Before we could EVEN get serious about our travels, we headed back to Caldwell, ID so as to retrieve our bicycles from our storage unit. A couple of days there got us a very nice catch-up visit with Jim & Stacy Camara (former co-workers, from another life seemingly far, far away). Bicycles in the rack, it was onward & upward.
Our first planned gig was to stay in the megalopolis of W. Yellowstone, MT and check out the area other than Yellowstone National Park (we had pretty well covered that on two prior trips). Jeanne found Baker’s Hole Campground just 3 miles outside of town, a National Forest Service campground in the Gallatin National Forest. This was a scenic little campground right on the Madison River and actually had some limited sites with electric hook-ups. It was heavily forested but we actually got a site with enough open sky to get non-HD satellite reception. (Note: this campground fills very fast, it is suggested you get here well before noon if you intend to get a spot with electric. I particularly liked site #22, a long, pull through with probably enough open sky for satellite reception). They had water spigots scattered about the campground, as well as pit toilets, but no sewer connections or dump station on site. The interior roads were pretty skinny & tight, but I think I managed to navigate them without destroying the 40’ beast’s paint job. We got set up, reconnoitered the campground, the Madison River and downtown, and generally settled in for the next 4 days. It appeared to me that the Madison River is a pretty big deal in the fly fishing world (take heed, Paul Sullivan!) and there was no shortage of fishing guide outfits in town.
Our home, Baker’s Hole Campground 
Pretty forested, wouldn’t you say? 
Interior road view of the campground 
A typical back-in site 
The Madison River next to our campground 
Fly fishin’, anyone? 
A bit of snow left on the mountains… 
This lone soldier has a nice mountain view… 
A look downtown, W. Yellowstone 
Lingering snow packs in town 
The local constabulary… 
Inside the Buffalo Bar, W. Yellowstone 
Now, why do they call it the Buffalo Bar? 
This character would have looked good on my barbecue… 
Wisdom, Buffalo Bar style
Our big adventure day we chose to take a bit of a driving tour (200+ miles roundtrip). The first leg of the trip took us from our campsite on Hwy. 191 north to Hwy. 287, then to the areas of Hebgen Lake and Earthquake Lake. Hebgen Lake was beautiful and fairly large. Unfortunately, a sign posted at the lake informed us that during certain times a green algae pops up making the water toxic to humans and pets. I guess looks can definitely be deceiving. Continuing north on Hwy. 287, just a stone’s throw from Hebgen, we found Earthquake Lake. It seems back in 1959 a 7.5 quake hit the area near midnight causing a massive landslide which blocked off the river in what was called Madison Canyon, creating Earthquake Lake. It was a local catastrophe, 28 people died, about 250 folks (campers in the area and residents) were trapped/stranded as the roads were destroyed by the quake. The new “dam” caused the Madison River to morph into Earthquake Lake, gaining about 9’ of depth per day for about 3 weeks, to its eventual size of 5 miles long and about 190’ deep.
Lake Hebgen 
The highway runs alongside Lake Hebgen 
Let me guess, “Don’t drink the water?” 
Earthquake Lake 
A little Earthquake Lake history… 
Views along the drive. Can you spot the beast? 
OK, now can you spot the beast?
At the small town of Ennis, Hwy. 287 forked off and took us to the two small Montana ghost towns of Virginia City and Nevada City. These are not true “ghost towns” in the strictest sense of the phrase. Nevada City is a group of salvaged buildings that had been relocated and grouped together on the site they now occupy, and is a tourist attraction that at the time of our visit was not open for the season yet. However, we were able to walk about the exterior and at least see the structures from the outside, all in all still interesting to see.
Virginia City is a different type of ghost town. There are numerous currently operating businesses interspersed among “ghost town” structures & businesses throughout the downtown area. Many of the “ghosties” had open doors which gave us views of the interiors as they had operated back in their days. There was also a small “boot hill” cemetery perched on a hill overlooking downtown. Both of these ghost towns are nowhere near anything like normal ghost towns such as Bodie, CA, but are still fun to explore.
Our driving tour continued as we backtracked to Ennis, then continued on the main spur of Hwy. 287 up to Norris, turned east on Hwy. 84 to Four Corners where we started south back on Hwy. 191. Our destination was the town area of Big Sky, MT and along this part of Hwy. 191 we were treated to some beautiful scenery as the highway follows along the Gallatin River. We even happened upon a stretch where we could watch some white water rafters.
This guy was watching the rafters as well…
Upon our arrival to Big Sky, after a short break for lunch at the Lone Peak Brewery & Taphouse, we headed off for Ousel Falls. The trail to the falls was well constructed, well maintained, fairly busy, and pet friendly, so Woodrow Wilson got to stretch his legs and lead us on the short jaunt (1.6 miles) to the falls. The trail had some brief, minor elevation changes, but nothing difficult and no obstacles/rock scrambling. Again, beautiful scenery, worth the effort, but I have to say it was not one of the most spectacular waterfalls we have ever seen.
The trail was very well maintained. 
There were several of these bridges crossing the river. 
This was a frozen waterfall along the side of the canyon, I assume a spring fed fall… 
The frozen falls from farther up the trail. 
Ousel Falls, looking down from above… 
Ousel Falls, looking up from below…
On our return to the campground, it was time to re-arrange our travel plans. At our last travel day we encountered issues with one of the bedroom slideouts. It appeared the dual motors were not operating in sync. If you know me or have been following this blog at all you already know that I am fairly incompetent in “the ways of the wrench”. So how the heck do I fix this sync thing?!? Well, by golly, when in the dark, find the light, in this case go to the good ol’ standby…the Tiffin RV Network (tiffinrvnetwork.com). Bazillions of topics, comments, common problems, common fixes, etc. posted by Tiffin owners. Lo, and behold, there I found a step-by-step on how to re-sync the slide motors. On moving day, I followed the step-by-step and son of a gun the slide seemed to return to sync. This came with a big “BUT”, as we have recently also encountered a God-awful metallic grinding at the beginning of retraction for that very same slideout. Even in sync, the grind remained. So instead of our formerly planned short travel days here and there through Wyoming toward South Dakota, we decided to change to a straight shot into Rapid City. From W. Yellowstone we headed into Sheridan, WY and took a 4 day respite to check out the area and in the meantime make an appointment for someone to check out the grinding. Jeanne located a mobile RV tech in the Rapid City area and made contact with him to arrange for the diagnosis/repairs. Our 4 day stay in Sheridan, WY will be covered in the next blog post, so stay tuned…