Sunday, August 23 - The Windstorm

We were awakened by thunder and lightning at our campground outside of Sturgis, so we rushed to take down camp, hoping to not get struck by lightning while putting things in the top carrier.  That "freaked me", as Jack says...because we were watching lightning strikes across the valley.  We had breakfast at the Cedar Tree in Spearfish after searching for restaurants…it was ok, not great but not terrible. We drove the route north from Spearfish to Belle Fourche and then angled west towards Devil’s Tower. We stopped at an old coal mine on the way, the Aladdin Tipple. 

I don't like mines, especially coal mines, but this had a rustic charm to it due to the history. It was interesting, I've never been anywhere like that.

 There was also a very old general store just a short distance away.

The Aladdin Mercantile is one of only 5 19th century mercantiles left in the state, and is a rare example of late 19th century vernacular mercantile architecture. I have no idea what that means, but it sounds interesting.  The store was built in 1896.

The Kids on the "Liar's Bench"

We drove close to Devil’s Tower but didn’t take the time to go all the way into the visitor center - we've been there before and we had many more miles to travel today. 

We made our way through Gillette

Painted steer at a Gillette gas station

and Buffalo and Sheridan and then stopped at the Connor battlefield where the Powder River Expedition attacked Arapaho Chief Black Bear's encampment. 

This is a very serene, beautiful spot and like many battlefields it is hard to envision it as the site of great losses of life.  Connor's mission, which left from Fort Laramie (which we will visit later in the trip) was to wage war with the Indians and force them into peaceful submission.  

We left this site and began our ascent into the Bighorns.

 I was a little worried about the drive up, and VERY worried about the descent on the other side.  We took the northernmost route through the Bighorns, Alt Hwy. 14, which has a much steeper grade than the other route that most people take on their way to Yellowstone.  On the way up, there are periodic signs pointing out the age of the rocks and the very interesting rock formations. 

At more than one point along this road, younger rock is located underneath older rock.  There was construction in the Bighorns where they took us totally off the road onto gravel tracks…not too bad but I still wasn’t thrilled. We stopped at the visitor center near Burgess Junction and took a short walk.

There was a marmot colony that was fun to watch even though we had forgotten our binoculars in the car.  A nice couple let the kids borrow theirs.  We saw a lone cow moose in the forest  as we were heading west.

 It was raining and looking stormy so we didn’t dare attempt walking to the Medicine Wheel…I was very disappointed, I had really wanted the kids to see it. The Medicine Wheel is located high in the wide, open spaces of the Bighorns at an elevation of 9,642 feet.  It is a wheel-like pattern of  rocks that had a diameter of 80 feet.  There is a center cairn with 28 spokes and if you stand/sit at the spokes they point you to different spaces on the horizon and seem to be related to solar/star alignments.  The wheel is 300-800 years old but there are archaeological sites in the area that have been dated back as old as 12,000 years.  Marc and I visited it in 1993 and I wanted to go back and spend more time but it is simply not a place you want to be if there is the threat of storms, as there was today.  So, I braced myself for the descent and it was not as bad as I thought even though is is a 10 % grade for 14 miles!

We drove through Lovell and found the free town camping spot at a city park but it was not nice at all...all gray gravel, not a bit of grass, and completely deserted.  The bathroom facilities were pretty dirty too.  I'd rather have an outhouse and no shower.  So, we stopped at the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area Visitor Center to ask about campgrounds. I thought there was one in the rec. area but it wasn't listed in my camping book.  There were two we could choose from.  We talked to him about the wild horse situation and the upcoming roundup and he pointed out the high number of horses, how many the range can support, etc.  We also discussed bad roads in other parks where he has worked.  He was a very nice guy.  Jack spent this whole time sitting on a couch looking at a book.  When we realized we had 15 min. to get to the grocery store and shop before they closed we got ready to leave and I told Jack to leave his book there.  The ranger said, "Did you look at it?  It's pretty cool book". It is called Fossil Freeway and it was cool.
http://www.amazon.com/Cruisin-Fossil-Freeway-Scientist-Ultimate/dp/1555914519/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263498168&sr=8-1


I promised Jack we'd come back the next day and buy it and we went to get groceries.  Then we drove out into the canyon area and found the campground.  We found one of the "free" sites.  Jack made us all laugh when he asked, "Is there dirt here?  "'Cause I NEED dirt!". 

http://www.nps.gov/bica/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm
We stayed at the Horseshoe Bend Campground shown on this website.

There were quite a few signs about rattlesnakes and the campground host came over after seeing the kids, to warn me.  He claimed they don't come in the campsites but have been found nearby...they had already relocated 7 that summer including one that was found in a garbage can!  Rosie and Logan set up the tent while Jack made a town out of rocks (inspected for snakes) and logs and I attempted to cook dinner.  Halfway through cooking the sausage for pasta (Jack had been promised pasta with sausage sauce for several days and had said that afternoon "I Want Sausage!"), our cooking gas ran out!  Very bad timing...it was already 8pm.  We hurriedly picked everything up and threw it in the car and went back to town (a 20 min. drive).  There was nowhere to buy cooking gas, and the only restaurant  that was open was in a motel.  It is called the Cauc-Asian Diner.  I am not making that up.  Here is proof:
http://www.cauc-asiandiner.com/index.php?p=1_7_Photo-Gallery

I inexplicably forgot to take a picture.  The kids liked their fries, and they got to watch Scooby Doo while eating.  The people were very nice.  We talked to a family from Redwood Falls who were eating at the next table.  What a small world, my grandparents were from a tiny town near there that no one has ever heard of (but of course they had) so it was strange to be discussing it in Wyoming.

It was dark by the time we got back to our campground, and very windy.  We reached our campsite and discovered that the windstorm (it was windy in town, in the canyon it could only be called a windstorm.  It must have been funneling just right through the canyon and hitting the campground with full force.  It had decimated our tent.  Some of the poles were even broken.  I give the kids a lot of credit for pitching in to help clean up the mess, in the dark, as quickly as possible.  There was no way we could stay there and no way to sleep in the car, we had too much stuff.  We packed up and headed back to town.  We hadn't really liked the look of the motel where the diner was, so we pulled into the Horseshoe Bend Motel at the other end of Lovell (which means about 5 blocks away).  It was 10 pm.  Rosie and I left the boys in the car and went into the office...I don't remember why she came with me. 

We opened the door and walked through and were met with wild horse "stuff' everywhere...statues, figurines, posters, books, calendars, etc.  And the owner was in the sitting area showing a "Cloud" movie to another motel guest.  We had obviously come to the right place!  She finished talking to him and we asked for a room and then started talking about the horses, Cloud, etc.  She knows Ginger Kathrens, the woman who made the Cloud movies.  She told us a lot of "that" side of things and what was going on and being done to fight the roundup.  It was a very interesting conversation.  We realized we had left the boys sitting in the car for a half hour by the time we were done talking!  We went out with our room key and they were asleep.  Ooops!  The rooms at the Horseshoe Bend Motel are very basic...nothing fancy and the furnishings and linens are older, but they are clean and reasonable.  I would stay there again. There is also a pool, and a courtyard with picnic tables where you are invited to cook your own meals.

We went to sleep quickly, looking forward to our wild horse adventure in the morning.

Monday, August 24 Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Day!

Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Day!

I woke up pretty early at our motel intending to go for a run but it was raining,  so I didn’t go.  I watched the sky and worried that they wouldn't take us up to the horse range if the roads were too wet.  I went to one gas station for coffee and a propane canister for the stove but they were out of those!  Thankfully they were not out of coffee or it would not have been a good morning.  I got everyone up and we thought positive.   We packed and made sandwiches and got snacks together and headed to the visitor center to get Jack’s book, Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway.


We met our guide at the Pryor Mtn. Wild Mustang Center  at 9:30 and got ready to go. Our guide was Tom Dillon, whose son runs the center. Tom grew up in Lovell and knows the area so well….we were so lucky! It was another amazing, incredible day. We headed up into the mountains…it’s a rocky track, not a road. It is bone-jarring…you bounce around and grab onto things at times. He showed us the roundup corral at Britton Springs, where the horses were going to be brought following the roundup.  He also showed us many spots where different horses are found in the winter, showed us some water containment structures  and told us about how the BLM wants to put more in but certain people are objecting. The water containments collect rainwater (there are only 5 inches of rain a year on this side of the Pryor mountains) and it attracts the horses downward and creates greenery around them.

This is a GOOD part of the road up into the Pryors

On the way up he showed us an old Indian eagle catchment structure ruin…this one even had one of the (very faded and worn and old) pieces of wood near it.

I have read about these, but have never seen one...it is extremely rare to see them.  Then we were finally on top of the range and neared the cirque that in the Cloud movies Ginger Kathrens calls “the teacup bowl”. We saw a few horses and it turned out to be Coronado’s band (Rosie’s favorite horse I discovered…she likes him even better than Cloud.

He’s known as “Red Raven” in Ginger’s movies/books but his BLM name is Coronado. What a beautiful foal! She was less than two days old so we got out so Tom could try and determine if it was a colt or filly…it was a filly! He let Rosie help name her…they decided on Juanita (although in a recent publication put out by the Pryor Mtn. Mustang Center it looks like they may have changed her name to Jemez).

Very Young Filly

 All horses receive “J” names this year and a Spanish name fit with Coronado. You can see her very, very curly mane and I cut off her tail somehow in the picture but it was the same way.  Absolutely adorable.  She is a rare color. 

We saw so many horses…Bolder (Cloud’s son) and his band were there, then we walked towards some cabins and saw many others. All day long Tom was showing us flakes from Indian tool-making, there used to be camps all over the tops of these mountains and he showed us. He was so full of stories and information and told us all about interesting things he has found and seen all over these mountains…he knows the horses history’s and often their genealogy too. There are also fossils in the rock formations.

It was fascinating…even Jack never got bored, Tom always had new and interesting thigns to tell us about when we weren’t watching horses.

We stopped at Pen’s Cabin (also in the movies) which is available on a first come, first serve basis…but it is infested with mice that may carry hantavirus so I would never stay there.

Horse Grazing With West Pryor in the Background

We saw many horses and then headed over to Krueger’s Pond and saw more including Phoenix, Cloud’s mother.

Phoenix is nearing 20 and may be removed during the roundup due to her age, we were told by someone in town.

Phoenix

Phoenix

 We left the pond and Tom wanted to take us to Dry Creek overlook where you look down 4,000 feet. It’s beautiful up there – you see intothe Bighorns, way north across the Crow reservation in Montana and south. Then Rosie asked to head back and look for Cloud, and Tom nicely agreed. We parked near Krueger’s Pond and Tom, Rosie and Logan set off on foot to check out a valley that was behind trees, where Cloud might be. Jack didn’t want to walk so I was going to stay at the car with him and Tom casually said “he could be back at the pond, you could check” so I decided to – Jack wanted to stay in the car and it was only a 4 or 5 min. walk away so I hurried up to the ridge overlooking the pond. I was looking down watching for arrowheads,etc. and as I reached the top of the ridge I looked down to the pond and then saw white to the left and up…there was a white horse there, on a path, just heading away from me intothe trees. I froze – said to myself “oh – my – gosh!” and stood there in disbelief for amoment. There were no other horses in sight but my gut said “it’s him”. I went tearing down the hill as fast as I could run (hoping not to step in a hole, of which there were many. I neared the car and saw the others off in the distance and started screaming at the top of my lungs “ROSIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. They finally heard me and turned and I just made a “come here!” motion and Rosie started running up. They finally all got there and Jack had gotten out too, to see what all the commotion was about. Tom was telling me a few others horses it could be but one was in Cloud’s band. We hurried down past the pond and through the trees and finally saw the white horse and then a few others. It was Cloud! He has 11 mares and a few foals with him, including Image, who is even whiter than his dad.

Rosie and Tom just after spotting Cloud

Image, Cloud's Son

**Update:  Image was adopted out to someone following the Sept. 26 roundup**

They didn’t pay much attention to us as we neared them and I was able to get some pictures of Rosie with Cloud in the background.

Cloud and Image

We then decided we were so close to the other eagle catchment that I had taken pics of with a telephoto lens that we may as well go see it so we headed out that way. The horses had moved that way too a short distance away. We saw the eagle catchment…right on a ridge and the perfect spot, it made a lot of sense. Some people think it’s a vision quest site but Tom knows his stuff and is certain it was for catching eagles.

Eagle Catchment

We made our way back and the horses were still there…only the foals and one mare paid any attention to us. Cloud seemed to not even acknowledge that we were there. I kept asking him to look at me for photos and nope, he wouldn’t. Then as we were walking away from them Tom turned back and sure enough, NOW Cloud was watching us.. I’m not sure why he wouldn’t let us know he was interested. I was so happy for Rosie to see her two favorite horses.

We then made our way up towards the car and another few bands were above the pond on the ridge.

I didn't write down all the names at the time and will have to send the photos to the mustang center for id.  The only bad thing about seeing so many horses that day!  At one point Rosie was just standing still and various horses walked within a few feet of her. 

They pretty much ignored us most of the time, acted like we weren't there. 

I LOVE This Picture!

We started across the top of the mountain headed east and then began our descent. It is a steep road at times but not as rough…but it is one lane and two directions which I do NOT like (remember the Garnet Ghost Town road?). It’s very pretty and runs along a canyon for a while. There were more horses along the upper part (who we found out were later rounded up and adopted out).

This Band was Rounded Up and Adopted Out a Few Weeks Later

We saw more horses up in the meadows across the beautiful canyon. 

We felt very lucky to not meet another car on the way!  We could have spent more time stopping at places along this road, such as the ice caves, but we'd already been gone longer than we were supposed to and Tom had promised to show us where some fossils are.  We reached the desert down below and stopped at a few different places where different formations contain different types of fossils. 

One formation contains dinosaurs...another mainly different types of shells and fish fossils. 

Then he took us to another spot where you can see very, very tiny star-shaped fossils that I think are called Crinoids.  You have to know what formation/level to look in, and then you have to find an anthill.  The ants bring these up out of the ground. 

Tom and the Kids Searching for Tiny Fossils

No one knows if they were plants or animals!  Absolutely enthralling, the depth of this man's knowledge about so many things.

We arrived back at the mustang center after 8 pm!  We didn't have much time to look around inside, they'd been closed for hours.  We will be back though.

We drove to Powell, a half hour away, and got a motel for the night.  They were going to close the pool early but I convinced them to stay open a little longer so the boys could swim.  Rosie didn't want to.  We ordered pizza, the boys and I went to the pool, and then when they were done the pizza arrived.

What an incredible, wonderful, amazing day of adventure.  We all agree that this may be the "coolest" thing we have ever done!  I am in love with those mountains. I know, some of you have heard that before, but these mountains are really unique.  They aren't high, craggy peaks...they are much older.  It is an adventure in itself to get up there, as a result, hardly anyone ever does go up there.  Between the horses and the beauty and the history and the wildlife that is there...I cannot wait to go back and just stay up there for days.  I know it is a place where you can truly feel like you are the only person for miles.  We will go back...soon.