Tahoe and Montana again

We had a wonderful time in Tahoe. The weather was perfect (although a bit too cold to swim) and we did some nice hikes and bike rides. There are so many trails!  My favourite trail was definitely the Flume Trail--such amazing views!! It started at Incline Village and, after a bit of a climb, ran along the side of the mountain. The trail was fairly narrow (although not narrow enough to worry about falling off) so there was mountain on one side of you and a drop off on the other. Great views...not so great if you're afraid of heights.
I find climbs on my bike to be quite a struggle so I didn't weight myself down with my camera. However, our friend Dave generously shared his iPhone photos with me so you can get an idea of what it was like.

The biker in the first photo is Ute, Dave's wonderful partner from Germany. Dave and Luke met about 25 years ago at the mountain biking World Cup at Mount Snow in Vermont. We met up with Dave and Ute in Tahoe and it had been about 20 years since Luke and Dave had seen each other. They both said they look exactly the same as they did back then :)
The lake is quite low because of the mild winter California had this year. We tried to swim twice but each time the water never got higher than our knees--you would have to walk out quite a distance to get deeper!
After we left Tahoe we drove back up through Nevada to spend time in Idaho. Up until then it had been a mature, dignified trip however I managed to convince Luke to stop in Elko Nevada so we could see the biggest taxidermy polar bear "White King". He was over 10 feet tall and now can be seen in a 'historic' casino. Here's me with White King:

I missed out on the dino park in Ogden and seeing the bizarro 2 ton statue of a sphinx with Mormon church founder Joseph Smith's face....so I was happy to get in this bit of kitsch.

We ended up in Twin Falls Idaho for a night, then drove up to Sun Valley/Ketchem. We had a great campsite in the Sawtooth National Forest. We did a fun bike trail called Curlys and I got some more practice climbing (it feels like I'll never get better at it...but I'm trying). The best moments of that trail were two large owls that flew in front of us and 4 fox pups that are living under a porch at the bottom of the trail.
There is a bike tour you can do in that area that's 500 miles with over 50 hot springs on the route. That is unfinished business too.

We drove up to Butte Montana and on the way we spotted a number of bikers riding the Great Divide Race. Luke has followed this race for a few years and is seriously considering entering it next year. The race goes from Banff to the Mexico border. Luke took some great photos of the riders.

We're now in Helena Montana. It's crazy beautiful here too. Our next plan over the next couple of weeks is to drive up to Banff and Jasper, then make our way up to Whitehorse Yukon.

Reno and Tahoe and animals

We've spent almost a week in Tahoe and we'll be here until the end of next week. It's been nice staying in one place for a bit and there are so many trails to hike and bike and so many places to swim. I haven't taken any photos yet, but I will before we head out.
We spent a couple of days in Reno before coming to Tahoe. Both Luke and I like Reno a lot more than expected (I thought it would be like nasty Las Vegas). It's a very outdoorsy city with lots of mountains and desert...and a sprinkling of casinos.
My main update is about a couple of cute animal interactions we've had lately. The first was in Midway Utah, where there was a squirrel who was not shy about seeing if there was extra food around the campsite. She came around a bit shyly at first, but quickly figured out that we're both softies and soon enough she was eating from our hand. I tried to take a shot of this, but I just missed the moment by a second:

This is a shot of Luke looking happy that he's converted yet another creature to a be a fan of Mexican food (we were feeding her tortilla chips, which she liked very much)

While in Reno, we were relaxing in the shade of a tree in a park when three ducks (a mallard and two lady ducks) came over, also looking for food. We didn't have much that was suitable for ducks, but they awkwardly ate the dried fruit we offered (also taking the food from our hand) and then settled down for a midday nap.

Luke hangin' with his duck peeps

My mom was extraordinary with animals--they could sense something about her and would always be drawn to her.  Being Italian, she would usually feed them too. I sometimes wondered if she wasn't the reincarnation of St.Francis of Assisi. So as we fed these guys it felt a little like we were carrying on her legacy.

Jackson Wyoming, Park City Utah, Ogden Utah, Nevada

We spent a day in Jackson Wyoming, a very cute town with fantastic mountains just outside of the Grand Teton National Park. This was our (free) campsite:

You can't tell from this photo, but those tents are at the edge of a cliff looking down on large flat area, part of which is an elk nature preserve. You can see it a bit better in this photo:

We found bear paw prints right next to our site, but we didn't have any problems.

After Jackson, we drove to Park City Utah, which is an extremely affluent, very cool mountain resort town about 30 minutes outside of Salt Lake City. There are piles and piles of trails, all going up into the piles of mountains surrounding the city. Nothing is flat there. Even the easiest trail was hard biking for me.
Here's a photo.

We stayed at a campground in Midway, just down the road from Park City. FYI there is a sweet looking hot springs in Midway, one of which is under a limestone dome. I didn't realize it was there in time, otherwise I definitely would have gone. I will go the next time I'm in the area, because I have some unfinished business with a bike trail that's beyond me right now. Luke rode a trail that had a mining ghost town way up in the mountains that I need to ride.
However, this large rattlesnake we came across on the road almost made up for it.

Here it is on the road, where you can see its size and the meal halfway down its body.

After this, we went to Ogden Utah. It is a great nature area with mountains (of course) and rivers and lakes but since it was the weekend it was too busy for our liking. We stayed a night in a campground and did a ride and then started making our way across Nevada.
The drive to Reno was more interesting than I expected. The Bonneville Salt Flats were huge...it goes on for miles and miles. I also really enjoyed watching the trains going through the area.

That's all for now! We'll be in the Northern California area for the next few days.

More Yellowstone...and more!

It's been a few days since posting, so I have a bit of catching up to do!

I forgot to include this in the first post: This is one of the handouts they gave us at the gate:

While in Yellowstone, we checked out some of the small caldaras and mud volcanos that spew sulfur gas and boil the water and mud within them.

Here's a shot of the beautiful river and colours in the rocks in one of the canyons.

And here's a happy me across the way from Luke at the look-out point for the canyon.

A lovely shot of the Lower Falls.

And just in case you think that all we saw were bison, here's an elk having a snack by the roadside.

Probably my favourite part of Yellowstone was when we got to the southern part of the park (past the loop where all the famous stuff is). There's still a lot of snow higher up in the mountains at that time of year and as the road climbed high we ended up in a section where the snow was still over a meter high (although the road was nicely plowed). There was a fantastic raging river up there too and I wish I had taken a photo...but we were running out of daylight and had to get to a campsite.

We stayed in the Grand Teton National Park, which has a picturesque mountain chain. I was photoed out at this time, so here's an internet photo if you care to see what I mean:

http://www.globeimages.net/img-grand-teton-national-park-photo-us-7867.htm

Next stop: Jackson Wyoming

Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

We drove through Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks on Saturday. The scenery and wildlife were amazing but the amount of tourists was off-putting (and it isn't primetime yet). Here's some of what we saw:

Me looking at bison

Luke looking at bison

The bison looking at us

There was a funny incident that happened soon after this field of bison. There are signs all over warning people of wildlife being on the road and there was a group of 7 or so bison crossing the road. Naturally this stopped traffic:

By the time the second-to-last bison got onto the road there were some people who had lost their patience and they were trying to push past in their cars. So, this is what the bison did:

If you look closely you'll see that, while the bison was staying on the road until his last bison friend (not shown) could get across, he had taken a dump right in front of that car who had wanted to drive past him. That bison has spunk!
As the last two were crossing, the car behind us (we were first in line and had left about 50 feet space ahead to give the bison their space) drove up ahead of us and drove their bumper right up to the bison (within a couple of feet!!) and the passenger's hand stuck out with their camera to take shots. The nerve of some people :(

That's all there's time for now. There will be a Yellowstone Part 2 soon!

Montana Paradise

We stayed a couple of days in Bozeman Montana--so fantastic!! It is so very beautiful there. Take a look!

They have a very cute and boutique-y downtown as well. We stayed at the Battle Ridge campground (which was free!):

There are a number of trails in the area. I hiked part of the Bangtail Divide Trail:

Luke and a couple of guys we met at the campground biked the trail (I would have but I'm not in good enough shape yet to take on that kind of ride). It turned out that a big chunk of the middle of the trail still had waist-high snow since it's so high up. They had to walk through it while carrying their bikes until eventually they gave up and found a way to get down the mountain again.

We're in Jackson Wyoming now, at a coffee shop called Cowboy Coffee. We drove through Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Parks yesterday. I still have to upload the photos onto my computer, but you'll get an eye full next time!