Nostalgia hits again.

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A friend of mine recently departed on a trip out west with his family. I've been viewing his posts about it on Facebook, and that got me to thinking of a trip Peg and I made out west on the Goldwing motorcycle that we had at the time. If I remember correctly, it was in 2004. I spent a little time scanning a few photos (we were still in the old technology at that time.....) and here they are!!

Not sure when we found this, but Peg is a big fan of Lewis and Clark.....

We booked directly to Montana via freeways. We did take the time to look at Teddy Roosevelt park, but kind of drove directly to Peg's cousins in Ronan, Mt. They took us on a tour of Glacier Park, and the next day we decided to motorcycle through the park.

These photos are not too good, but you kind of get the idea of the immenseness of the mountains in Glacier. That nearly horizontal line at about chest height on me is the Going To the Sun road, carved across the face of miles of REALLY steep land.

Pretty awesome scenery near Logan Pass, the highest point in the road that crosses the park.

A turn-out near (maybe) Lake Katherine, with mountains rising thousands of feet behind it.

Looks like we were having a good time, conned a passing motorist into being our photographer.

This is one of my favorites, a lookout on the Going to the Sun road. You can imagine how steep the slopes are, but you really need to see them in person to imagine just how incredible it all is.
Mycal, you need to talk Greg into going here.

Back to the real world of "just ordinary Montana". Just kidding, it was all great.




We visited Virginia City, Montana, and I had to shoot my way out of one saloon....

And, of course, I found Peggy in the other watering hole.....

Not sure where this was.....

We were heading up the Galatin Valley on our way to West Yellowstone. We didn't quite make it due to the huge wildfires. Lots of fires that summer. We watched for a while then headed for Livingston.

Stopped at Dan Bailey's fly shop, it's a quite famous place known to fly fishers only. Mycal, go here.

We headed into Yellowstone via one of the other northern routes. No fires in this area.

Elk grazing on the lawn at a big hotel/motel thingie in the park. Pretty neat.... as you can see, we were dressed for bad weather. It was in the 90's at lower elevations, but in the upper 40's here.

When looking for moose, thing small. That one in the background was really quite far away. Depth perception is destroyed in these grand expanses out west.
Double click the photo to see the moose better.

After Yellowstone, we left via the northeast entrance and headed into worse weather. We traveled through Cook City, rain and dropping temps. As we headed up toward Beartooth pass, the temp was in the upper 30's!! But we made it, and at nearly 11,000'!

I think this was in the Bighorn Mountains, not sure. I am sure that I was having a wonderful vacation.

We finally made it to Custer Park in SD. Needles highway was cool and this tunnel through solid rock was awesome. We went through, I dropped Peggy off and I went back through, turned around and came through again for the "photo op".

I had a staring contest with George. It lasted quite a while, but he blinked first. HA!!

We visited the Corn Palace, the first time we had seen it (maybe Peggy was there when she was a little kid, I'm not sure and she's not home to verify this). It is totally amazing.........

We had roasted corn. Go figure.....

People were looking at us like we were kind of nuts. Oh well, I'm used to that look.

So, did we have fun? It looks like it! This is at the rest area on Beartooth Pass. Once we got over that hump (the 11000' photo) the weather improved, the sun came out and we had a couple Hardee's little roast beef sandwiches from the day before, washed down with Diet Mountain Dew. Livin' the good life, with that exhilarating run down the Beartooth Highway to Redlodge still ahead of us. I think we need to do that trip again some year soon.

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