get to the park we'll be able to see the mountain tops. So far we've had spectacular weather...blue sky and sunshine...gets cold at night, but not that bad. We've got a good heater in the camper so stay cozy. There was quite a storm last night...wind almost blew the camper over....well, not quite. We're on our way so I'd better put the laptop away. It's kind of hard to type while we're driving. We're off to Yellowstone to see some wet buffalo and grizzly bears...hope the weather hasn't made them grouchy!
bye for nowT&C


October 30/07 Evening
Well, we had quite a day today. We started off in bad weather this morning and got to a little town near the north Yellowstone entrance called Gardiner. It was storming pretty bad...windy and raining like crazy. There was a souvineer/coffee shop open so we stopped and went in to wait out the storm a bit. Bought a few things, but the weather didn't get better. We figured we'd go ahead anyway. We went to Mamoth Falls first. There were elk all over the place...got a few pictures...then went to see the falls. They aren't really falls, but terraces where the hot water, full of lime, flows over the terraces and creates limestone deposits. It was pretty cool...or warm actually...all the water in the streams coming off the terraces was warm. We checked out the shops around there but didn't spend too much time. It was snowing lightly and kind of cold. Went south toward Old Faithful...saw lots and lots of buffalo. They were in the fields, on the road, in the forests...guess they are big enough they can go wherever they want. Awesome animals though..the snow was falling on them and some of the ones laying out in the fields were almost covered in white...they didn't seem to care.

We got to Old Faithful about half an hour before it was supposed to blow. Apparently it "burps" as Tom puts it, every 92 minutes. We went into the interpretive centre and watched a movie about Yellowstone...some pretty interesting facts. It was snowing when we went outside again and when Old Faithful blew, it was pretty interesting. We couldn't get pictures of it because of the snow and white background...couldn't really see the steam on the film so much, but we could see the clouds of steam while we were standing there. It was over in a couple minutes and we were back on the road. A few ravens in the parking lot...very well fed...they were big as turkeys!
We wanted to go south to Jackson Wyoming through the Tetons, but the road was closed. There was only a few inches of snow but I guess the passes further along were pretty snowy. Anyway, we'd seen what we wanted to anyway so headed out the west entrance of the park, back into Montana...from there we went south through Idaho. I'm not sure which state boasts the most rednecks...from what we saw it was pretty well equal. In the small towns in Montana it seems quite ok to drive your four wheeler down to the local saloon for a few drinks...in Idaho we went through places with names like Hog Hollow and Badger Creek. Going south along the west side of the Tetons was pretty nice. The countryside is like the Paloose country outside of Spokane...kind of rolling hills and lots of farms. Lots of potato farms. The mountains were beautiful...by this time the weather had cleared and was quite nice but some of the mountains were still hidden by fog. From a little town named Victor, Idaho, we went over a really steep pass and down into Jackson, Wyoming. The town of Jackson is really fun...old west meets ski resort! We'll spend some time tomorrow checking it out futher. We're staying in a parking lot at the info centre in town tonight since all the RV places are closed. It's nice to be self sufficient...can just pull off anywhere and stay if we like...tonight we like the parking lot by the info centre.

Well, Tom's got some burgers cooking and I've got to put this away so we can eat. There should be wi-fi somewhere here in town so can get these messages out on the blog.
bye for nowt&c