Fun round of golf today in West Glacier Montana, right on the edge of the national park. Decent views from the course, but we'll see much better tomorrow when we hike in the park. But today was fun, first, I scored an 82, my best round in a long time. But second was the two spectators we had on the 13th tee.

Today we hiked in Seeley Lake Montana. After a six mile drive into the woods to the trailhead, it was about a 3 mile hike to the falls. Most of the area had been burned in a big forest fire last August.

One picture shows some of the trail to the falls. Lots of burned trees, but undergrowth coming back.

Another picture shows the lower falls. Trish is in the picture at the bottom of the beautiful waterfall. Then we hiked up to see the upper falls, just above the lower one. That's the picture I am in. Both are beautiful waterfalls.
It is called Morrell Falls.

 Tonight's campsite, for the next three nights actually. We are at Livingston Paradise KOA, just outside of the north entrance to Yellowstone. Our first KOA on this trip. More kids and young families, probably because of the amenities here, including an indoor pool. The campground is right on the Yellowstone River, although the view above is looking the other way toward the mountains.

Our neighbors.

Jack's relaxed ...... And so am I!

Our lifestyle on this trip is not all sightseeing and hiking, a lot of the time it's normal life stuff. Tonight's dinner on the grill, local fresh 🌽 and bbq chicken. Then my view out the front of the coach as I sit in my recliner relaxing.

Today we visited another battle field from the same war as Custer's, this one the day before. Tomorrow we pack up and head for Yellowstone area.

Today we drove into Bighorn National Forest (about an hour away from our campground), and hiked around a beautiful pond. Top picture is on the drive up into the mountains, our hike was at about 8400 foot elevation. The temp went from 85 to 68 as we climbed into the mountains. The hike was beautiful around the pond, 2 miles at 68 degrees was wonderful! And no bugs!  The bottom picture was at the entrance to a ranch we passed om the way back to our campsite.

We are camped within site of the battlefield where Custer had his last stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn. It is about 6 miles away, but out here you can see forever! Very interesting battlefield, easy to feel the way it happened, especially when the park ranger told the story. The top picture shows the marks where the soldiers died during the last stand, Custers is the one with black background, and is shown with the zoomed in picture.

Wyoming and Montana scenery

Sure is tough traveling with Jack in 90 degree weather. Sometimes too hot for him to hike and many places we take day trips to don’t allow dogs on the trails or in the water. Can’t leave him in the car in this heat. I feel bad leaving him in the air conditioned motor home but he doesn’t seem to mind. 🙂

More from today. Driving down into the pit, with the massive truck loads of coal coming up out if it. Interesting that they drive on the left in the mines. It's a safety thing apparently, giving the driver a good view of the edge of the road.

Next picture is inside the dragger shovel machine, which is the white machine in the distance of the first picture.

Got a chance today to explore a massive coal mine with a guy who works there. He is camping next to us so we went over to see it. Huge is the word, miles wide. The equipment is almost unimaginable in size. The first picture shows his work truck that we drove around in next to one of the dump trucks. The tires must be 8 or 9 feet tall.

Next picture is as we approach one of the draggers. Big......each shovel is 2 million pounds of dirt. The third picture is once we got onboard, looking down at his truck.

IllIpost more later, but it was cool!

The rest of the story!

Then, Trish looked at her ball ....... Now what!  Fortunately they were moving at that point and she was able to get her shot off a couple of minutes later.

Very calm animals, they just calmly walked down and across our fairway.

Playing golf in Wyoming!

Ok, coming up the 9th fairway, standing by my ball ....... This what is between me and the flag! You can see the flag up the hill. Should I hit or should I wait?  Well, they didn't want to move, so I hit the ball, hoping I wouldn't hit one of the antelope, especially the little ones.

  Good news, I hit the ball to the edge of the green, and not one of them flinched!

First dinner in Wyoming. We decided to cook inside tonight due to threat of thunderstorms. Can't really call this camping!  Enjoying a 2016 Marquette wine from our Tongue River Winery stay.

 More from tonight's campground. The dirt road is directly in front of us, leads down to a ranch.

Our campsite tonight. We are in Broadus, Montana. Hard to describe except to say ...... middle of nowhere!  Actually most of the scenery is nice, lots of evergreen trees. But quite dry, greens starting to turn brown after what the locals say has been a very wet early summer.

Tonight we are camping as guests of the Tongue River Winery. Our hosts treated us to endless wine samples when we arrived, most of their wines are quite good. They are located in Miles City Montana.

We're in Montana!  It's easy to understand why they call it Big Sky!

These pictures are from the Williston Brewing Company in Williston, North Dakota. I've seen men's and ladies rooms called many things, but never this!

Other than the National Park, this is what North Dakota is about.  Beautiful fields of yellow, blue and green …….. and oil derricks.  These two pictures were taken without moving, except looking another direction.

So, wildlife, first we saw one buffalo, from a distance. Quite exciting actually. Then we took a hike, only a mile off the road, to see a prairie dog town just off a trail. Well, there were all sorts of them, maybe 50 or more.  Then Trish spotted the buffalo.  Just a hundred yards away was a herd! Quite exciting, just listening to them and watching them. Lots of loud snorting sounds and a few rolling in the dusty dirt. We watched for a few minutes, much to the displeasure of the prairie dogs whose village we were standing in, until one big buffalo started moving in our direction. Seeing a large male buffalo, over 2000 pounds, capable of 30 MPH running, moving toward you, inspires you to go back the other way, which we did.

Anyway, very fun day seeing all of that wildlife.

Today we spent the day at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We went to the "north unit", which is less popular than the south, but also far less crowded!  In three hours there we probably saw 20 other cars.

Quite good scenery, the wind kept the temps ok, but still hot.  Anyway, according to the reviews, the north unit has a lot less wildlife, but equally good scenery. Well the scenery was very nice, as you can see, I wore a nice hat ...just kidding.  The scenery was great, and we saw wildlife, …. lots of wildlife. Pictures will be in our next post!

Thunderstorms last night, they seem bigger and more intense than back home.

Update: I guess we dodged a bullet that night. Our park ranger said that we had 70 mph winds during that storm. But only a few miles away the same storm had 127 mph winds and a tornado hit an RV park, killing a baby and flipping something like 27 RV's. Very sad.

View from tonight's camping spot. We are in Lewis and Clark State Park in North Dakota. Nice drive today, lots of yellow canola fields that I showed yesterday, but also the other "non-green" field, now identified as flax plants. Those are a kind of blue, so from a distance they look like water.
Then when most of the fields end, suddenly it is more hilly, drier, and prarie like. Oil dereck's and cattle.
Flames burning off the gases, one on the hill beyond our camp site.

Tonight we are in the town of Minot, North Dakota. Nice area, and for some reason we found a statue of Sondre Norheim, who is the founder of modern skiing.

Driving across North Dakota today was beautiful. Miles and miles of fields of yellow. Apparently the yellow flowers are canola, a common crop up here. Also plenty to corn, hay and other assorted plants.