Shoshone National Forest

It was a warm day, and we needed to give my wife's mother an alternative to Animal Planet on TV. We decided to travel up to Meeteetse and then to Shoshone National Forest. Here are the map and directions.

Just before Lower Sunshine Reservoir, we turned off of WY-290 and soon encountered a big herd of elk. This picture below only shows a small portion of it.

We continued on up Wood River Road and stopped at a ranch which was fattening up some buffalo.

Finally we arrived at Shoshone National Forest.

We wanted to see if we could get to Kirwin, an old ghost town where Amelia Earhart was planning to build a cabin when she disappeared.

We had another seven miles to get to Kirwin, but with Grandma on board, we thought we had gone far enough when we saw this portion of the road with a stream intersecting it.

On the way back, we stopped at one of the campgrounds.

We used the well maintained outhouse on the right.

Click on the photograph below to read the posters.

This stream is next to the campground.

Here are a couple of shots I took after leaving Shoshone National Forest.

We saw the elk herd once again, but this time they were trying to jump two fences and cross the road. The oil derricks in the background are a common sight in Wyoming.

About three fourths of the herd made it across the road when we were startled to hear a large boom. Hunters were hiding in the brush and trees. They didn't seem to be successful, however, but the remainder of the herd was cut off from the rest, as the photograph below shows.

The following three photographs were taken along WY-290 on our way back to Meeteetse.

This final shot was taken along WY-120 during our drive back home to Thermopolis.

link: index to photographs

beyond the Buffalo Pasture, part 1

Today we just had a couple of hours, so we parked at the north end of Dirty Jack Road in the Buffalo Pasture of Hot Springs State Park. Then we climbed over the fence (below) and avoided the electric wires which are designed to keep the buffalo from harming the fence.

Then we took on this hill:

Below, you can see in the distance where we parked.

Above (looking east) and below (looking west toward Thermopolis) are two more views of what we could see from the top of the hill.

Below is what we found on top of the hill:

As we continued our hike, we climbed other ridges and hills.

In the shot below, you can see the first hill we climbed today on the far right. Just to the left of that is Roundtop Mountain, to the left of that is T-Hill, and left of that is Monument Hill.

See also beyond the Buffalo Pasture, part 5, part 4, part 3, part 2.

link: index to photographs