Life on the High Plains

A couple weeks ago Diana and I went on an overnight trip to Cody, Wyoming via Cooke City, Montana.  Our trip took us through Lamar Valley, my favorite area of Yellowstone.  I was driving and Irv accidentally took both my "good" cameras home so all I had was my iPhone to take pictures with.  There were herds of bison and even a huge grizzly bear along our route.  No pictures though and that's okay because sometimes it's good to just take a mental snapshot and enjoy the moment. First stop was lunch in Cooke City at the Bear Tooth Café.  In this part of the country you always have to have a huckleberry soda. As we were driving through town Diana pointed out all the snowblowers on the roofs.  I have never even thought about getting snow off roofs.  I'll never live anywhere that a rooftop snowblower is needed. We stopped by the Range Rider Lodge in Silvergate which was supposedly a favorite hangout of Ernest Hemingway back in the day.  There is a Hemin...

 Sorry for my absence these last few weeks.  I have a few posts to catch up on. Earlier in August I ventured to Madison Meadows to view Yellowstone Revealed 2023, a modern exhibition of the evolution of the Teepee Village Madison Meadows is where the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers join to form the Madison River.  (Further downstream the Madison joins with the Gallatin and and Jefferson Rivers to form the Missouri River.)  In the background is National Park Mountain where a group of conservationists met in 1870 to discus the formation of the world's first national park.  Yellowstone was created two years later. Two native artists, Ben Pease and Sean Chandler, created modern teepees to tell the story of our shared past, present and future.  The artistic teepees were set among traditional teepees. It was the last day of the exhibition and they were about to start taking them down. I thought it was so beautiful especially with the bright blue sky. It was fun just t...

 After leaving Craters of the Moon we headed to our cabin at Eagle Ridge Ranch in Island Park, Idaho. We used to have Maloney Family Reunions here.  I think the last one was in 2013.  I always had a great time at the reunions at Eagle Ridge, but for some reason they have stopped or maybe the Bates family isn't invited anymore. We rented a little one bedroom cabin with a hot tub. The first order of business was cocktail hour by the campfire. I got the world's largest mosquito bite before it occurred to me that we should put insect repellent on. I absolutely love campfires.  I don't think Irv is a big fan, but he humored me and kept the fire going for a few hours. The next morning my darling took me for a rowboat ride.  It looked like hard work to me especially with the blowing wind. We rowed to the other side of the lake to check out the horses.  They didn't even acknowledge our existence. Then we walked over and checked out the horse corrals.  Horse ri...