'My' Montana Ranch

I left ‘my’ Montana Ranch heading south to Lewis Lake in the southern part of Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. I had been to the north of Yellowstone National Park twice but on both occasions the roads to the south of the park were blocked by snow. On the first occasion in the autumn of last year one road was blocked by snow and the other by a wild fire which made me think some greater power didn’t want me to get to the south of the park!

Lewis Lake, Yellowstone N.P.

I hoped to camp at Lewis Lake which is a ‘first come, first served’ campground. Being peak season I thought the chances were slim but I was lucky enough to get one of the last sites. The popularity of camping in Yellowstone may have taken a dive as the previous month one person was killed and two others injured when a grizzly bear with yearling cubs dragged them from their tents through the night from a Yellowstone campground. When I first heard of this attack I hoped to hear that there was food in the tents or they had broken the camping in bear country rules in some way but it appears they did everything correctly, as I have always done and were just unlucky. Bear attacks like this are extremely rare but grizzlies are unpredictable. I was glad that I only had a few more nights of camping in grizzly bear territory.

Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

The following day a biker from Arizona was riding round the campground unable to find a vacant site so I invited him to share mine. Each site is big enough for several tents and you pay the same whether there is one person with a small tent or half a dozen with a number of tents and a large mobile home. He was heading north to Glacier National Park, Montana on the Canadian border.

Grand Teton, National Park, Wyoming

The park roads were very busy going from Yellowstone to Grand Teton National Park, this being the peak holiday season. Each campground I passed was full including Jenny Lake where I had hoped to camp. Not only was the campground full, the car park was overflowing and vehicles were parking on the side of the road leaving plenty of space for me to get through but a motor home (R.V.) of which there were plenty would have had difficulty.

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

Grand Teton Mountain at 13,770 feet (4197 metres) towers 7000 feet (2134 metres) above the surrounding plateau, the greatest plateau to summit rise in any mountain range between Canada and Mexico.

Grand Teton Mountain

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming

I continued on through the Wind River “Indian’ or First Nation Reserve to Boysen State Park near Riverton, Wyoming. The campsite was by a lake and I was the only one there the first night. The following day I met a local who said I should have gone to Sinks Canyon State Park near Lander which is much better. Sinks Canyon has a river that disappears underground and emerges again quarter of a mile away. I thought about detouring via Sinks Canyon when I left Boysen S.P. but I had already booked a hostel in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado which was over three hundred miles away and decided there wasn’t time. I’m still keeping to a schedule that gets me to Mexico before my USA visa expires which means sticking to a reasonable pace.

Boysen State Park, Lakeside Campsite

I had a large motor home (R.V.) join me at the campsite for the second night. They kept a generator running until after dark then their dogs woke me early the following morning. At least this gave me an early start from Boysen State Park as I packed up and headed towards my Rocky Mountain National Park hostel. The route crossed the continental divide three times and was as usual scenic with little traffic apart from twenty miles on the I80 interstate after a breakfast stop at Rawlins, Wyoming.