Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

Well this is our last National Park for awhile, this will make our 11th National park we have visited since we started out this year in January.  Don’t ask me which one is my favorite!

 

This is rut season for the Elk and we got to see lots of them.  This was a large “harem” of  female  elk with the bull watching over them carefully.

Snow was starting to fall at this altitude and had closed the roads just a week earlier.  On this day we could only see for a short distance due to the clouds and some snow showers.  These young elk just appeared up out of the fog.

 

The next day was beautiful and the late evening sky with the mountains was awesome.

Well, I might have to say that Rocky Mountain N P could have been my favorite park….maybe?????  They all have something special about them and we hope to visit them many more times.

Cody, Wyoming & Buffalo Bill Museum 9-15-11

  The Irma Hotel was named for Buffalo Bill’s daughter Irma.  Inside the hotel is like stepping back in time, most of it is original furnishings.

 

The town of Cody has lots  of  stores with anything western you can think of from saddles to spurs.

 

On to the Buffalo Bill center and this place is huge, at least 3 buildings.  (Note to Ms. Jerri:  You just thought the airplane museum was bad, try this place with him!)

Everything Buffalo Bill exist here and he was quite a man. 

The following pictures are just a few of the things inside the museum.

 

  To much info to absorb! Wow!

On to Virginia City, Montana and Nevada City, Montana 9-13-11

Virginia City was once a booming place, but  is now just an old ghost town.  It was one of those gold boom era places.   There are several old buildings still around and some have a few gift shops.

Jerry did find the old Telephone Co. building. Looks like the operator is still there!

Inside the drygoods store was a little bit of everything.  Sure am glad we don’t have to wear those corsets these days! Yikes!

 

Of course there was a few hangings here also. This guy was known as Pegleg George.   This was in Nevada City, just a few miles from Virginia, City.

Some of the old gold dredging equipment was abandoned and left to just rust away.

Leadore, Idaho 9-11-11

Our next stop was in Leadore, Id  a very, very small ranching community.  

The stop here included Mike and Deb  (a.k.a. Coldsmoke).  They had worked here on one of the huge ranches and invited us to join them for a few days.

So we boondocked and looked for deer and elk and fished.  We had a great time with them and we even caught some trout, so one night we fried them up and had a great meal together.

Glacier National Park 9-06-11

 

After many years of hearing about The Going to the Sun Road we finally made it to Glacier N.P.  The scenery is awesome and is one of the highest points in the northern Rockies.

If you don’t like heights it could get a little hairy at some of the spots along the road and road construction can slow down the trip for a couple of hours, but we were in no hurry.

The scenery more than makes up for the delays.

The Lake McDonald Lodge is a wonderful old hunting lodge, with all the old lodgepole pine  timbers and huge fireplace.

The old Jammers were fun to see, in fact we met a gentleman looking over one  of the vehicles and he was  reliving the days when he drove them for the park back in 1956 when he was 20yrs. old!  He had some great stories to tell about those days.

  The bighorn sheep were out when we came back over the mountains which was a treat to get to see them that close.