From Greybull Wyoming to the top and then home.

My pictures for this part of the trip are finally up here.

From the Beartooth Mountains in Montana we came south through Lovell and to Greybull where we stopped to take a look at an airfield with a large number of old airplanes parked. This was the home of a company that used to be one of the largest owners of planes used for firefighting, crop dusting and seeding. And imagine my delight to discover my name - oh no it is their name emblazoned on the tail of a PB4Y-2, the Navy version of a B-24 parked right next to the fence. Hawkins and Powers is no longer in business due to two tragic accidents with C-130s during fire fighting chemical drops. Pictures of the airfield and all that is left of the collection is here. Oh Hawkins is my maiden name which made it a fun discovery.

From Greybull we continued up US 14 through Shell where there is an impressive waterfall and its deep narrow canyon of smooth rock walls (pictures in the US 14 photo album on Picasa) and up to the top of the north end of the Bighorn Mountains. Again we drove through undulating landscape that hardly looked like the tops of mountains. We found a place to camp at Tie Flume campground.
The story of how the camp ground got its name is fascinating. I am not good at dates, but during the building of the rail roads a flume (water flowing in a wood trough also used at grist mills and the like) was built by hand from this location all the way to Sheridan Wyoming to transport railroad ties which were cut from the forests on top of these mountains. What a feat. Tie Flume is a National Forest Campground with graveled parking spaces well away from your closest neighbor, good water from a pitcher pump well and acceptable pit toilets. This building had LED lights on them so they were easy to find in the dark. Unlike in the south the garbage cans here were heavy duty bear proof jobs with complicated mechanisms a bear could never get his big paws into even if he figured out what was needed. As we parked the "Silver Dog House" we could hear cattle bawling in the not too far distance. Driving the road into the campground we had to wait for cattle to get out of the way, we should have know, it was pretty obvious, that this campground was on an actively grazed open range. The cattle even wandered through camp. Our other camps had been on open range but the cattle were kept out in part by rail fencing plus we just happened to be there at a time when the immediate areas were not actively grazed. Mule Deer also habituated the Tie Flume camp ground. This was our least favorite camp site but since the cattle slept at night they were quiet then. We missed having a stream running right by the site but it was heavily covered with Lodgepole pine.

From here we explored US 14A without the trailer on the day before we were to collect our three month old puppy, Duncan. Who is now seven months old and banging my elbow with his nose as I try to type this. We traveled west on US 14A. The part of 14A that descends to the Basin below has long 10% slopes which we had been advised to stay off of it with our trailer. It is the direct way to Lovell where we needed to go to get Duncan the tomorrow and we want to know just how bad this road is. Most of it is level road either on top of the mountain or in the Bighorn Basin. It is a beautiful drive. East of the Medicine Wheel we found a patch of snow and some wildflowers blooming around it. There was a parking area here with a foot trial west to an old abandoned mine. East of the road a horse trail through the flowers lead to the top of a steep slope. We chose east through the flowers and climbed high above the road on a great hill side of grazed alpine meadow. There are pictures in the Picasa. From the top of the hill we looked east to miles of pastured meadow rolling into the distance and to the west we could see into the Bighorm Basin. Below the road but still on top of the mountain, a flock of sheep gathered around a copse of conifers in the distance. A pair of horses with halters, so not wild as one tourist excitedly declared, grazed just below the road. They likely belonged to the shepherds.

From here we continued on to the Medicine Wheel. An FAA installation is also located off the same road on top of Medicine Mountain. From its high location it can peek through a gap in the mountains to the west to control the communications of aircraft over a great area. The Medicine Wheel is located on top of a Medicine Mountain. Access is from a parking lot a mile and a half off the 14A and then by foot another mile and a half up a road that is accessible to handicapped and American Indians by vehicle if requested.

The Medicine Wheel is an ancient holy site of the American Indians who come from all over the country to pray and make offerings. Open to the public all visitors are urged to walk around the circle to the left and to respect the site as you would any holy site. American Indians have priority and may request to have the site closed to the public for a ceremony with no advance notice.

My pictures of the Medicine Wheel do not do it justice. It helps to have an advantage of greater height than standing on the ground. As we walked a storm was approaching from the north and made our stay a bit shorter than I would have liked and not very relaxed. I would like to visit on a day when the weather was not trying to chase us away. I walked around the wheel twice once taking pictures the second time trying to get a feel of the place. Though it was interesting I unfortunately got no personal feeling of a Spiritual presence. Clearly others had.

The storm finally chased us back down the mile and a half road with thunder crashing over our heads and the lightening blessedly farther away down the valley behind us. We waited out part of the storm in the little building erected for the Forest Service volunteers, at the parking lot, along with other visitors and then made a dash for the truck. We sat and watched as snow and then hail fell on us, praying that there was no large hail where the "Silver Dog House" was parked. As the storm passed we started down the road toward US 14A and the trial run down to Lovell.

The drive was quite an adventure. Much of it in second gear to keep our speed down so we would not have to use a lot of braking for the sharp switch backs. At one spot there were tire marks on the pavement and signs of impact with the wall of the mountain. We passed a number of 18 wheelers coming up the road so we figured if they can do it so can we - course they have big diesel engines and we have a small gas engine. We had learned much by listening to lots of people who had driven this before. With low gear and brakes applied only in short hard bursts not over long distances they were only warm at brake check stops as we went down. We did stop at the Brake Cooling Turnout on the map and spent time there because the view was great. There was one wide place in the road on the outside which was protected by high fences where we also stopped to check the brakes and enjoy the view. The driver had little other opportunity to enjoy the scenery as his concentration had to be on the road. Coming back up we passed several vehicles whose brakes smelled way too hot.

We spent only a little time in the basin before the return back the way we came. Ate dinner in an unfamiliar fast food place and Discovered the most divine candy shop. Queen Bee candy company makes candy from the local honey. The irrigated fields in the Basin produce a huge crop of alfalfa hay and the accompanying honey. The trip back up definitely had a lot less pucker power, but it would be a real job to haul the Silver Dog House up. Not this trip thankfully. However driving the route again the next day to pick up Duncan was going to be OK.

The next day we collected Duncan from the desert. That evening his crate was siting on the ground beside the steps into the trailer. When it started to get dark he just went in the crate and put himself to bed. What a surprise. We were told we could spoil him and let him ride on our laps all the way home if we wanted, to aid bonding. He preferred to ride in his crate. He turned out to be a great traveler, no complaint, no accidents. His only problem was that on the first night on the top of the mountain the poor pup nearly froze. He was used to 100 degree temps during the day and certainly a lot warmer than the 37* it fell to that night. He did not have a blanket to curl up with and I could hear him moving around in his crate during the night. In the morning he was shivering pretty hard so I wrapped him up in one of Husbands coats and hugged him until he warmed up.

The next morning we headed White One pulling the Silver Dog House east for home. We had three LONG days on the road. The first night we stayed at a city park at Medora, North Dakota just outside of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. The next night was at a Wal-Mart parking lot in Superior Wisconsin, right next to the Burlington Northern track - that was noisy! The third was back in our friends yard in the U.P. There Duncan learned to manage a long flight of steps and had the shock of his life. Duncan is a desert raised dog and got to go for a swim in Lake Michigan. Well he just dabbled. It was a bit much for him. A month later when we returned to Lake Michigan at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore he discovered he LOVED the water. From the U.P home was the shortest day's drive of the return trip.