Badlands & Family fun!

July 22, 2021July 22, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

Left Custer State Park and headed towards Yankton where my cousin Lisa vacations. First stop Badlands after our #campgroundschef breakfast.

After leaving Badlands, we headed towards Yankton, SD to meet my aunt and cousins. My shame of the entire trip is that I was rated third at doing donuts (behind my Morgan age 16 and George). It was apparently so bad that it was rated a burnout and not even a donut. #roomfordonutimprovement

Custar State Park. Black hills

July 20, 2021July 20, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

We left devil’s tower early. We wanted to try some caves. (jewel and wind) but that was a Ringo bust. We got to Custer state park. What a surprise!

Needles eye tunnel, we pulled the mirrors in. 8 feet wide.

Then we headed to sylvan lake, what a lovely surprise.

Devil’s tower

July 19, 2021July 19, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

Primarily a travel day. We left Big Tetons and spent 9 hrs in Frank. I even legally traveled 81 mph! George says, I technically legally drove 80 miles per hour. The extra 1 MPH is just me living on the wild side. Devil’s Tower / Bears Teepee is a worthy visit. Check out their campground at the base of the tower.

Big tetons: Day 2

July 18, 2021July 18, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

Since Ringo can’t go on the trails, it was just torture sitting around thinking about all the good hikes we couldn’t take. Rather than just sit around in the campsite feeling sorry for ourselves, we decided to take a trip into Jackson Hole and re-provision and check if Jackson Hole still had a brewery. Mission accomplished and another scenic route traveled.

We showered up and we got another fine sunset on Mt. Moran from the campground. While sitting there, a bald eagle flew right in front of us. We both decided it was the closest either of us had seen an eagle in the wild. #cagesDontCount

For those of you concerned, Ringo is still running loose, but #notintheT@g.

Late night Ringo

July 17, 2021July 17, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

Woke up very early and got our Yellowstone on. Good thing! We pulled into the nearly empty Old Faithful parking lot at 8 and by 10am, the parking lot was full and we were hitting the road back to campground to switch sites.

While there, Ringo got to see old faithful from afar. And we took turns going into the inn. We visited the geyser basin too. I have lots of pictures of Yellowstone that just can’t convey how weird Yellowstone is. It’s the sounds, the smells the colors, the deep hot bubbling pools of water /mud that you just can’t capture in a picture.

Inside the old faithful inn. This place never ceases to amaze me. It’s like a tree house.

We got back to the campsite and then after lunch drove to the canyon. It was beautiful. We found a trail to the top of the waterfall that was really cool.

Sorry about my finger…

We had dinner and took Ringo for a walk around the Yellowstone Lake. Pretty sure this lake water made him sick. He’s had diarrhea every 2 hours every night since this photo, but at the time I took it, he was just another cute wet dog and we were dog owners without a care in the world.

First night in Yellowstone

July 16, 2021July 16, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

We left craters of the Moon and trraveled to Yellowstone NP. It was pretty easy driving but took about 5 hrs. We stopped at Cascades waterfall on the way to our campspot. Then we stopped dropped and rolled to another historic building, the Yellowstone Lake Inn. Somehow we missed this area on our last visit.

#CampgroundChef outdid himself with some tuna smothered with chimichuri with a side of rice and beans. We eat better in the campground than we do at home…

Craters of the moon

July 14, 2021July 14, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 2 Comments

We were going to stay a while longer in the Sawtooth mtns and Skip our Yellowstone reservations since dogs can’t hike in Yellowstone, but the smoke was so dense we couldn’t justify staying.

We got to craters of the Moon and wow! I 😍 volcanos. We slept in the lava field and took a perfect evening walk to the top of a cinder cone.

Two new things I saw were splatter cones and lava tubes/caves which were really cool.

We had a late dinner but check out this campsite. #campgroundschef made trout which was delicious.

Sawtooth mnts

July 14, 2021July 14, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

Woke up to gorgeous views and got good intel from a native in hikers. Woke up in sunny gulch with this cute t@g view. Then we drove to redfish Sandy Beach to catch the shuttle. Pics of lots of pointing.

We walked up the valley a ways before turning back to bench lakes. The hike was great but we probably all over heated a bit. Here are some of those amazing Sawtooth pics.

The Trail to bench lakes was super dusty with that fine grain dust. I tried to catch it in a picture. The horse flies were an added nuisance but we made it to the beach and even had a pretty amazing sunset at the campsite. All on all a fantastic day even though Ringo found a dead fish at the salmon River and decided to roll around on it. So, we had to wash him under the water pump. We’ve probably scarred him for life. Oh well.

Sawtooth Mtns Campground: Sunny Gulch

July 12, 2021July 12, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 2 Comments

Drove through the Redfish lake campgrounds even though they all said full… After striking out there, we moseyed over to sunny gulch campground and got a primo spot with a view.

The campground host laughed at us that we thought we would grab a spot in one of the 6 redfish campgrounds… Oh well. We are 2 miles from there. We Plopped our bums in the river and George worked since we have connectivity. We hit their laundry and showers. It was almost like we were there. Admin day. No pictures of our laundry but I assure you that we got everything done. Tomorrow we hike.

Sunny Gulch Campground fast fact: Sunny Gulch Campground has the nicest pit toilet you can hope to have. Leah, I have now experienced your pit toilet happiness experience.

Home is wherever I’m with you

July 11, 2021October 29, 2021 / rugreen4u4632 / 1 Comment

Finished up John Day Fossil and traveled to 10 Mile Campground outside of Boise in the Boise National forest.

Lovely evening. We parked our camp chairs in the creek and stuck our feet in the creek. The temp got to 104 on the way through Boise and I was happy to have Frank as our travel horse (sorry Veronica…)

Idaho tonight! Going, going, Ore-gone