Really beautiful country up here.\u00a0 The drive last night and this morning was lovely – up the Salmon River, then over through the Nez Perce<\/strong> battle country to Montana fly fishing country…\u00a0 Lovely, but there sure is a lot of it.\u00a0 I’ve spent about $580 on fuel and I’m only about halfway done.\u00a0 $4\/gallon diesel is killing me.<\/p>\n

Anyway…the reason I’m taking this particular route rather than some other was to camp at the fascinating ghost town of Bannack<\/strong>.\u00a0 On the 2002 trip I passed through here and still remember how inviting the campground looked.\u00a0 So, I roll in about 4PM on a sunny Saturday, kinda jangly from a lot of driving – really<\/em> ready to stop, and … FAIL<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 There is some kind of Masonic gathering happening here, commemorating something I didn’t quite get.\u00a0 The point of this park is to preserve the old west town of Bannack, a short walk from the CG.\u00a0 So the place is crawling with Masons, and the campground is full full full.\u00a0 It does look very inviting still, and to camp there on a quiet evening and walk around the ghost town at sunset is still a goal of mine, but it ain’t happening on this trip.<\/p>\n

So, back in the saddle, to drive on to Dillon<\/strong>.\u00a0 The downtown is quaint old west in a decaying kind of way, but the edges are mining and industrial … with the beautiful Madison River<\/strong> flowing nearby, so there’s the occasional upscale fly fishing shop also.\u00a0 funny combo.<\/p>\n

Unlike the canyons of Idaho where I just was, this part of Montana has few (none actually) convenient campgrounds.\u00a0 These are very broad, domesticated valleys between distant mountain ranges.\u00a0 The mountains are mostly federal land and have plenty of campgrounds, but they most definitely back-country sites, not at all convenient to the main roads.\u00a0 My research (done on a comfy chair in the shade in front of a coffee house in Dillon that was closed for the weekend)\u00a0 turned up a nice sounding CG a mere seven miles off the main road at Sheridan (Montana, not Wyoming!).\u00a0 So that’s the plan.<\/p>\n

Even more driving, through very prosperous looking farms past perfect trout streams, to Sheridan. <\/strong>I note the bakery on the corner for tomorrow morning, take my left and start counting the 7 miles. \u00a0\u00a0 The road starts out as nice pavement through town, in fact for about 4 miles, then it turns into pretty nice gravel road with nice rich person houses on it, and then at about mile 6<\/em> is the fence and cow barrier that marks the beginning of the National Forest, and boom!\u00a0 The road goes to hell – very rutted and bumpy and narrow and scary.\u00a0 I got about 200 yards and meet a 4WD Subaru coming down.\u00a0 They say the CG is a couple of miles further on. I decide that two more miles of this is not for me and my top-heavy van\u00a0 I back down the road (between this and tricky campground parking areas I am getting pretty good at backing this thing), to the fence where there is a turnaround.\u00a0 I say the hell with it and just park there.\u00a0 Turned out to be quite nice!\u00a0 There was a roaring stream right across the road, I hung out there in the shade till the sun went behind the mountain, then just did my usual evening things.\u00a0 One truck went out and back that night, then one in the morning and that was it.<\/p>\n

Sunday<\/h3>\n

Prepare to enter the Yellowstone<\/strong> vortex.\u00a0 First 3\/4 of the day were quite nice.\u00a0 Had a blueberry turnover and a maple bar and a lot of coffee at the cute little Sheridan Bakery.\u00a0 The Bakery was pretty 50’s, but the town was modern enough to have downtown wifi!<\/em><\/p>\n

I did not stop at the Nevada City<\/strong> ghost town.\u00a0 I did so on the trip 11 years ago (yikes!) and quite enjoyed all the derelict train cars and random pieces of equipment and took a lot of pix.\u00a0 Just didn’t feel the need this time\u00a0 Also did not stop at the tourist trappy town of Virginia City<\/strong>. That was a much easier call.\u00a0 I did stop at Norris Hot Springs<\/strong>, where I spent the next two hours-ish It is a combo hot pool and roadside bar, a combination I have not seen before!\u00a0 There was a single pool, 3′ deep and with a sprayer on about half the pool.\u00a0 In a pleasant little glen with flowers and birdfeeders and shade and lawn chairs and a grill for dogs and burgers and beer by the plastic glass.\u00a0 If only they allowed camping.\u00a0 Anyway, noon to 1:45, and I’m outta there, no beer thank you.<\/p>\n

Drove past the Red Mountain BLM Campground on the ridiculously scenic Madison River.\u00a0 It looked very nice and I plan to remember it for next time.<\/p>\n

My plan is to get groceries, fill the tank, and snag a little wifi in Bozeman<\/strong>.\u00a0 I figure Yellowstone will be a little infrastructure-deprived [this was wrong – Yellowstone is completely<\/em> infrastructure-deprived!].\u00a0 I did all that, but was not ready to fall in love with Bozeman.\u00a0 Turns out it’s a college town, some directional Montana university is here, and it really makes the downtown nice!\u00a0\u00a0 Tons of food places and bookstores and cute coeds and all that college stuff.\u00a0 Everywhere has wifi and hipsters on bikes.\u00a0 Now I want to sell my condo so I can do stuff like live here six weeks, and Missoula six weeks, and Florence Oregon a few weeks, and so on…<\/p>\n

Didn’t escape Bozeman til 4:30-ish.\u00a0 A little I-90, then south at Livingston<\/strong> on US 89, to head up the oh so scenic Yellowstone River valley to see those iconic National Park sights of Yellowstone Park.<\/p>\n

It’s about 5:30 when I pass a really inviting looking Forest Service CG right off the road, but I’m very excited to maximize my Yellowstone experience by camping there and spending the evening at the Mammoth Headquarters area.\u00a0 This turned out to be a horribly misbegotten idea<\/em>, pretty much 180 degrees opposite of how one should attack the park, but I didn’t know any better, so I zoomed past the quiet CG, rushed through the quaint and scenic restaurant-filled town of Gardiner to get into the park.\u00a0 Passed the now famous Teddy Roosevelt entrance Arch, and started winding up the Gardiner River Canyon to get to my campground (HAH) at Mammoth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Really beautiful country up here.\u00a0 The drive last night and this morning was lovely – up the Salmon River, then over through the Nez Perce battle country to Montana fly fishing country…\u00a0 Lovely, but there sure is a lot of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-september-2011-northwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}