My Travel Path

My Travel Path

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

National Parks Road Trip - Part 3 - Big Horn Canyon, Cody and Glacier National


Following Yellowstone, we traveled East to Big Horn Canyon National Recreational Area.  The camping here was also free.  The canyon was beautiful. 

Did you know there are still WILD horses running around in the US? Neither did I.  We had to pass through a wild horse range in order to get to our campsite.  This herd was hanging out right by the road. 



We went on a couple of short hikes around the canyon area.  Pictures just dont do the real thing justice.

Stumbled upon some Big Horn Sheep on one hike. 



We also visited Cody, WY which is a fun little tourist town about an hours drive from Big Horn Canyon.  Here we also went "rafting".  I would actually consider it floating down the river in a raft.  There was almost no waves what so ever, but it was nice to see all the scenery in the area.


Every night Cody, WY has a free gun show in the street. They set it up to be comincal.  There was a character in the skit with the name Dick Cheney and in the story line he "accidentally" shot his hunting buddy.  


We heard from several people that Glacier National was an amazing scenic park to visit.  Everyone insisted we visit since we were already so close (only 16hrs off from our planned route).  Soooooo, what the heck, we jumped in the car and headed north!


And everyone was right.  The views were indeed amazing. Mountains were everywhere.  Not to mention, some how, the weather was warmer than at Yellowstone. 




Again we hiked around on some of the shorter day trails.  Water falls allllll over the place. 


And we saw a real glacier!

We were so high up in the picture that we had to look down onto the waterfall. 


One part of the park had HUGE cedar and cotton wood trees.  Im not sure how some of them ended up hollowed out like this one but it made for a cute picture.  The tree, even though part of its trunk was hollowed out, was still alive!


We hiked a 4 mile round trip trail to Avalanche Lake.  This has got to be one of the most spectacular hikes I have ever done.  The entire trail runs along side a stream that has cut perfect cylindrical shapes out of the rocks.  There were beautiful huge trees along the entire trail and once you arrived at the lake the view was breathtaking.  The mountains surrounded the lake and at the time we counted 5 different waterfalls flowing down the mountains and into the crystal clear lake.  This was definitely one of the highlights of the entire trip. 



Also, also, also......the trip up to Glacier enabled us to see a grizzly bear! He/She was chowing down on some berries on the side of the road.  You can believe I didn't get too far away from the truck to snap a few pictures and watch the beautiful animal.



Glacier was indeed a fascinating place. 

 


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