Wildflowers on the Beaver Ponds Trail

An after work/dinner hike on the Beaver Ponds Loop Trail. 5 miles roundtrip. I've never seen so many wildflowers. Absolutely gorgeous!

Bull elk coming to greet us.

Trail Creek Forest Service cabin

Mary reserved the Trail Creek National Forest Service cabin in the Gallatin National Forest for Saturday night. It's located between Emigrant and Bozeman off Trail Creek Rd.

The directions called for us to turn onto an old logging road. There warned us of a "small 6 inch" dip in the road. I guess all the rain we've been having has caused the ground to shift even more because it was at least a 1.5'. We had to leave the car parked off the side of the road and walk an extra half mile in because there was no way the car could cross.

The start of the trail. Notice the mudslide on the trail at the right: We had to scramble over this...not easy.

An old, abandoned homestead in the valley had us all imaging who lived here, when, why they left.

The only wildlife seen for the entire weekend was a large herd of elk. They were a little spooked by our presence and fled to the woods.

The cabin was supposed to be 1.9 miles. It seemed much longer.

We crossed over private property and through the woods...

Finally, we arrived! The cabin was cute and nestled at the edge of the forest. So fun!

The view from the front of the cabin:

A handy table/shelving unit folded out between the bunks:

A woodstove and split firewood waiting for us!

The cabin had 4 bunks.

After checking out the cabin, we headed outside to eat our dinner and create the best Smores over the fire using Chips Ahoy cookies instead of chocolate bar and graham crackers. Yum!

The trail was a little muddy! Kim dried her shoes out on the fire grate:

A few wildflowers were in bloom:

Exploring the surroundings:

Just past the cabin along the logging road...

After dark, we brought out the lantern and played Boggle and Kismet while snacking!

Early the next morning, we had a much easier hike out. We stopped at the Old Saloon for breakfast. Another great weekend...

Wes' Visit

I have a visitor from home!!! Wes came to spend a week in Yellowstone and it was great to see an old friend! I had to work the first 3 days of his trip so he went sight-seeing along the upper loop during the day while I worked.


Tuesday, we hiked Elephant Back and had a great view of Yellowstone Lake. Afterwards, we had lunch at Fishing Bridge General Store and drove back to Mammoth stopping along the way to take pics of flowers, wildlife and scenery.

Once we were back at Mammoth, we decided to head down to Boiling River to relax. Boiling River is where scalding hot water from natural hot springs flows into the cool Gardner River. It takes some time to find a spot that isn't too cool, and most importantly, not too hot.

Later that evening, Rebekah joined us for dinner at Rosie's in Gardiner.

Wednesday morningwe headed down to the Old Faithful area. We walked the Upper Geyser Basin and visited the Old Faithful Inn. We visited some other geyser basins and did a short hike to get an aerial view of Grand Prismatic Hot Spring. This night, we camped at Madison Campground and Wes went fishing for a while.

Thursday morning, bright and early, we headed for Grand Teton National Park. Along the way, we spotted this coyote:

Seeing the Tetons never gets old...

At Moose Junction in GTNP, we spotted 2 bull moose!! Here's one of them:

On the drive back to Lake Lodge, we stopped at Lewis Lake so Wes could do some more fishing. It was a beautiful sunset...

Friday morning, after breakfast at Fishing Bridge General Store, we went on a hike back to Riddle Lake.

It was a nice 2 mile stroll back to the lake through the forest. Fishing was not good this day because it was much too windy. But the view was nice:

We did some exploring of other areas of the park that Wes had not yet visited. The evening was spent enjoying the lake and geese: